Bryan’s Song.

“Bryan inaugurated an era in which style and sentiment would trump substance, personal charisma would trump intellect or ideas, and pious moralizing would trump social consciousness. Politicians of the Gilded Age had remained aloof from the public, relying on printed broadsides, entrenched partisan loyalties and local organization. Bryan invented the glad-handing, ‘happy warrior’ style of the modern political campaign, crisscrossing the country tirelessly by rail and delivering countless speeches to crowds large and small. (It has often been observed that if radio or television had existed in Bryan’s day, he would have beaten the drab McKinley or pretty much anyone else.)” Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir reviews Michael Kazin’s A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan, and argues that the legacy of the Great Commoner’s brand of populism is less sanguine than Kazin makes it out to be. Still, I’m looking forward to checking out Kazin’s book.