WI: WJB doesn't run in 1908, runs in 1912?

Let's say William Jennings Bryan decides to sit out 1908 (John A. Johnson or William Randolph Hearst probably get the nomination), and runs again in 1912. It seems that the Democrats' chances were excellent, regardless of whatever candidate they fielded. Had Bryan not had the stigma of being a three-time loser, he may well have gotten the nomination, and very likely the presidency. How would his domestic and foreign policy have compared from that of Wilson? Would he have enacted the Federal Reserve, or something similar? Any ideas on his cabinet?

@David T, does this interest you?
 
Last edited:

cpip

Gone Fishin'
Let's say William Jennings Bryan decides to sit out 1908 (John A. Johnston or William Randolph Hearst probably get the nomination), and runs again in 1912. It seems that the Democrats' chances were excellent, regardless of whatever candidate they fielded. Had Bryan not had the stigma of being a three-time loser, he may well have gotten the nomination, and very likely the presidency. How would his domestic and foreign policy have compared from that of Wilson? Would he have enacted the Federal Reserve, or something similar? Any ideas on his cabinet?

There would be very significant differences.

While Secretary of State, Bryan advocated for suspending even loans to the warring powers in World War I: "Money is the worst of all contrabands because it commands everything else. The question of making loans contraband by international agreement has been discussed, but no action has been taken. I know of nothing that would do more to prevent war than an international agreement that neutral nations would not loan to belligerents. While such an agreement would be of great advantage, could we not by our example hasten the reaching of such an agreement? We are the one great nation which is not involved, and our refusal to loan to any belligerent would naturally tend to hasten a conclusion of the war." He's undeniably right: without the influx of American currency, the Entente (most particularly Britain and France) would have had a harder time raising funds and paying for things, which leads to all sorts of ripple effects across the war.

For Mexico, Bryan hated Huerta as much as, if not more, than Wilson did; where the two differed, however, was that Bryan was a strong supporter of Pancho Villa, and opposed the punitive expedition in 1916. Small changes could lead to big butterflies in Mexico, however.

His Federal Reserve would be different; he advocated a much more centralized Federal Reserve in the sense of a Central Bank with the power to print money. The effects of that, I would have to leave to someone else; I'm no economist. I've actually posed the question here before and gotten no answers there.

For his cabinet, I'd expect you'd see a significantly more Western tilt to it; it's where Bryan's political allies were, on the plains states. One particular note of the Cabinet, to circle back to my point about foreign policy, it's unlikely he would have named William Gibbs McAdoo to be Secretary of the Treasury, and that could have equally significant effects on the economy once World War I breaks out. The run by the Entente powers in the opening months of the war to cash out all their gold would have led to a serious disruption of the American economy if McAdoo hadn't taken the literally unprecedented step of shutting down trading on Wall Street for four full months to stop Britain and France trading in their dollar-backed securities for gold and more gold. I recommend Silber's When Washington Shut Down Wall Street as an excellent, readable book on that usually underreported event of the first months of the war.
 
For his cabinet, I'd expect you'd see a significantly more Western tilt to it; it's where Bryan's political allies were, on the plains states.

Which could matter.

Iirc, there was quite a bit of resentment in the North about how Southern-dominated the Wilson Cabinet was. Some northerners saw it as "Jeff Davis' revenge". Would a Western-oriented Cabinet have caused the same irritation?
 
What kind of effect would Bryan suspending loans to the Entente have on the war? Just how would were the Entente's financial troubles?
 
What kind of effect would Bryan suspending loans to the Entente have on the war? Just how would were the Entente's financial troubles?


Probably not a lot to start with. Basically, the British etc investments in America would have to be *sold* rather than used as security for loans, or else payment made in gold. But by 1917 things would have been getting difficult, and even if Britain could manage to finance her own war effort, she might ell have been no longer able to subsidise her allies.

Another point would be the Bryan Administration's attitude toward armed merchantmen. Many Americans and others viewed these as auxiliary warships and favoured excluding them from US ports. From reading Devlin it appears that Wilson and even Lansing were seriously considering this in late 1915. Bryan might well have done it, in which case the Germans might have been less keen to do full-blown USW.
 
Who were the men Bryan was closest to at this point in his career? Asking to see who he would appoint to his cabinet. I'd think Bryan would try not to appoint too many party insiders, considering his stance on cronyism.
 
I'll dissent and say that even with the House having gone to the Dems in 1910, a Bryan candidacy would have been a fine way to get the factions of the GOP to agree to disagree if nothing more for the short term. The GOP would close ranks behind Taft (perhaps with Taft making a sub rosa promise to TR for a senior cabinet position?) and would have come out with all guns blazing, TR especially. Taft wins a second term albeit narrowly; Bryan's political career is over as a three time loser; TR becomes SecState or SecWar, so he's in place to influence/make major policy decisions if events in Europe in 1914 play out as they did IOTL.

