The Strange Death of Liberal America

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Of men and whirling flowers and beasts,
The bard and the prophet of them all.
Prairie avenger, mountain lion,
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
–Vachel Lindsay

With the Democratic presidential campaign underway, it seems an appropriate time to examine the idea of what it has meant to be a Democrat over the last century, especially those Democratic presidents and presidential candidates who have helped to shape the modern party.

Perhaps the best place to start is with one of the most misunderstood figures in American history, William Jennings Bryan. Over the next few weeks, this ongoing series will explore Woodrow Wilson, Al Smith, FDR, Harry Truman, and others. The posts will not focus on the usual recitations of what they did, but instead on their beliefs: what did they define as the core values of the Democratic Party? Where possible I also will try to draw parallels with current issues such as Iraq and the role of government. What do these people who helped define what it means to be a Democrat–and for some a progressive–have to contribute to the current debate about where America and Democrats should be headed?

For most of the turn of the last century William Jennings Bryan dominated the Party, serving as its presidential nominee three times–more than anyone else other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is possible he might have even run a fourth time but in 1912 he threw his support to Woodrow Wilson, a move that was crucial in enabling Wilson to win the nomination and go on to capture the presidency. Bryan today seems book-ended by two events–the Cross of Gold Speech the first put him on the national stage and the Scopes Trial which was his exit–that many present-day Americans regard as the defining moments of an eccentric man with harebrained ideas.

Known to his contemporaries as “The Great Commoner,” Americans today might style him “The Great Crackpot.” This is not helped by the contemporary image of him that appears occasionally on cable television in the movie Inherit the Wind, Stanley Kramer’s dramatization of the Scopes trial. Frederick March’s over-the-top portrayal of Bryan (who in the movie is named Brady)–which was intended to deliberately contrast with Spencer Tracey’s laid-back Clarence Darrow (Drummond in the movie)–cemented an image of The Great Commoner in our cultural consciousness as an out-of-control zealot.

Yet Bryan did not earn three presidential nominations–and perhaps could have even had a fourth–because he was a crackpot. Actually, in many ways he was–and still is–ahead of his times. Long before most politicians recognized the power of the media, Bryan founded a publication he named The Commoner which was mailed to thousands of households throughout the country, households that remained loyal Bryan supporters for most of his life. In the opening issue of The Commoner Bryan wrote:

Webster defines a commoner as “one of the common people.” The name has been selected for this paper because THE COMMONER will endeavor to aid the common people in the protection of their rights, the advancement of their interests and the realization of their aspirations.

It is hard to remember what those times were like in these days when candidates born with silver spoons in their mouths like to pretend they cut brush on weekends at their Texas “ranches,” but back when Bryan wrote that paragraph a majority of people in power were not only skeptical of “the common people” a good many of them were afraid of them, seeing them as ignorant rubes who hadn’t the slightest concept of either politics or economics or as wide-eyed fanatics who would plunge this country into anarchy that would make the excesses of the French Revolution look tame. When a self-styled anarchist assassinated President McKinley it only reinforced their fears. Republicans then as now, also loved to evoke the specter of “class warfare” in a way reminiscent of segregationists warning of the perils of integration. One GOP editorial warned in a passage that sounds like Dick Cheney of:

specious demagogy which has evolved the professional politician, arrayed country against town the farmer and his sons and daughters against the business and professional men and their sons and daughters capital against labor, and built up against neighbors the impregnable barriers of prejudice and hate.

So the Republicans projected their fears and prejudices onto Bryan and he became caricatured as a rube and a zealot. Yet the list of causes and programs Bryan fought for would not make a bad platform for the Democratic Party today. What makes William Jennings Bryan one of the more remarkable figures in American history is that in his times many of his ideas were not only radical but thought by some to be “un-American.”

In The Commoner and as Senator from Nebraska, Bryan opposed our intervention in the Philippines as “imperialism,” advocated for a federal income tax and women’s suffrage before either of them became law, defended trade unions, demanded that candidates reveal the source of their campaign contributions, proposed labor have a cabinet position, championed the idea of insured bank deposits and a precursor to the federal reserve system, and spoke out for the popular election of Senators decades before the Seventeenth Amendment.

