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.