William Jennings Bryan is enjoying through something of a renaissance, more than 80 years after his death, thanks in large part to Michael Kazin, who published a sympathetic biography of Bryan a couple of years ago, entitled A Godly Hero. Kazin is a liberal of good standing, teaching at American University in DC, but he understands how much the Democrats lost when they abandoned their rural-Christian-populist heritage. And so Kazin is helping Democrats to get it back, if any of us will listen.
Democrats also lost, it should be noted, the rhetorical firepower that comes from preacher-speakers, such as Bryan:
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
That was Bryan in his famous speech to the Chicago Democratic convention in 1896. Truer words in American politics were never spoken.
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