This also would likely butterfly away a Wilson presidency: Wilson wasn't on the best of terms with the Dem establishment in NJ during his time as governor, and it would have been problematic at best for him to get nominated for a second term, never mind win one. And since he left Princeton on less than amiable terms, there's no going back to that part of academia. My guess is that he'd wind up president of some other up-and-coming university in the border states (e.g., Johns Hopkins) or the south (Duke; Vanderbilt; Virginia), but his political career would be finished also.
 
I'll dissent and say that even with the House having gone to the Dems in 1910, a Bryan candidacy would have been a fine way to get the factions of the GOP to agree to disagree if nothing more for the short term. The GOP would close ranks behind Taft


Not a chance. Taft was hopelessly unpopular and certain to lose to virtually any Democrat. Not that TR would ever have endorsed him - the GOP split was irreparable by the time the Conventions met - but even if he did it would not have saved Taft any more than it saved Hughes in 1916.

Incidentally, when the GOP Convention met, quite a few people still thought that the Dems might nominate Bryan. It made no difference tot he Republicans, who split anyway. The Taft men's top priority was stopping TR. If that meant enduring four years under a Democrat - no matter which Democrat - then so be it.
 
Not a chance. Taft was hopelessly unpopular and certain to lose to virtually any Democrat. Not that TR would ever have endorsed him - the GOP split was irreparable by the time the Conventions met - but even if he did it would not have saved Taft any more than it saved Hughes in 1916.

Incidentally, when the GOP Convention met, quite a few people still thought that the Dems might nominate Bryan. It made no difference tot he Republicans, who split anyway. The Taft men's top priority was stopping TR. If that meant enduring four years under a Democrat - no matter which Democrat - then so be it.
Speaking of Hughes, while it depends on how his term goes, it seems Bryan will lose 1916 if he's re-nominated.
 
Speaking of Hughes, while it depends on how his term goes, it seems Bryan will lose 1916 if he's re-nominated.

Why particularly?

He'll likely lose the Northeast, but so did Wilson. He has nothing to lose there except the 4 votes of NH. OTOH he is likely to do better than Wilson in his native Midwest, where MN and IN went for Hughes by a single percentage point or less. If he does a shade better than Wilson in the Border States [1] then he may also pick up WV, which was equally close OTL.

If his Cabinet is less Southern-dominated than Wilson's, he may also do a shade better in the North generally.

Except for MD he typically did about 1% better there in 1908 than Wilson in 1912. In WV he got 43.17% to Wilson's 42.11%. In 1916 that might be just enough for the State to switch columns.
 
Last edited:
Why particularly?

He'll likely lose the Northeast, but so did Wilson. He has nothing to lose there except the 4 votes of NH. OTOH he is likely to do better than Wilson in his native Midwest, where MN and IN went for Hughes by a single percentage point or less. If he does a shade better than Wilson in the Border States [1] then he may also pick up WV, which was equally close OTL.

If his Cabinet is less Southern-dominated than Wilson's, he may also do a shade better in the North generally.

Except for MD he typically did about 1% better there in 1908 than Wilson in 1912. In WV he got 43.17% to Wilson's 42.11%. In 1916 that might be just enough for the State to switch columns.
I had thought Bryan's more pronounced non-interventionism would give the Republicans an opening, along with a more centralized Federal Reserve, and whatever happened in Mexico.
 
Last edited:
I had thought Bryan's more pronounced non-interventionism would give the Republicans an opening, along with a more centralized Federal Reserve, and whatever happened in Mexico.

It's important to note that while Americans did not want to enter the war, most still sympathized with the Entente and wanted then to win. If Bryan's actions lead to a situation where the Entente is losing, and/or he appears indifferent to their plight, Hughes would probably win.
 
It would really be hard to keep Bryan from running in 1908. He viewed Parker's defeat in 1904--by a much greater margin than he himself had lost in 1896 and 1900--as proof that a conservative Democrat could not win and that his was the only path forward for the Democracy. And he was not the only one who thought that this time he might actually win, given the Panic of 1907, the fact that Roosevelt would no longer be the Republican candidate, and the support of Gompers and the AFL. The Democrats even hoped for inroads in the northern African American vote. (W.E.B. DuBois said, "If between two parties who stand on identically the same platform you can prefer the party who perpetrated Brownsville, well and good; but I shall vote for Bryan." https://books.google.com/books?id=6NtMAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA363) Bryan was not running on his past controversial stands like free silver or government ownership of railroads but on things like the tariff, popular election of senators, reform in the use of labor injunctions, etc. which were much less controversial among Democrats--he managed to get a party platform which, while it was to the left of Taft's, did not alienate any major portion of the Democratic Party. Indeed, he got the endorsement of every living member of Grover Cleveland's cabinet.

