The great loser.(A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan)(Book review)

A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan, by Michael Kazin (Knopf, 400 pp., $30)

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN has got to be the greatest loser in American political history. No other major-party nominee has run for president so many times, only to have lost each time by an increasing margin. The 1896 vote was somewhat close, but 1900 was less so and 1908 a trouncing. "We have beaten them to a fizzle," as Teddy Roosevelt put it. Perhaps this explains why there is so little mention of Bryan in a Democratic pantheon dominated by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ. And yet, like Barry Goldwater, this loser led a successful grass-roots insurgency against his party establishment, caused that party to become aligned to a new set of ideas, and laid the groundwork for a major movement that would permanently alter the political landscape.

Still, Bryan's story is more complicated. Goldwater was affirmed within conservatism; Bryan ultimately met with rejection within his own movement. This makes his part in the development of modern liberalism all the more significant--and much more interesting.

In this fascinating new biography, Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin makes a compelling argument that Bryan "did more than any other man--between the fall of Grover Cleveland and the election of Woodrow Wilson--to transform his party from a bulwark of laissez-faire into the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideological descendants." Kazin's case is hard to dispute.

By the end of the 1880s, a divide already existed in the Democratic party--between the so-called Bourbon conservatives and a growing number of reformers. Bryan, the son of a staunch Jacksonian Democrat, came to side with the reformers. Shortly after Bryan moved from Illinois to Nebraska to practice law, his eloquence attracted the local party leaders just as the Populists (and their anti-big-business reforms) were becoming significant in state politics.

In 1890, Bryan became only the second Democratic congressman in Nebraska history. He was reelected, but instead of seeking a third term Bryan ran in (and won) a non-binding election for the Senate. The Republicans captured the legislature and appointed someone else.

Bryan embraced the key Populist ideas, but it was his advocacy of "free silver" (the policy of a bimetallic standard for currency rather than a unitary gold standard) that made him a national voice of reform and assured his first presidential nomination. It wasn't good economics, but made a winning political argument: Financial magnates ruled the country by controlling the money supply, and a silver standard would make currency cheaper and send more money back to the little guy. Bryan famously closed the deal with his dramatic "Cross of Gold" speech at the Democratic convention of 1896.