LOST:
1896 to McKinley 
1900 to McKinley
1908 to Taft

three-time United States Democratic nominee for President.

Just 36, the youngest major-party presidential nominee in U.S. history

By the 1920s, Bryan was among America's most outspoken critics of the theory of evolution. Echoing his earlier support of Prohibition, Bryan actively supported a constitutional amendment banning public schools from teaching evolution and several state legislatures passed anti-evolution laws after Bryan addressed them. His participation in the famous 1925 Scopes Trial served as a capstone to his career. Bryan was invited by William Bell Riley to represent the World Christian Fundamentals Association to act as counsel for the association at the trial. Political author Thomas Frank writes that Bryan's anti-evolution views are a result of his Populist idealism. Frank suggests that Bryan's fight was really against Social Darwinism, a theory that many unfamiliar with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection perceive to go hand in hand with Darwin's theories.

After the war, Bryan came to detest it, and the imperialism that resulted from it. Bryan would later become a pacifist, a position that made it politically impossible for him to be elected President. At the time, pacifists were generally regarded as cowards. However, Bryan became committed to pacifism only after he was too old to serve in the army and the position hurt him politically; as such, it could be seen as an act of courage. For this reason those who believe that L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is actually a populist allegory consider the Cowardly Lion to represent Bryan. (The Scarecrow represents agriculture, the Tin Man represents industry, and Dorothy's slippers were, after all, made of silver in the book.)