Review: President McKinley: Architect of the American Century

Robert W. Merry, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century

President Donald Trump is fascinated with President William McKinley.

I read Robert W. Merry’s book President McKinley: Architect of the American Century because I wanted to get a sense of why Trump is inspired by our America’s 25th president.

In many ways, it would be hard to find two American presidents who differ more in their character and leadership style than Trump and McKinley. McKinley was a Union veteran, a lawyer, a devout Methodist, a devoted husband, an establishment Ohio Republican and a party stalwart. He was the kind of Midwesterner who didn’t travel on the Sabbath. He was more like Mike Pence than Donald Trump. He also defeated the prairie populist William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 and 1900 elections. McKinley was the system candidate that a majority of Americans supported over Bryan’s radicalism.

On the other hand, McKinley was America’s first imperialist president. He was a protectionist who later supported bilateral reciprocal trade agreements. As the architect of the Inner Empire, he broke with his predecessors to project American power into the Caribbean, Central America and the Pacific. He presided over the annexation of Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico. It was McKinley who made America an Asian power by acquiring the Philippines. He presided over the first guerilla war and attempt at nation building in the Philippine-American War. He led the first intervention in mainland China during the Boxer Rebellion. He evicted Spain from the Caribbean in the Spanish-American War and began the Great Rapprochement with Great Britain. He signed the Gold Standard Act and supported balancing the budget.

William McKinley was also a Republican, but he wasn’t a Black Republican. The McKinley presidency was a time of segregation, lynchings and a speedy retreat from civil rights. The Wilmington Coup of 1898 occurred during the McKinley presidency, but he didn’t send federal troops to North Carolina. The Spanish-American War cooled sectional tensions and reignited the flame of American nationalism. Ex-Confederates like Joseph Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee served McKinley as ambassador to Cuba. The country had moved on from the Civil War and Reconstruction to focus on issues like the tariff, the currency, trusts and imperialism. McKinley ran on the message “Prosperity at Home, Prestige Abroad.” It resonated.

As an alternative to liberalism, it is easy to see why “national greatness conservatism” would appeal to Trump. America decided in the McKinley years that it wanted to be a Great Power with its own sphere of influence. We were not afraid of throwing our weight around and bullying smaller countries. Americans cared far less about crusading for “human rights” than making money and getting rich. We didn’t have our current “allies” sucking us dry or getting us bogged down in devastating wars where we have no clear national interest like the war in Ukraine. We were wealthy relative to the rest of the world.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal? Wouldn’t it be great if we had a trading system which encouraged production and investment in this country? Wouldn’t it be great if we stopped caring about all of this woke bullshit? This is why Trump sees McKinley as a role model.