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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: Hi. You know what? I am feeling all fabulous today. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm feeling very common.
N. Rodgers: The great commoner. I'm glad you didn't say, I feel like I also ran. Because that also is true of this episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, I'm going to lift up the veil behind the process Nia and I use to write, produce, record this podcast. Part of what we try to do with one another is stump one another with our openings. There are some mornings when Nia will say to me, I got one, but I'm not going to tell you how I'm going to lead off the episode.
N. Rodgers: You did that to me this time.
J. Aughenbaugh: I did it.
N. Rodgers: Well done. I usually I'm the guy who does that, and you did. Well done.
J. Aughenbaugh: But this morning, I am a little pleased with myself because it forced Nia to pause. Again, if we were doing visual recordings, this would be one of those times where Nia actually had a blank look on her face, which hardly ever occurs.
N. Rodgers: You would have seen ellipses above my head, but nothing happening yet, like when somebody's typing, but you don't actually see words yet. That's what that happens. Well, I was saying, no, so very well done you. William Jennings Bryan, is our story behind the name this episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: This episode, and again, listeners, we did not plan this, but we are fond of three named government officials on this podcast.
N. Rodgers: We have done, though, people who aren't three named. And we have surprised you with some of their names. In a previous episode, you found out that Learned Ann's first name is Billings.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Billings.
N. Rodgers: Which he did not go by big surprise. But William Jennings Bryan did go by his three names. Like that's how he was not B-R-Y-A-N. I've learned that we need to spell the names out because people have asked that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Could you spell the names out? I will start doing that from now on, and I apologize for the early episodes where we didn't do that. But William Jennings Bryan, when was he born? How old is he? Well, he's dead now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Was like, wow is he still alive? Now, he was born at the beginning of the Civil War. March 19, 1860.
N. Rodgers: It wasn't his fault though, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: No, his birth did not cause.
N. Rodgers: Did not start the Civil War?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's what he's known for.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's a lot of things we can attribute to William Jennings Bryan. But causing the Civil War ain't one of them, right?
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was a lawyer.
N. Rodgers: Wait, when did he die?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, 1925.
N. Rodgers: He's well in our past?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I mean, well, he spanned two of the major, if you will, war events in our country's history.
N. Rodgers: Oh, that's true. The Civil War on World War I.
J. Aughenbaugh: One, yeah. But he was a lawyer, speech giver, extraordinaire, and he was a politician.
N. Rodgers: We call that an orator.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: An orator, that's an old world term for that. But I like it. I like the idea that one of the things you're known for is giving speeches.
J. Aughenbaugh: Speeches. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Couple of our previous names in the news were known for their speeches. [inaudible] was known for speeches.
J. Aughenbaugh: Carrie Nation. I mean, even Learned Hand, became prominent during World War II, for talking about how a democratic nation could fight fascism while also honoring freedom of speech, which oftentimes in wartime, we're not very, shall we say, friendly to free speech. Unfortunately. But anyways, we previously touched upon William Jennings Bryan in a previous episode, where we looked at American individuals who ran for the office of president multiple times. This guy.
N. Rodgers: Not Winning it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not without winning it. He was a dominant force in the Democratic Party at the turn of the 20th century, and he ran three times. He was picked by the Democratic Party three times to run for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908 and lost all three times.
N. Rodgers: Not in 1904?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: He must have been off doing something interesting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I mean, he did serve in the House of Representatives from 1891-1895. He was the Secretary of State for President Woodrow Wilson 1913-1915. I mean, he did serve in government positions. But because of his faith in the common person, he was often referred to in the media as the great commoner, and because he did want.
N. Rodgers: He was so young, wasn't he? A lot of his service and a lot of his, let's see, 1896, he would have been 36.
J. Aughenbaugh: Three-six years-old the first time he ran for president. Yes.
N. Rodgers: The limit is 35, so as soon as he got over the limit, he was like, I'm in. As a side note for listeners, please remember that Democrat, at this point, more or less means Republican.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right.
N. Rodgers: Because that switch has not been made yet, so he would have been a conservative candidate.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not surprising, he was born and raised in Illinois and Bryan moved to Nebraska in the 1880s. As we mentioned previously, he was only 30-years-old the first time he was elected to the House of Representatives. We would refer to him today as an over-achiever.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, or a kid. Especially when you look at the average age of the House of Representatives and the Senate. At the senate, the average age is 482. The House is a little younger, but I mean, it does tend to be that didn't he run for the Senate in one of those years?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, he ran for the Senate in 1894.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, so he would have been 34 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thirty-four years old.
