A wing of the Democratic Party has seemed to return to its William Jennings Bryan roots. Bryan, a devout Presbyterian, is probably best remembered as the fundamentalist who prosecuted John T. Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, during the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. Yet, before he was humiliated by defense attorney Clarence Darrow by taking the stand to defend the more outrageous stories in Scripture, Bryan was "the Great Commoner" and a true American populist.
In the past few years, Democratic candidates have included individuals who tout their religious beliefs but maintain their partisan affiliation. Sen. John Kerry, a Roman Catholic, said while campaigning for president in 2004 that he morally opposed abortions but did not believe it was right to imprint his personal religious beliefs upon the Constitution or American law. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, a Roman Catholic, campaigned for the governorship last year saying he opposed capital punishment on religious grounds but promised to obey Virginia law enforcing the institution; to date, I believe he hasn't commuted a death sentence. During this year's midterm elections, Pennsylvania Sen.-elect Bob Casey, another Roman Catholic, has favored overturning Roe v. Wade but does support wider availability of birth control and stem-cell research, and North Carolina Rep.-elect Heath Shuller has said, "I am a pro-life Democrat and I believe that all life is sacred."
Bryan was born to a Baptist father and Methodist mother but was baptized a Presbyterian at age 14. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1890, his first elected office. High tariffs and record federal spending wrecked the economy in the 1890s, and a grassroots party called the Populists was born in the Plains. The most contentious issue of the decade was the nation's monetary system: Easterners endorsed the gold standard, and debtors supported a bimetal standard of gold and silver, a 16:1 ratio which would ease inflation's burden on debtors. Making matters worse for the lower classes in this period was when the Supreme Court ruled that a federal income tax was unconstitutional in 1895 -- the Sixteenth Amendment reversed the Court's decision in 1913.
The Democrats rejected President Grover Cleveland, who supported the gold standard, for reelection and instead nominated Bryan for president in 1896, and at age 36 was the youngest presidential candidate in history of the major parties. Bryan delivered his infamous "Cross of Gold Speech" at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, where he chastised Eastern banks and creditors for making huge profits at the expense of laborers. "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." He also picked up the support of the Populists and pro-silver Republicans, riding a wave of popularity in the West and South. Yet, urban Democrats and most major newspapers didn't support Bryan, and the Republicans, spearheaded by Mark Hannah and their candidate Ohio Gov. William McKinley, derided Bryan as a fanatic supported by anarchists and that the Democratic Party had been conquered by the Populist Party. Bryan lost 271-176 in the Electoral College. After the loss, Bryan supported the Spanish-American War but denounced its subsequent American imperialism, and he made that an issue when he was the Democratic nominee for president in 1900, but lost even worse because most Americans supported the idea of the United States being a world power competing with Europe's empires. He served as Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state for two years but was conspicuously ill-suited for the job.
If Bryan was alive today, he'd likely oppose legal abortions, stem-cell research and gay marriage because of his belief in the literal word of Scripture and antiquated stance on science. Yet, he dedicated himself to the Social Gospel movement, which applied Christian teachings to resolving the social problems of alcohol, crime, poverty, drugs, war, segregation and poor public education. Bryan also founded "The Commoner" weekly magazine to promote the Progressive agenda of regulating the railroads and dismantling monopolies and trusts; Bryan even called for the nationalization of the railroads for a time.
Whether Darwinism was accurate was irrelevant to Bryan. In his speeches in the years preceding the Scopes trial, Bryan decried Social Darwinism, which adopted the "survival of the fittest" tenant of evolution to explain and defend a strict class society, and how he believed Darwinism led to atheism, Bolshevism, social selfishness, and class and racial segregation; "if a person is poor and unable to work, why should I help him if it's `survival of the fittest' "? was the prevailing sentiment Bryan feared. This pseudoscience of "eugenics," the belief of a genetic superiority based on nationality or race, would prevail until the rise of the Nazis.
Bryan died five days after the Scopes trial ended, and left behind a legacy of his political celebrity as an orator and populist than his actual accomplishments in office. "The Great Commoner" would certainly agree with former vice presidential candidate John Edwards' talk of "two Americas" -- the well-to-do and the destitute -- and Virginia Sen.-elect Jim Webb's talk of "three Americas" -- a wealthy upper class, a squeezed middle class and the threat of a permanent underclass.