If Bush does get his wish at some point in the near future, though, he probably won’t deserve any of the credit for it. In the modern, post-machine-politics era, individual endorsements simply don’t matter as much as we sometimes pretend they do. The exceptions are, typically, the endorsements from those politicians who still do have a machine—or at least a robust activist and fundraising operation—that can be employed on the endorsee’s behalf.

There’s no reason to believe that a nod from a single politician can bring a campaign like this one to an end, David Karol, an associate professor of American politics at the University of Maryland and the co-author of “The Party Decides,” says. “I just don’t think that there is any one figure—with the rare exception going way, way back—[who] has that power.” Indeed, Karol says, the most recent example he can come up with of a single endorser swaying a nomination might be Teddy Roosevelt backing William Howard Taft, in 1908. (“The Party Decides” is discussed at greater length in Ryan Lizza’s recent article for the magazine about the primaries.)