N. Rodgers: Thirty-four years-old.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's really young for Senate. I mean, think about now. We don't have a whole lot of young senators. I mean, government skews old, but jobs are, anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: He gets involved in congressional politics, but it was at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, where he became known across the country, because he delivered, what infamous speech, Nia?
N. Rodgers: The Cross of Gold speech.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is the speech where he attacked the gold standard, which was, if you will, supported by moneyed interest on the East Coast, and he was basically taking on the policies of the incumbent president Grover Cleveland, who was favored by conservative Democrats. The Democratic Party basically turned its back on the incumbent president's, economic policies and picked William Jennings Bryan to represent it in the presidential election.
N. Rodgers: Thirty-six.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, 36.
N. Rodgers: That is incredibly young to potentially be the president of the United States. Although not a terrible idea, considering how that job ages people. You know what I mean? Like, we probably should stop picking people who are 80, because it's a cruel office that ages you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yes, it does.
N. Rodgers: You probably should only pick people who are in their mid to late 30s and say, well, good luck.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I was thinking, early to mid 40s.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: They've had enough time to have some government service, but not too much to where they're so old that when they if they win the presidency, by the time they get out, they're basically not good for anybody.
N. Rodgers: Right. They could still have an after career.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right?
N. Rodgers: But also, their kids are probably teenagers at that point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Now, what was also interesting is because the Democratic Party picked him, he was also very popular with populace. And him being picked brought a whole bunch of populists into the Democratic Party. Which plays out over the next couple decades, where the Democratic Party was divided between conservative Southern Democrats and populist, who wanted a more energetic government.
N. Rodgers: You can see that modernly with the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders.
J. Aughenbaugh: And AOC and Megumi.
N. Rodgers: There are in a much more progressive.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Those people find their home generally in the Democratic Party as opposed to the Republican.
J. Aughenbaugh: Republican Party.
N. Rodgers: When they have to vote in the presidential elections because we don't have a third party system the way we should.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it also explains why the Democratic Party, even if they are today unified in their opposition to Trump, frequently struggle to get a message out to voters because they have internal strife and divisions.
N. Rodgers: He would have had that same or similar problem?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Now, to his credit, the 1896 presidential election was a close one. It was hard fought, but William Jennings Bryan did lose to the Republican nominee William McKinley. Now, many of you may remember McKinley because he didn't last long in office. You remember why Nia?
N. Rodgers: He was assassinated.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was assassinated, and that led to his vice president.
N. Rodgers: In start of his second term, I think.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, the start of his second term.
N. Rodgers: Right, 1901?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and that led to who becoming president?
N. Rodgers: His vice president was Roosevelt.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I was going you.
N. Rodgers: Was it Roosevelt?
J. Aughenbaugh: It was Theodore Roosevelt. I was going to give you a hint.
N. Rodgers: Walk softly and carry a big stick.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I was going to go with the children love these.
N. Rodgers: Oh, Teddy Bears.
J. Aughenbaugh: Teddy Bears. That's right. Yes. Even to this day, William Jennings Bryan is still the youngest major party candidate to run for president.
N. Rodgers: You and I are now too old to fix that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, we are.
N. Rodgers: Come on, we're way too old. Can I mention something from your notes that I really thought was interesting?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Is during that presidential election cycle, that's when he started doing that thing where he would stump the country, where he would take a train from town to town to town to town and give speeches. That became the way presidents get elected. That's now, if president doesn't do that, or if a presidential candidate doesn't do that, they have no chance of being elected because it's now this assumption we have as an American society that they will come to us and talk to us, that they will try to convince us of their intentions.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Which Jennings Bryan knows this and he's doing it right. But at the time, it was unusual. You would see things in the paper. You would see written statements. But, aside from the Lincoln–Douglas debates. Aside from that, you don't really get a lot of this, we will take it to the people kind of thing. Bryan makes that a big deal to take it to the people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Exactly. And again, modern transportation allows us, and William Jennings Bryan.
N. Rodgers: Its a good point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Figures out that there were a lot of people, who felt disconnected with national politics because they never saw, presidential candidates. In some rural states, they may have never even seen their House of Representative member or US Senator.
N. Rodgers: But he reaches 5 million people in 27 states in 1896. That is huge. That is a huge number of people who had laid eyes on him and heard him speak.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's pretty impressive, really.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's extremely impressive. And again, this also suggests why his youth served him well, because doing that kind of stump, campaigning, is not for older, less energetic candidates.
N. Rodgers: That's true.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, for our younger listeners, wait till you get a little bit older, and if you do a trip, then you need a week after the trip just to recover.
