But it is not such a misfortune to Mr. Bryan that he will never be
President. Several millions of very respectable men share that lot with
him. He is rich,—the only man that ever got rich doing reform work. In
Bryan’s case, indeed, there has been no reform work,—just floods of
talk about it.
He has friends everywhere, has no personal enemies, is of sanguine
temperament, is rounding out into a comfortable fatness, has no bad
habits, no gentlemanly vices, and is so unconsciously self-righteous in
all that he does that he fails to realize what bad taste he displays
when he introduces his wife’s name into a public speech and sets forth
at length her qualifications for the position of “First Lady in the
land.”
Personally, we bear Mr. Bryan no ill will and wish him no harm, but
it is our deliberate opinion that his inordinate ambition for office
and his mistakes as a leader have done more immense injury to the
cause of reform. He destroyed the Populist party, he has wrecked the
Democratic party, he has driven thousands of Conservative men into the
Republican ranks, and thousands of radical Democrats and Populists to
the Socialists.
His career has been rich in substantial rewards to Mr. Bryan himself,
but, on the whole, it has been the bane of Jeffersonian democracy.