159 Assessing the President’s Role LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXIX, 2, May 2004 159 GARY C. JACOBSON SAMUEL KERNELL JEFFREY LAZARUS University of California, San Diego Assessing the President’s Role as Party Agent in Congressional Elections: The Case of Bill Clinton in 2000 Presidents have become their parties’ chief fund-raisers and thus have the capacity to further their parties’ collective fortunes by imposing a more efficient distribution of campaign resources than might otherwise prevail. In order to succeed, presidents must, first, accurately target their efforts where they will best improve candidates’ prospects for winning seats, and second, either directly or indirectly (through signaling to other donors) generate sufficient new resources to affect the election outcome. Analyses of Bill Clinton’s extensive fund-raising efforts during the 1999–2000 election cycle confirm that presidents can indeed use their unmatched fund-raising ability to help their parties win congressional contests they might other- wise lose. But analysis of the Clinton record also shows that presidential fund-raising activities may be shaped by other purposes that lead to a distribution of effort that is suboptimal for the party. In pursuing congressional majorities, the national parties face a standard collective action problem. Each party’s collective interest lies in maximizing the number of seats it wins with little regard to whom the winners turn out to be. The party’s individual candidates, however, care intensely about who the winners are, for losers share neither the collective benefits of the party’s victory nor the personal benefits of holding office. The candidates’ interest thus lies in maximizing their own chances of victory. The differing perspectives of parties and their candidates naturally generate conflicts over the distribution of cam- paign resources. Theoretically, the party should prefer to allocate money and organizational effort efficiently, redirecting resources from cam- paigns of stronger candidates to those of weaker candidates as long as the marginal improvement in the latter’s prospects exceeds the mar- ginal decrement in the former’s prospects. Individual candidates, how- ever, will rationally resist giving up resources for the party’s sake if doing so increases their risk of defeat.