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Excerpt from The "Also Rans" Great Men Who Missed Making the Presidential Goal <p>Some one has wisely said that wherever there is victory there must be defeat. In politics as in battle, mischance often plays a greater part than leadership. Great men who aspired to fill the highest office in the world, the Presidency of the United States, have more than once met Waterloos either in convention or at the polls at the hands of their inferiors. Of the eighteen outstanding figures I have selected as Also Rans, fifteen failed to get enough votes. Three never really reached the people. These last were the most eminent of all. <p>Written at the beginning of another Presidential campaign this volume is a retrospect of American politics on the losing side. I have stopped with William Jennings Bryan, and only allude to Alton B. Parker, the single interlude in Mr. Bryan's twelve year domina tion of the Democracy. The defeated candidates since then, Charles E. Hughes, James M. Cox, and John W. Davis, still ourish as able and interesting citizens, each continuing to make his own place in the affairs of the nation. It has not been deemed seemly to re exhibit them in their retirement from party leadership. <p>About the Publisher <p>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com <p>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.