Bryan, Bryan, Bryan
The three-time loser with a lesson for Trump
In the early twentieth century, the Democratic party had a problem. His name was William Jennings Bryan, and he wouldn’t go away.
Bryan had been a darling of progressive Democrats when he burst on the scene at the party’s national convention in 1896. Against the old guard wedded to the gold standard, Bryan preached the remonetization of silver at a generous rate. “If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost,” Bryan proclaimed. “Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
The delegates swooned, then made the young Nebraskan—Bryan was a mere thirty-six, only a year past the minimum age for president—their nominee. Bryan campaigned thrillingly against William McKinley, carrying his message around the country while the staid Republican sat on his porch in Canton, Ohio. Bryan spoke himself hoarse, until by election day he could barely croak.
He lost. McKinley’s men shamelessly shook down big corporations for money to offset Bryan’s personal appeal, and in those days before regulation of campaign spending, there was nothing the Democrats could do to prevent it.
Yet the Bryanites stood by their man, hoping to nominate him again in four years and make him president then.
They did nominate him again in 1900. The dire fate he had predicted for America under the gold regime hadn’t come about; in fact, following discovery of new mines in the Yukon and South Africa, the gold standard became the basis of an economic boom in the United States and other rich countries.
But Bryan had a new issue: anti-imperialism. After the brief Spanish-American War, McKinley persuaded the Senate to accept a treaty annexing the Philippines and Puerto Rico as American colonies. Bryan railed against this violation of the spirit of democracy, and he tried to make the 1900 election a referendum on the issue.
He lost again. Americans cared about foreign affairs less than Bryan did, and they liked the prosperity McKinley presided over more than Bryan did.
Bryan retreated but didn’t disappear. The Democrats turned to another candidate—Alton Parker, a conservative—to carry their banner in 1904, but after Parker suffered the largest popular-vote defeat in American history until then, to Theodore Roosevelt, Bryan made a comeback in 1908. He won the nomination a third time, and he sallied into battle against William Howard Taft, whom TR had anointed to be his heir.
Bryan lost yet again. His core of support among farmers dwindled with each try at the top; farmers were simply declining in number, and Bryan’s shine had dulled since his first run. But they remained the largest single bloc in the Democratic party, and though they couldn’t make Bryan president, they could keep other Democrats from becoming president, by denying those others the nomination.
Donald Trump isn’t William Jennings Bryan. In the first place, Trump actually won the presidency, in 2016. Yet he did so with a minority of the popular vote. And when he ran in 2020, he did worse than he had in 2016, losing the popular vote by a larger margin and losing the electoral vote too.
A growing number of Republicans fear that Trump has become a weight on party prospects they can’t get rid of. His supporters, like the Bryanites with their man, will follow him just about anywhere. Trump’s supporters appear to be dwindling in number; they probably can’t make him president again. But they can keep other Republicans from becoming president, by denying those others the Republican nomination.
What are Republicans to do?
The Democrats solved their Bryan problem by making him secretary of state after the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912. It wasn’t an ideal appointment. Bryan lent his weight to Wilson’s efforts to rein in the money trust, but after the outbreak of World War I, Bryan’s pacifist streak put him at odds with Wilson’s increasingly interventionist desires.
It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump as secretary of state. Less-diplomatic individuals have rarely crossed the stage of American politics.
Conceivably Trump will recognize the problem he has become for his party and retire quietly. But not much in his background points toward selfless statesmanship.
Bryan finally became a celebrity spokesman for conservative Christian values, speaking in favor of Tennessee’s anti-evolution law in the famous Scopes trial of 1925. Trump was a celebrity before he went into politics; perhaps he could just go back to that.
Although an interesting comparison between two figures and two times in our nation’s history, the problem is that The Donald cannot really be compared to The Great Commoner on an individual level. I, at a personal level, have read and re-read countless times Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech. I cannot recall one momentous utterance of Trump’s that really sung to me. But then again, I enjoy words well-joined and well-spoken, whether I agree with the political principle or economic theory those words were or are trying to advance in the public’s minds and trying to arouse in the peoples’ hearts.
But the comparison fails because, as you rightly point out, Trump is not Bryan.
Both men, however, share the historical role of “cockroaches” to their party’s political success and spoilers in the life stories of aspiring individuals who try to march under a party’s banner or hitch themselves to another candidates wagon in order to advance their own political goals and careers. But thus is ever politics.
I somehow sense that the changes in the structural dynamics of the functions played by parties in the way issues and candidates are put forth on our national stage as have evolved over 200 years, and certainly over the last century, play a large part in the ultimate failure of the comparison.
Parties and most aspirants lose sight of the reality that elections for the most part are not the selection of the “best and the brightest,” but the elimination of the “alternative.” When that is lost, coupled with the personal and collective denial of the fact that, on the given days designated by each state legislature as the window of election decision-making opportunity, more voters than not deemed the candidate and party standard bearer as the “alternative,” rather than the “best and brightest, disaster looms.
I neither know, nor can know how it will all work out. But, because it provides me with moments of humor, I eagerly, if not anxiously, look forward to watching. After all, there are only so many versions and episodes of Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone” that can be viewed.
Post script: Republican Solution-at the next convention, broker a Secretary of the Treasury appointment for Trump, so that he can put the nation on a bitcoin standard. That solution is probably not realistic, since he would want Florida to be the “bitcoin hub” instead of Texas, thereby costing him the Lone Star State’s delegation-California’s, too.
There's a solid economic reasoning behind Bryan's bi-metalism as it was then called. America was stuck on the gold standard and only allowed the amount of dollars to circulate that was backed by government gold inventory. In short the money supply could not expand which limited loans to farmers as well as dampened economic growth.
While still steeped in using metal as backing for our paper dollars, Bryan's attempt to add silver to that backing would have vastly expanded the money supply and facilitated economic growth.
Hitting new gold reserves as you pointed out literally did the same thing- as well as caused a measure of inflation.
As an aside, the goldbugs (people who want a return to the gold standard) fail to realize that ALL money- even that 'backed by gold' - is really a human construct anyway.
Always enjoy your writing, Mr Brands. Looking forward to reading The Last Campaign as well as your next presentation at the Hauenstein Center in Grand Rapids