During his first term, George W. Bush was arguably the most successful party-building president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like FDR, who fashioned a Democratic coalition that dominated American politics for a generation, Bush during his first four years in office helped the Republicans post gains in Congress and around the country that many in the party viewed as the cornerstone for a similarly long-lived GOP majority.
But during his seemingly ill-starred second term, the Republicans have hemorrhaged seats up and down the ballot–losing their majorities in both houses of Congress, dropping hundreds of seats in the state legislatures, and giving up enough governorships to leave the GOP with less than half of them for the first time in more than a decade.
As a result, with barely a year to go in his administration, that part of Bush’s legacy–as a party builder par excellence–remains very much in question.
Over the course of his presidency, Bush has thrown himself into the role of party builder with gusto that few, if any, of his predecessors have matched. He has helped the GOP and its candidates raise tens of millions of dollars and he has stumped extensively for Republican candidates who tapped the White House for assistance.
Boosted by high approval ratings through much of his first term and with the Democrats on the defensive, Bush’s efforts to help his party initially paid off. In 2002, he became the first president since FDR in 1934 to see his party gain both House and Senate seats in his first midterm election.
In 2004, Republicans added more seats to their congressional majorities with Bush leading the GOP ticket. The Republican Senate total swelled to 55 seats and the GOP House total to 232, the highest post-election total for the party on the House side in nearly 60 years and equaling the GOP’s highest post-election total on the Senate side since the eve of the Great Depression in the late 1920s. A nation split 50-50 after the 2000 election looked after 2004 as though it was definitely leaning Republican.