William Jennings Bryant 1860-1925

In reviewing Michael Kazin's new biography of William Jennings Bryant, Andrew O'Hehir also provides a terrific summation of the mercurial Democratic demagogue most famous today for allying his name to creationism during the Scopes trial, the "Cross of Gold" speech of 1896, and for running (and losing) for president three times (still a record):

He convinced his followers that he was for the little guy and for Christian virtue, and that they came to the same thing in the end. But beyond a general constellation of issues that varied only slightly during his 30 years in public life, neither Bryan nor his believers worried much about ideological consistency. At various times and for various reasons, Bryan made common cause with the Socialist Party, the American Federation of Labor, biblical fundamentalists and the Ku Klux Klan.

How do you categorize a politican who ran as a committed populist, resigned as Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state to protest American involvement in World War I (and was probably correct), then exploited the most abject kind of rural ignorance to protest the teaching of evolution in the mid 1920's. As most of his admiring colleagues were prepared to admit, Bryan didn't know much. After he got the Democratic nomination in 1896, Thomas Gore, the first senator of Oklahoma (and grandfather of Gore Vidal), famously said, "He never learend anything else ever again in his life."