Richard Bensel, a professor of government at Cornell University, has added Passion and Preferences to his list of impressive studies of nineteenth-century American politics. Unlike most of his previous works, this book covers only a few days, those immediately preceding and during the 1896 Democratic national convention, which Bensel acknowledges as “one of the great turning points in American political development” (305). Most of the book is devoted to a detailed, and highly readable, narrative and analysis of the convention itself, from the selection of a temporary chairman on July 7 through the nomination of William Jennings Bryan on July 10. Bensel crafted his narrative almost entirely from primary sources, especially the official record of the convention, the extensive coverage of convention events by five major newspapers (the Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, Detroit Free Press, Boston Globe, and New York Times), and a few memoirs, occasionally supplementing these primary sources with accounts by historians.

The convention opened with about two-thirds of the delegates committed to bimetallism as the national currency policy, a position usually expressed as “the free and unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1,” or simply “silver.” The other one-third of the delegates was committed to the existing gold standard, a policy closely associated with the incumbent Democratic president, Grover Cleveland. The silverites came largely from the South, Midwest, and West; the gold supporters largely from the urban, industrial Northeast, especially New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and nearby states. Silver supporters were passionately convinced that the future economic security of their sections required a currency policy that would halt the prevailing deflation and stabilize the purchasing value of the dollar. Gold supporters argued that a bimetallic standard would seriously cripple international trade and otherwise injure commerce and industry, and were especially contemptuous of a fixed ratio between gold and silver as making equity between the two precious metals impossible. Hanging over the convention was the likelihood that nomination of a silverite would permit an electoral coalition with the Populists and Silver Republicans (both of whom sent representatives to the convention) but would guarantee a bolt by at least some Gold Democrats. Despite their passion for silver as a policy, few delegates had deeply felt commitments to any of the various silverite candidates for the presidential nomination though many had announced preferences.

Bensel explores this situation by presenting both an absorbing narrative of events—including an hour-by-hour and even minute-by-minute account of events on and off the convention floor—and also a theoretical analysis both of the interplay between the formal, “ritualized” procedure of the convention and the demonstrations, both planned and spontaneous, that disrupted the ritualized proceedings and also of the interplay between preference and passion as determinants of delegates' behavior. Bensel gives a chapter each to the silver and gold supporters, and separate chapters to the formal process and the displays of passion.

His analysis of the relations between the gold and silver supporters is of particular interest. The post-Civil War Democratic Party had drawn the large majority of its electoral votes from the South but had consistently looked to the Northeast, especially New York, for both presidential candidates and policy priorities. Bensel presents a sophisticated understanding of that relationship, especially the reasons that the southern wing of the party had reason to be grateful to the Northeast. With the rise of the silver issue, though, the South now allied with the West against the Northeast.

Many leaders of the Democracy in the Northeast, aside from Tammany and similar organizations elsewhere, were men of wealth and economic power. Bensel suggests that the monetary system appeared “complex and often mysterious” to the silver men, who realized that the gold leaders understood it both in theory and practice. “As a result, the silver men knew it was their will, not their intellect, that would give them their triumph. And that made many of them feel vaguely unworthy, if not nervous” (119). In addition, the silver men knew, as the gold supporters kept repeating, that a silver platform and silver candidate would devastate the Democratic Party in the Northeast. “And,” Bensel argues, “that made the silver men feel guilty, if not ashamed” (120). Thus, according to Bensel, “feelings of unworthiness, anxiety, guilt, and shame” had developed among the silverites, and they “were almost desperately seeking a leader, someone who could tell the gold men why they had to do what they did.” Bryan did that, “releasing those emotions.” Thus, “the gold men had inadvertently made Bryan the nominee” (120). While this is an interesting psychological analysis, it is also the only part of the book where the evidence from primary sources is extremely sparse.

Bensel presents an excellent picture of the various convention demonstrations, especially that following Bryan's famous “Cross of Gold” speech, and he notes that “passion, working through those demonstrations, created William Jennings Bryan as one of the most important political leaders in American history” (306). Bensel notes that part of his analysis of preferences fits well with contemporary political analysis that understands collective political decisions in terms of preferences, but he also concludes that the passionate “transformative experience” of the delegates hearing Bryan's speech is, in the end, “utterly incapable of incorporation into a rational analysis,” so much so that “we inevitably destroy much of the meaning and impact of such an experience when we attempt to explain it” (310). But he does an excellent job of describing it.

Bensel concludes with the observation that it was the situation that called forth a charismatic leader, as much as it was a charismatic leader who seized the moment. He notes that such situations and moments have occurred through history, and he suggests, in closing, writing shortly before the 2008 presidential campaign, “we can and will enchant charismatic leaders into existence whenever we need to” (311).