AHC: Make William Jennings Bryan President

Hmm, maybe Benjamin Harrison decides to serve through Reconstruction leading to a delayed or short circuited political career. Everything nanationally goes the same until the Republicans struggle to find a compromise candidate in 1888. They eventually settle on someone, but the damage is done. Some Republican, probably Governor Foraker of Ohio, wins in 92. WJB is elected to the Senate in 94, which is used as a springboard into the White House in 96
 
With a POD in 1865(end of American Civil War), make Bryan president.

You could do it with a much later one.

In Dec 1914, President Wilson is delivering his State of the Union message, when an embittered Mexican student throws a bomb from the gallery. Vice-President Marshall is killed outright, Wilson himself rushed to hospital but found to be DOA. Secretary of State Bryan gets an urgent telegram from Washington, informing him of a sudden promotion.
 
You could do it with a much later one.

In Dec 1914, President Wilson is delivering his State of the Union message, when an embittered Mexican student throws a bomb from the gallery. Vice-President Marshall is killed outright, Wilson himself rushed to hospital but found to be DOA. Secretary of State Bryan gets an urgent telegram from Washington, informing him of a sudden promotion.

How effective of a President would he be seeing as it's heading towards the First World War and the end of Wilson's first term? Also, knowing the position he is in (as well as his age) would he/could he run for re-election?
 
How effective of a President would he be seeing as it's heading towards the First World War and the end of Wilson's first term? Also, knowing the position he is in (as well as his age) would he/could he run for re-election?

Actually WW1 is already on. OTOH the 1916 election is still two years away - not as imminent as all that.

As for seeking re-election, why not. If he continues Wilson's domestic program (which OTL was what mostly got him re-elected) there's no reason why he shouldn't win. He'll probably lose NH, but the other Wilson states look winnable for him.

Still, I see I'm in the wrong forum.
 
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Actually WW!1 is already on. OTOH the 1916 election is still two years away - not as imminent as all that.

As for seeking re-election, why not. If he continues Wilson's domestic program (which OTL was what mostly got him re-elected) there's no reason why he shouldn't win. He'll probably lose NH, but the other Wilson states look winnable for him.

Since I'm not up to snuff on Bryan's foreign policy, what would he do in terms of the war? Would he stick to his party's (and presumably his own) line of non-interventionism, or would he pull the US into war like Wilson? (I'm assuming it would be former, going by what little I do know about him).
 
Since I'm not up to snuff on Bryan's foreign policy, what would he do in terms of the war? Would he stick to his party's (and presumably his own) line of non-interventionism, or would he pull the US into war like Wilson? (I'm assuming it would be former, going by what little I do know about him).

Brian really wanted the US to stay out of the war, and opposed both war loans to the Entente and Americans traveling on British ships because he saw how those could drag the country into things. I think it's fair to say he'd do a much better job than Wilson of staying neutral.
 
This is not too hard. As I pointed out in soc.history.what-if some years ago,

"Although it was no landslide, we do not think of the 1896 election as one
of the extremely close elections in US history. McKinley defeated Bryan
by 7,108,480 to 6,511,495 in the popular vote and 271 to 176 in the
electoral vote.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1896.txt Yet, as Bryan
pointed out afterwards, a switch of about 20,000 votes in the states of
California, Oregon, Indiana, Kentucky, North Dakota, and West Virginia
would have given him a 224-223 victory. It might be objected that two of
the states Bryan mentions--North Dakota and West Virginia--went for
McKinley by fairly substantial margins in terms of percentage of the vote
(and if the absolute *number* of voters needed to change those two states
was small, it was partly because they were small states). But note that
one of the states Bryan doesn't mention is Ohio, which would have required
a greater *number* of votes to change than most of the rest of those
states, but only a small change in the percentages. McKinley carried Ohio
by only 51.9 to 47.1 percent, even though McKinley had advantages in that
state--and not just the fact that he was from it--that no other Republican
candidate would have had. Had Bryan carried the 23 votes of Ohio--and as
I will discuss below, with most candidates other than McKinley this was
not only possible but even probable--and the extremely closely contested
nearby state of Kentucky (12 votes), he would have been within thirteen
votes of a majority. Indiana alone (15 votes) could have given him that
majority, regardless of what California, Oregon, West Virginia, North
Dakota, or any other state did." https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.history.what-if/JdGV9CyfZu4

In that post I went on to cite Kevin Phillips' argument that Bryan would have defeated any Republican candidate except McKinley or *possibly* Iowa Senator William Allison.
 
Could Bryan have won in 1908? Given the decisive margin by which he lost http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1908.txt it may not seem so, but to quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

***

In January 1899, William Howard Taft received word (from his brother Henry
Taft) that he was being considered for the presidency of Yale. He wrote a
letter to Henry, declining the job, giving as one of his reasons his
religion. Yale's strongest support was from "among those who believe in
the creed of the orthodox evangelical churches," and with him as president,
Yale might be deprived of that aid, because he did not share that creed:

"I am a Unitarian. I believe in God. *I do not believe in the Divinity of
Christ*, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed
to which I cannot subscribe. I am not, however, a scoffer at religion but
on the contrary recognize, in the fullest manner, the elevating influence
that it has had and always will have in the history of mankind." (Emphasis
added)

Taft's biographer Henry Pringle thinks that "it was well that political
enemies did not have access to his private files" because the phrase "I do
not believe in the Divinity of Christ" if made public "would have been more
than enough to send Bryan to the White House in 1908." *The Life and Times
of William Howard Taft*, vol. 1 , p. 45.

Would it, though? Suppose in the heat of the campaign the letter had
somehow been made public--let's say some shocked janitor in Henry Taft's
office comes across the letter and decides he must make it public to save
America from the curse of an un-Christian president. Remember that Taft
made no secret of the fact that he was a Unitarian, and of course many
people denounced him for that and said that they would not vote for him
precisely because as a Unitarian he did not believe in the divnity of
Christ. But there were also no doubt people who had only a fuzzy idea of
what Unitarianism was--who thought it was just another Protestant
denomination--but would have been shocked at the phrase "I do not believe
in the Divinity of Christ" even if in fact it was implicit in his
Unitarianism. So I do not doubt that Taft would have lost *some* votes
(though there would also be some sympathy for him for the way in which
a private letter of his was made public). But I doubt that it would have
been enough to let Bryan win...
 
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