N. Rodgers: Right, and if you drive it 18 hours in the car you get crippled for days. But it's interesting to me that he continued to do that even after he was no longer stumping for president. He just continued this idea of touring and speaking, public speaking.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Bringing politics to the people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even to this day, we have an expectation that our presidents should be able to speak to the public.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: There have been presidents who hardly ever gave press conferences or whoever did any campaign events or rallies, and they would get criticized. I'm thinking about, for instance, Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower got criticized because he hardly ever left the Oval Office except to go on vacation to go golfing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even when he left the White House, he wasn't meeting with the public. He was doing something so that he could recharge his batteries. He got criticized.
N. Rodgers: There's a reason that huge number of people had no idea that FDR was in a wheelchair.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because he was not out publicly in a wheelchair.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Even when he did campaign events, he was always brought from a stage, a short distance to where he could rely upon assistance.
N. Rodgers: His nephew, I think. Didn't he have a nephew that was quite close to him that helped him?
J. Aughenbaugh: Get right to the podium and give a speech.
N. Rodgers: He held onto the podium to hold himself up.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, back to William Jennings Bryan. He ran again. He was the Democratic Party nominee in 1900. He did serve in the Spanish-American War. After the war, this becomes a theme in Bryan's speeches, he became a fierce opponent of American imperialism. William Jennings Bryan was a huge advocate of American isolationism.
N. Rodgers: Oh, okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not because he didn't think the United States should be involved in world events, but he was, to a large extent, a pacifist.
N. Rodgers: The world do that to you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's true. McKinley did beat Bryan again in 1900. Bryan began to lose some of his support, particularly in Western states. In 1904, the Democratic Party picked conservative Elton B. Parker to be their nominee to run against Teddy Roosevelt.
N. Rodgers: If you're asking yourself, who? That's because Teddy Roosevelt won handily.
J. Aughenbaugh: Handily. Oh, destroyed him. Yes. It was not close at all. But the Democrats response to Parker losing so soundly to Teddy Roosevelt was that it once again flirted with progressive policies and ideologies. And Bryan won his party's nomination in 1908, but he was defeated by Roosevelt's chosen successor, William Howard Taft.
N. Rodgers: See the Taft court.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. We should note that William Jennings Bryan is one of two individuals, the other being Henry Clay, who never won a presidential election despite receiving electoral college votes in three separate presidential elections after the ratification of the 12th Amendment. That's right. Two of our most prominent states people, Henry Clay, William Jennings Bryan, received electoral college votes in three different presidential elections and never won. Never one.
N. Rodgers: Popular but not popular enough.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Again, one of the reasons why listeners, we wanted to do an episode about William Jennings Bryan is that even though he never won the presidency, he had a huge impact on the Democratic Party.
N. Rodgers: He drove politics for a long time. Both him and opposition to him. It drove it on both sides. It drove the Republican on the other side.
J. Aughenbaugh: Think about also too, Nia, how he changed behavior of modern politicians.
N. Rodgers: Right. You're going to have to go to the people, you're going to have to talk to them, and you're going to have to convince them.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Sit behind the office, in the White House, in governed.
N. Rodgers: You're going to have to grow your positions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You're not going to get to stay in the one place. You're going to have to be responsive to the goings on in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, you might think that William Jennings Bryan, after losing the presidential election three different times, would have just said, hey, I'm done with this. But alas, he was rewarded by a Democratic president when Woodrow Wilson won the 1912 presidential election. This is the infamous election where Woodrow Wilson ends up winning the electoral college because Teddy Roosevelt was so disappointed in his successor, Taft, that Teddy Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate for the infamous Bull Moose Party. Took votes away from Taft, which allowed Woodrow Wilson to win the 1912 presidential election. Woodrow Wilson rewards Bryan by making him his Secretary of State. But William Jennings Bryan only lasted about 2.5 years as Secretary of State.
N. Rodgers: He was a little crabby. He thought Wilson was being too mean to Germany.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There is some argument to be made there because the treatment of Germany after.
J. Aughenbaugh: The sinking of the Lusitania.
N. Rodgers: But after the end of World War I, leads to World War II. Bryan saying, whoa whoa, let's everybody take a step back on being angry at each other and being volatile with each other may have actually been the right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Bryan was ahead of his time in that regard. Now, specifically, what really led to Bryan resigning was he thought that Wilson and the rest of Wilson's administration overreacted to Germany sinking the Lusitania. That was the ship that was sunk by German U-boats.
N. Rodgers: Remember, the Lusitania was a slogan.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it was a slogan, and it really did turn the tide in the country from being isolationist to actually getting involved in World War I.
