We fight the same battles over and over again.  I am currently reading a biography of William Jennings Bryan by Michael Kazin called, A Godly Hero. Kazin emphasizes the religious underpinnings of Bryan’s long fight to define America.  He also says “Bryan was the first leader of a major party to argue for permanently expanding the power of the federal government to serve the welfare of ordinary Americans from the working and middle classes.” Bryan spoke from a spiritual context and an extension of the Protestant ideal without an elite who would go to heaven in the service of and imitation of Jesus.

I am simplifying a bit too much for in the 1894 presidential election stakes Bryan spoke for Free Silver and against the Eastern Elite of Bankers and Railroads who were squeezing the workers and farmers because of a protectionism of capitalism by the ruling Republican Party.  As a Democrat he was in a delicate position because that party opposed the Republican espousal of Black egalitarianism, at least at the polls. While no flaming racist, he was a man of his times that pitted Democrats against Black enfranchisement with Republican efforts to stay in power by registering former slaves and their descendants.  The recent Civil War exacerbated rather than ended the conflict over the Black Man’s equality.

But, I was most interested in the fight over what American democracy had to do with the power of the American government.  Was it or was it not to expand the rights and powers of all Americans – especially the “producers” who did the work that paid all the bills and enriched a tiny class of owners who pulled the strings of Congress and owned the Presidency?

Bryan had a way with words and if it had been in a time when all who came to see him could hear him also, he would not have just come within a hair of winning the Oval Office, but would have overwhelmed his opponents.  His oratorical skills and personality would have won the day except for the fragmentation of his Democratic Party having to make deals with Populists and others in order to win the main prize.  Hoards of believers came to hear the golden voiced legislator who railed in Christian terms against those who would press a crown of thorns on the foreheads of laboring men in service to the Cross of Gold manipulated by the owners of wealth in the East.  This was before microphones and radio made it possible for his magnificent voice to be fully appreciated by the back rows who saw but could not hear him. Bryan wanted government to be the servant of the people rather than the other way around. The end of the 19^th Century is a mirror of the end of the 20^th Century.  Voices to sway “The People” are managed by public relations wonks that spin causes and like “Judas” goats, lead the masses astray into maintaining the status quo.