In retrospect, we know that Bryan was not as strong a candidate as he and others thought in 1908. He could not escape the baggage of his past "radical" positions; Gompers could not deliver the labor vote; the economy had largely recovered from the Panic by November 1908; Taft did unusually well for a Republican among Catholics (both because of his cooperation with the Church in the Philippines and because of Catholic suspicion of the evangelical Bryan), African Americans voted overwhelmingly for Taft despite Brownsville, etc.. But all this was clearer in retrospect than at the time. TR campaigned so vigorously for Taft precisely because he thought there was a real risk Taft might be defeated.

In short, there is no reason to think the Commoner would give 1908 a pass. With so many others thinking that his hour might now have come, it would be uncharacteristic if he himself did not think so...
 
It's important to note that while Americans did not want to enter the war, most still sympathized with the Entente and wanted then to win. If Bryan's actions lead to a situation where the Entente is losing, and/or he appears indifferent to their plight, Hughes would probably win.

But in 1916 hardly anyone seriously thought the Entente was losing. Not even the Germans, which is why they gambled on USW.

Britain's financial difficulties were unknown to the general public, while the Russian Revolution and the French Army mutinies were still in the future. Even in April 1917, most Americans, including President Wilson himself, would have assumed that they were joining the already winning side.

Also, pro-Entente sympathy was weaker in 1916 than even a year earlier. Blacklisting of American firms for not cooperating with Entente blockade measures was causing great offence, to the point where Congress, in September 1916, passed legislation empowering the President to close American ports to ships of nations which discriminated against US companies. For most of the election year relations with Britain were if anything more strained than those with Germany.

Finally, how much effect was any of this likely to have on the election? Europe was a long way away, and domestic issues weighed *much* heavier than foreign ones. If Bryan's domestic programmes are similar to Wilson's, he will most likely win regardless of his foreign policy. On this point, the electoral map of OTL's election is very revealing. Hughes swept the Northeast, where pro-Entente sympathy was strongest, but also the isolationist Midwest (with the crucial exception of Ohio, where the State Republican Party was in a trainwreck for reasons totally unrelated to the war). The Solid South aside, Wilson was re-elected by the West, the Border States - and Ohio. If voting patterns were related to any war, it was probably the ACW, where Wilson's Southern-dominated administration came close to uniting the North against him, rather than the one in Europe.
 
I'll dissent and say that even with the House having gone to the Dems in 1910, a Bryan candidacy would have been a fine way to get the factions of the GOP to agree to disagree if nothing more for the short term. The GOP would close ranks behind Taft (perhaps with Taft making a sub rosa promise to TR for a senior cabinet position?) and would have come out with all guns blazing, TR especially. Taft wins a second term albeit narrowly; Bryan's political career is over as a three time loser; TR becomes SecState or SecWar, so he's in place to influence/make major policy decisions if events in Europe in 1914 play out as they did IOTL.

This also would likely butterfly away a Wilson presidency: Wilson wasn't on the best of terms with the Dem establishment in NJ during his time as governor, and it would have been problematic at best for him to get nominated for a second term, never mind win one. And since he left Princeton on less than amiable terms, there's no going back to that part of academia. My guess is that he'd wind up president of some other up-and-coming university in the border states (e.g., Johns Hopkins) or the south (Duke; Vanderbilt; Virginia), but his political career would be finished also.
I agree that Bryan might unite the GOP, but I don't know that it will be enough to keep him out of the White House. Otherwise, I agree with this.
 
I agree that Bryan might unite the GOP.

Not with a 1912 PoD, By the time the Conventions met, the Republican split was wider than the Grand Canyon, far beyond any hope of reconciliation. Even four years later they couldn't pul it off, and in 1912 passions ran far higher. .
 
Not with a 1912 PoD, By the time the Conventions met, the Republican split was wider than the Grand Canyon, far beyond any hope of reconciliation. Even four years later they couldn't pul it off, and in 1912 passions ran far higher. .
The Democrats are not nominating Bryan a fourth time. The necessary POD is at least as far back as 1908.
 
The Democrats are not nominating Bryan a fourth time. The necessary POD is at least as far back as 1908.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if 1912 sees Bryan and Clark as the main contenders at the convention, and neither one receives a 2/3 supermajority - which is quite possible, odds are that Wilson is nominated as a compromise candidate anyway.
 
Top