N. Rodgers: Right. It was one of those, oh, no, you didn't episodes in American history where America just responds sometimes to things. Gulf of Tonkin, 9/11. There's some episodes of that in the US history.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, William Jennings Bryan, listeners, and Nia hinted at this, William Jennings Bryan was known for being very principled, and he did not like to compromise. After his tenure in the Wilson administration, he did not shrink away from public affairs. He devoted himself to a prohibition because he believed, like many progressives did at that time, that drinking was one of the causes of many societal ills. He was very religious, and he was decidedly anti-evolution.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. If you have heard of him, this may be why.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because he was the prosecutor during the infamous 1925 Scopes Monkey trial.
N. Rodgers: So a brief of that a teacher from Tennessee said evolution is a thing. Humans evolved from primates.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The world set itself on fire and melted down, basically.
J. Aughenbaugh: Beyond hyperbole, Tennessee had passed a law. Tennessee and a number of states had passed a law saying that in science classes, you could not teach evolution. That science should be taught from a perspective that humans arose because of God.
N. Rodgers: The religious explanation for human development, as opposed to any evolutionary theory.
J. Aughenbaugh: Scopes was a science teacher in Tennessee in a small rural community who wanted to go ahead in addition to teaching creationism, that God created life. He wanted to teach evolution.
N. Rodgers: He wanted to say, there are two choices, and you're smart. You figure it out. He wanted to leave that to his students. That didn't go well.
J. Aughenbaugh: He gets arrested, he gets prosecuted, and William Jennings Bryan was the prosecutor. He died soon after that trial. For listeners, if you want to see a fictitious account of the Scopes monkey trial, I strongly encourage you to view a movie that I show in my politics and film class, Inherit the Wind.
N. Rodgers: By the by, the lawyer for the defendant was Clarence Darrow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Darrow. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Who will be talking in one of the stories behind the names episode later on, because Clarence Darrow is a hugely influential attorney.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Attorney in the United States.
N. Rodgers: Labor. He did a lot of labor stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Civil liberties defensive.
N. Rodgers: He's on our list.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He's on our list. So we're going to get to him. But you're talking about two heavyweights in that trial.
N. Rodgers: Right. These are not people who are without an enormous experience as attorneys, coming in and doing this.
J. Aughenbaugh: For listeners, you should know William Jennings Bryan, because he was very influential in, shall we say, some of the key debates. At the turn of the 20th century. Though he could be easily written off as a three-time loser, if nothing else, this episode should tell you can still be very influential even if you don't win. It's in the trying. It's in the attempt that you can really change a lot of people's minds.
N. Rodgers: Right. Also, the things you do will carry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Great weight after you leave.
N. Rodgers: Can do that. You want to be cautious about what you do. His prosecution in that trial is a thing that one could argue might be considered a black mark against him. That he wanted to prevent the teaching of what is now an accepted. Most schools now say you should teach both, or you can teach both.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because I was about to say, Nia, as I point out when I teach Inherit the Wind in my politics film class, there are a number of states that, even to this day, require the teaching of both.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even if you're not religious, you're going to get exposed to both perspectives. This is not necessarily a policy issue that died in the 1920s. We're talking a century later, and we're still debating this in American public school curriculum.
N. Rodgers: Both Bryan and Darrow are quoted.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Still today.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness, yes. Good stuff. Fascinating character. I got to be honest with you, Nia, when I lose something, and I basically get told by a bunch of people, we don't want you, I just go ahead and walk away. Not William Jennings Bryan. He's like, I'm going to try again, and I'm going to try a third time, and I'll even go ahead and serve in a presidential administration. Fascinating character.
N. Rodgers: There's a book, if you want to read more about him, called A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. It focuses heavily on his religious beliefs as they drove his political beliefs. But one that, if you want to know about him, that's a good place to start.
J. Aughenbaugh: Before we conclude, Nia, I'm going to make a brief connection to our most recent story behind the name character, Carrie Nation. There is a religious component to much of the progressive era, late 1800s, early 1900s.
N. Rodgers: Oh, a prohibition comes out of a fear for the family and a religious, we have to figure out a way for people to have better families. This alcohol is the devil.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's a religious fervor. You see this even to this day, when you have movements to go ahead and reform a government institution. There's a fervor to it that can remind you of the fervor that you see among true believers in a religious organization.
N. Rodgers: Because public passion is not common anymore.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The place that you see public passion the most is in faith and in politics. Those are the two places where you see public passion in a way that is not so common anymore in a world where most people have their heads down, and they're looking at their phones. Yeah, I hear you on that. That's a good point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Anyways, thanks, Nia. I definitely enjoy talking about and researching William Jennings Bryan.
N. Rodgers: Thank you.