geeky
It was a campaign full of similarities and great divergences. Both men were mid-westerners (McKinley of Ohio, Bryan originally from Illinois and representing Nebraska), both drew heavily in support from working Americans: McKinley from labor, Bryan from farmers. Their differences were more glaring. McKinley was a civil war veteran, Bryan was barely old enough to be President. McKinley was a plodder, while Bryan was a gifted orator. McKinley was a protectionist, supportive of a high tariff, while Bryan was a "silverite", advocating for changes to the monetary system that would make silver the dominant metal behind the US dollar, instead of the gold standard. McKinley campaigned from his front porch, while Bryan traversed the country giving campaign speeches in almost every state, travelling a distance equivalent to about two-thirds of the circumference of the planet. And despite the country having a Democratic incumbent president (Grover Cleveland), McKinley was seen as the candidate of the status quo, while Bryan was portrayed as the candidate of change.
As Rove points out, this election is often overlooked because of its focus on issues considered to be boring by many: currency and tariffs. But in fact at the time these were issues which captured the interest and passions of the nation and which divided both parties, with pro-silverites and gold standard supporters to be found in both parties. It was an election in which the issues caused many voters to abandon past party loyalties.
Rove explores the background of the major candidates, the races for each party's nomination, the convention bartering and nomination fights, before comparing the respective campaign strategies. He looks at how the candidates campaigned, how the parties fund-raised, how convention bruises were soothed, and how each party got their message out to voters. In a detailed post-mortem of the two campaigns, Rove compares what each campaign did right and what each did wrong (both made their share of mistakes) before finally attempting to fulfill the promise of the book's title in explaining what he sees as the relevance of this turn of the century campaign to modern day politics.
Some of Rove's conclusions make good sense while others invite debate. Rove soundly makes the case that candidates for president must confront the central and controversial issues of any campaign and can not be successful in dodging them, as McKinley learned when he first tried to ignore the currency issue before realizing that he had to confront it. He also illustrates the importance of candidates confronting their own perceived weaknesses as well as attacking the perceived strengths of their opponents. He is less convincing when he tries to make the case that victorious candidates must take the high road, giving examples of when McKinley did this, in contrast with Bryan who tried to drive a wedge between the working class and the eastern moneyed interests. While this is certainly what Bryan did, it is difficult to imagine that the McKinley campaign was devoid of any negativity or fear-mongering about the goals of the silverites. Finally, Rove attempts to argue that disparity in fund-raising does not equate with campaign success, but this argument is less convincing when once considers the extreme imbalance of fundraising in the 1896 campaign in McKinley's favor.
This book drew recent attention in a twitter war between Rove and leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, when the latter called the book boring. It is true that the issues of bimetallism and protectionism through high tariffs are not the sexiest ones imaginable, and they provide difficult subject matter for any author. But in 1896 these issued managed to fire up the passions of the American voters and made for some interesting political strategy. Rove tells this story capably and in doing so, produces a book which will provide interesting reading for political or history junkies and for anyone with an interest in election campaign strategy. Rove is certainly correct that there are lessons which can be studied and learned from the 1896 campaign that continue to have application and relevance today and in the 2016 campaign.