> Bryan decided that he wanted America to have a bimetallic currency. Unfortunately, there was a political class united in its opposition to this policy. That meant he needed a president that favoured it.
This gets the causality backwards. What Bryan decided was that he wanted to be President, and that in order to become President he would need to associate himself with an issue hot and controversial enough to attract voters to him for having taken their side on it. Bimetallism was a live-wire issue among the rural constituency he wanted to set himself up as the champion of, and it had few other champions due to the oppressive orthodoxy the gold standard held over the thinking of the time, so he chose that as the issue to wrap his arms around.
It worked -- Bryan stood out to rural voters as the one politician who really understood their needs, and his career as "The Great Commoner" was born. But Bryan's adoption of bimetallism came because he recognized its political potency, not because he held strong opinions about the economics of the matter. He cared so little about those that, when questioned about the details by an Omaha newspaper, he replied that "I don't know anything about free silver. The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later."
He also ran for President for three out of four elections between 1896 and 1908 without winning. That's unheard of these days. The last major party losing candidate to run again was Richard Nixon in 1968. Ross Perot also ran, and lost, in 92 and 96.
It's very strange that losing a Presidential general election is seen as the end of a political career when in years past, candidates like Bryan, Stevenson, or Dewey were still seen as viable.
Also, your explanation of Dewey choosing a political stance that was widely held among voters but somewhat taboo among the political class and riding that stance to prominence shows that there's really nothing new or innovative in the wave of populism sweeping Western democracies in recent years.
> It's very strange that losing a Presidential general election is seen as the end of a political career when in years past, candidates like Bryan, Stevenson, or Dewey were still seen as viable.
It's true, but it's worth noting that while in modern times losing is generally a career-ender for candidates it is much less so for the operatives behind the scenes, some of whom spend their whole careers cycling from one losing campaign to another. The most striking example of this is Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, who was behind the curtain for a remarkable eight losing presidential campaigns. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9895-2004Sep9... for a good profile of Shrum, written as he was on his way to his eighth defeat in 2004.)
I can't find a simple list of his eight losing campaigns. I can see that he worked for Kerry in 2004, Gore in 2000, McGovern in 1972, Ted Kennedy in 1980, Bob Kerrey in 1992, and both Gephardt and Dukakis in 1988, but that only adds up to seven. It turns out he also worked on Ed Muskie's campaign in 1972.
To be fair, though, between the years of 1972 and 2004, the only two winning Democratic candidates were Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
That's not "to be fair," that makes it so much worse! Between 1972 and 2016, he supported 8 losing Democratic campaigns and did not support any of the 3 winning Democratic campaigns? That's an extraordinary losing streak!
He retired before 2008, so Obama doesn't count. He worked for one of Clinton's primary opponents back when Clinton himself was a dark horse candidate, and he actually resigned from Carter's 1976 campaign after ten days, writing to the future President, "I am not sure what you believe in, other than yourself." So it basically boils down to, "he never worked for Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton".
You could tell a similar story for any Democratic strategist with an overlapping career. Tad Devine worked for the failed campaigns of Mondale 84, Dukakis 88, Kerrey 92, Gore 00, Kerry 04, and Sanders 16. (He also worked in Ukraine on Viktor Yanukovych's winning 2010 Presidential campaign, alongside Paul Manafort. Small world.)
Also, if you work for a successful Presidential election campaign, you end up working in the White House, e.g. George Stephenapolous, Karl Rove, David Plouffe, David Axelrod, and Steve Bannon.
This is likely because the number of viable candidates today is much larger due to population growth and access to media.
In 1904, getting famous was much harder than now, so someone already known to the voters, even as a loser, could have a better chance than a yet-unknown.
I wonder if negative campaigning also plays a role. Candidates like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore have faltered due to the cumulative effect of years of attacks, while candidates like Obama who appeared out of nowhere were more successful.
Check out 19th century negative campaigns. Modern politicians look like kittens. Pamphlets were published comparing Lincoln to an ape.
Candidates like Clinton falter because they suck. Kicking off your campaign Roosevelt Island and driving to Pennsylvania or wherever in a hotel shuttle van was the kickoff to a weak campaign.
The audience was different. Candidates were selected in party conventions in back room deals, the name recognition that mattered was with party machinery.
Bimetallism can never work, because the amount of silver relative to gold is never fixed. It has all the fundamental faults of "pegging" one currency to another.
You could read a biography of Bryan; he was an important figure of the era, so there's plenty to choose from.
A great short biographical sketch can be found in Richard Hofstadter's classic The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/773961.The_American_Poli...), which is an excellent, compulsively readable book, though Hofstadter had a low opinion of Bryan so this is not the source to turn to if you want to argue with me. The "I will look up the arguments later" quote can be found in Robert Cherney's A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1704339.A_Righteous_Caus...), which I haven't read myself but looks to be a good general-interest book-length biography. A contrarian view on Bryan can be found in Michael Kazin's A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79196.A_Godly_Hero), but the rehabilitation of populism has been a project of Kazin's for decades now, so it will come as no surprise that Kazin has more respect for Bryan than most historians.
This gets the causality backwards. What Bryan decided was that he wanted to be President, and that in order to become President he would need to associate himself with an issue hot and controversial enough to attract voters to him for having taken their side on it. Bimetallism was a live-wire issue among the rural constituency he wanted to set himself up as the champion of, and it had few other champions due to the oppressive orthodoxy the gold standard held over the thinking of the time, so he chose that as the issue to wrap his arms around.
It worked -- Bryan stood out to rural voters as the one politician who really understood their needs, and his career as "The Great Commoner" was born. But Bryan's adoption of bimetallism came because he recognized its political potency, not because he held strong opinions about the economics of the matter. He cared so little about those that, when questioned about the details by an Omaha newspaper, he replied that "I don't know anything about free silver. The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later."