Even the Scopes Trial is still misinterpreted and misunderstood. While there is no doubt Bryan’s religious beliefs were a large part of his motivation in offering to prosecute Scopes, the famous “final speech” that he never lived to give, says little about religion. Instead it builds its case mainly on the principle that local school boards should have the power to decide what is taught in their schools, something few Americans today would oppose. Bryan’s much-discussed antipathy toward Darwinism actually grew out of his horror at how what Richard Hofstader would later term Social Darwinists were using “survival of the fittest” to justify oppressing anyone who didn’t live in a mansion.

In the autobiography she completed for her husband after his death, Bryan’s widow noted, he stood for “equal rights for all and special privileges for none.” In essence William Jennings Bryan fought for the importance of the level playing field even as the plutocrats of the 1890s were turning the country into what Mark Twain called “the Great Barbecue.” He took on the causes of the powerless, the poor, what he called the “common people” and fought for them against the money and influence of what were then called “trusts.” These were times when people like John D. Rockefeller proclaimed,

The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.

Indisputably the last great public orator who spoke without the aid of technology, Bryan essentially made his living giving speeches. A few remain on three old wax cylinders preserved by Cylinder and Digitization Project of the University of Santa Barbara. Those cylinders leave little doubt about Bryan’s rhetorical powers, for even on these primitive recordings his voice rings like a bell, clear and pure with every word so carefully and precisely enunciated that it is easy to understand how this man could speak to a thousand people gathered under a Chautauqua tent on a steamy summer afternoon as fans fluttered in the air and even those in the furthest seats could understand him as clearly as if he was standing right next to them.

The cylinders also destroy March’s parody in Inherit the Wind of a bombastic, flowery speaker given to outrageous metaphors to make his points. Instead in two political speeches on the cylinders, Bryan gives careful, reasoned arguments for his positions, citing historical examples and other evidence to bolster his point. Because the recording time of the cylinders was short, only a couple of minutes, Bryan has about the time of the average television interview question to make his points, which he does convincingly, leading you to believe this man regarded as a rhetorical dinosaur might fare quite well in today’s media environment.

This is the Bryan who literally struck fear into those who dared debate him, for they knew that his command of an issue allowed him to weave his voluminous knowledge into a tight argument from which few could escape. The “Cross of Gold” speech is remembered today for its famous conclusion, but in fact most of the speech is devoted to making an economic and social case for what at that time was called “free silver.”

It is hard to believe that this short, stocky man whose face reminds me of Elmer Fudd should have charisma, but Bryan had enough of it that he could give his surplus to Al Gore and John Kerry and still move a crowd like a bolt of lightning. Any public relations student would tell you that such a man who looked like a caricature from Hee-Haw could never be president today, but that is a sad comment on our times and not on Bryan.

He even favored Stetson hats, which some in the press lampooned, because back then Stetson hats had all the romance of seed company baseball caps. But the hat was part of the image Bryant cultivated as the Great Commoner, like Ben Franklin wearing a fur hat in Paris, in a day before handlers molded presdients with make-overs as if they were Paris Hilton.
In “On Democracy,” an early speech for which no recording exists, he outlined what he believed should be the principles of the Democratic Party:

But what are the principles for adherence to which we are so denounced? Look at the word democracy itself, “the rule of the people.” That is the fundamental idea of the party, and a government by the people is the form which we desire. Contrast this with the form proposed by Hamilton, that aristocrat who has been represented, during the last campaign, as the embodiment of sagacity, wisdom, and statesmanship. ..He feared and distrusted the people.

In the same speech Bryan went on to lay out some of the important elements of that principle, elements that remind me of some of the cornerstones outlined in The Strange Death of Liberal America.

We believe in the superiority of civil law to military rule.

We believe in the separation of church and state for the benefit of both. Read, by the light of the faggot and the torch, the history of the bloody years when Church and State joined forces and crushed opposition by the heel of power.

We believe in free schools, fostered and protected…Education is necessary to self-government. The schoolhouse is the dearest friend of a free people…God speed the day when education shall banish bigotry from every mind, when the man of learning will stoop to help the man less fortunate and confess himself superior only is his ability to do greater good.

Another Bryan speech, “The Paralyzing Influence of Imperialism” was given before the 1900 Chicago Democratic Convention. Someone ought to mail a copy of it to those who now propose to send more troops into Iraq. We also might recall the war in the Philippines has some uncanny parallels with Iraq. Like Iraq, President McKinley (who is Karl Rove’s hero) believed American troops would be welcomed to the Philippines, but instead their arrival precipitated an insurrection that lasted from 1899-1913. It took 126,000 American troops to put down the rebellion.

Bryan thought the Philippine invasion was a bad idea and pressed for the inclusion of an anti-imperialist plank in the 1900 Democratic platform. In his speech advocating the plank, he said:

Someone has said that a truth once spoken can never be recalled. It goes on and on, and no one can set a limit to its ever widening influence. But if it were possible to obliterate every word written or spoken in defense of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, a war of conquest would still leave its legacy of perpetual hatred, for it was God Himself who placed in every human heart the love of liberty. He never made a race of people so low in the scale of civilization or intelligence that it would welcome a foreign master. (my emphasis)

Bryan goes on to outline the main reasons for opposing making the Philippines an American colony in a passage that also has contemporary echoes:

I am not willing that this nation shall cast aside the omnipotent weapon of truth to seize again the weapons of physical warfare. I would not exchange the glory of this republic for the glory of all the empires that have risen and fallen since time began.

It is appropriate to recall William Jennings Bryan as the Democratic Party enters into a new era when it has the first chance in a long time to control both Congress and the White House. Bryan is seen today as a perennial loser, someone who might have been president had he only moderated his positions on issues such as free silver and the Philippines. For today’s candidates he is cited as the classic example of someone who should have moved to “the middle” rather than cling to a too-radical progressivism. To see him as someone to emulate or an important influence would probably precipitate a few snickers from many of today’s party officials.

Yet even though Bryan never became president, if one measures success even in simple score-keeping terms then Bryan was a success because almost everything he fought for became part of the American fabric. However, Bryan’s place in history and his importance to today’s Democratic Party lie not in keeping score–something he himself would abhor, for Bryan was not a man who kept score. Instead what mattered was that he remained consistently true to his principles no matter what the consequences.

This might suggest Frederick March was not far off the mark, but the real Bryan was not the bombastic blowhard of Inherit the Wind but a much more complex character. Bryan had his share of faults. He was a racist, his support of prohibition could sometimes seem bizarre, and there is no question about his religious beliefs could be as rigid as any contemporary fundamentalist. The cross-currents of his times blew through him as one of his Nebraska tornadoes. There was no triangulation, no waiting on the focus group data in the way Bryan lived. As Lindsay’s poem suggests, even today people are rarely neutral about Bryan.

Yet despite his faults it could be argued that William Jennings Bryan is the founder of the modern Democratic Party, for it was Bryan who reshaped the party at the turn of the 19th century into a party of the “common people,” with an emphasis on the level playing field. Until the Democrats lost their moral compass during the 1980s, Bryan’s principles served as the backbone of the Party. In his 1900 speech, Bryan said,

Lincoln said that the safety of this nation was not in its fleets, its armies, its forts, but in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere, and he warned his countrymen that they could not destroy this spirit without planting the seeds of despotism at their own doors.

As the Democrats seek to redefine themselves, those are principles we would do well to remember over the next year’s presidential campaign.

NOTE: Any post on Bryan would be remiss in not mentioning the recent biography by Michael Kazin. Click here to check out the book. An even more provocative interpretation, which has parallels to my own The Strange Death of Liberal America is Jeff Taylor’s Where Did the Party Go?  I would put this book right up among the must reads for contemporary Democrats. To check out the book and order your own copy, go here.

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