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. This generation of Americans wanted to be rich and respected. The country itself wanted the Spanish-American War, not McKinley who yielded to the groundswell of public opinion after the sinking of the Maine.
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 like the other European empires. We were not afraid of throwing our weight around and bullying smaller Third World countries. Americans cared far less about crusading for “human rights” than their own security, status and getting rich. We didn’t have our current “allies” sucking us dry with chronic trade deficits 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. There was no income tax. “Winners” were rewarded. The turn of the 20th century was also a time of unprecedented innovation.
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 idealistic woke bullshit? Wouldn’t it be great if foreigners paid our taxes? This is why Trump sees McKinley as a role model. There are echoes of the McKinley presidency in Trump’s vision of his second term. Trump’s comfort with business tycoons like Elon Musk is another throwback to how McKinley leaned on the fortunes of Carnegie and Rockefeller to defeat Bryan.
In a different timeline, America could have matured as an industrial colossus and the Great Power of North America, protected by a strong navy in the Atlantic and Pacific, guarded by strategic outposts like Hawaii and Guam. The Caribbean would have been an American lake, the eastern Pacific would have been ours and Latin America would have been our backyard. There were countless interventions there in the first thirty years of the 20th century. After the World Wars, this vision of America with its own sphere of influence was supplanted by “the rules-based international order” of Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. It was their idealistic global liberalism which defined the American Century.
Now that modern liberalism is exhausted and has run its course, where should America go from here? How do you “Make America Great Again”? When was America great? Trump’s answer is that we should revert to this earlier version of America – America after Reconstruction, but before the legacy of Wilson and FDR took root – when Republicans like McKinley, TR, Taft, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover ran the country. It was a time when America’s business was business and mainstream American culture wasn’t too crazy. Warren Harding won the presidency in 1920 by promising a “return to normalcy.” The term “normalcy” was popularized by Harding after two decades of Progressivism exhausted the country.
“A return to normalcy” is what Donald Trump aims to achieve too. He likes to say he runs the party of “common sense.” He is willing to destroy modern liberalism root and branch to get us there. This memory of the past is what motivates MAGA as a uniquely American reactionary movement.
Note: Just as the Third Reich is the lost Golden Age of the “NS” fandom, Trump is inspired by the “winners” of Gilded Age America when New York was at its peak.
That said, don’t be surprised if Trump calls for returning the $500 bill to common circulation.
What were his views on immigration?
Not strong enough!
Thank God Anglin is posting again because the stuff Wallace is posting is being prescribed by doctors to patients with insomnia.
Hopefully, some of the uneducated, low-IQ mouthbreathers who have been polluting my comments will return home to spin their little wheels about Jews all day. It bores the hell out of me.
HW offers very good insights into socio/political issues, better than anything you’ll find in mass media.
Besides, he allows many of us to hammer on about the jp…… 🙂
Expanding American influence was terrible because it installed the global system that would export the innate liberalism of the American system to the rest of the world. America was always from the beginning a radical woke liberal project. The South was right about blacks but the North had the more legitimate Constitutional claim. Now that the mask is long since off, types like McKinley are thankfully forever in history’s dust bin and the Orange clown will soon follow.
I’m reviewing the William Jennings Bryan biography next. This post was not an endorsement of William McKinley.
@Anonymous and Hunter Wallace,
“Expanding American influence was terrible because it installed the global system that would export the innate liberalism of the American system to the rest of the world.”
What do you mean by innate Liberalism? There are clear departures from the Antebellum Republic Liberalism and Gilded Age Progressive Liberalism and the later with modern day Progressivism. In turn, if you hold to that judgement of history, then basically allowing the Russian Empire to become a key part of the World System allowed Russia to export its innate Progressive Despotism. In reality one did not inexorably lead to other. This is why McKinley is so popular today because he appears to be a firm timeline departure before things went kinda wacky.
“America was always from the beginning a radical woke liberal project.”
America had Established Church Religions in most states until the end of the first quarter of the 19th century, almost three generations since independence. Requirements of a belief in God were a requirement, in most states, until recently. American Protestantism and Catholicism are more conservative than their European counterparts. America didn’t fight World War II to defeat nationalism and Christianity, it fought in WWII to stop German-Italian-Japanese Imperialism and their UnChristian ideologies. That our victory was hijacked by leftists is a different story entirely.
“The South was right about blacks but the North had the more legitimate Constitutional claim.”
Complete falsehood. Might Made Right in that war. The States were sovereign countries. They provided some of their rights and responsibilities to a larger government. But, in no way did they surrender their sovereignty or liberty. But, the Feds habe accumulated more power. This is not unusual. For example, regarding the EU, its likely that if Britain didn’t have nuclear weapons and waited just a wee bit more to leave, the EU wouldn’t have let them and eliminated Brexit if not the Parliament itself.
“Now that the mask is long since off, types like McKinley are thankfully forever in history’s dust bin and the Orange clown will soon follow.”
McKinley has a mountain named after him, and now renamed after him. What do young have?
Trump wants to build a great America on a soon to be minority White, majority non-White demographic. He supports Diversity because he does nothing to alter the minority White direction it is leading to. He encourages it. His VP married to a non-White confirms it.
You can have Diversity or you can have a great America. You can’t have both.
@more of the same,
“You can have Diversity or you can have a great America. You can’t have both.”
That should be argued into the MAGA taking points.
Yeah, and Trumpo wants to hand the Ohio governorship to the Democrats by unconditionally supporting Ramaswamy for Governor. Crazy, man, crazy. Trump did the same thing in Pennsylvania when he supported the TV Muslim doctor for the US Senate.
Btw, Mike Pence was a Roman Catholic and an adult convert to Protestantism for political purposes in Indiana.
I’m hoping that Ohio AG Dave Yost can defeat Ramaswamy in the Primary.
How exactly do countries suck America dry when America buys more from them than they buy from us? That is one of Trump’s worst takes. The US could always buy less. But Trump wants to frame it as America being victimized. The whole thing smacks of narcissism. The US chooses to run a trade deficit and then blames other countries not itself.
I partially agree.
Ever since World War II, I would say that our trade policy has been subordinated to our foreign policy goals. We run huge deficits with our allies (and many of our enemies like China) because the terms of trade are more favorable to them. We do this because it gives us leverage over them. This relationship is the basis of American leadership in the “rules-based international order.”
You could say that the American working class and middle class pays the price for it by the export of entire industries abroad. You could say that future generations are paying the price for our consumption in interest on the national debt. I agree with Trump that the status quo is unsustainable. Trump doesn’t seem to want to be the leader of the world’s liberal democracies.
Yes, I know we get cheap consumer goods out of this relationship, but we are paying a price for it in employment opportunities that would go to Americans but which go to foreigners.
‘ we are paying a price for it in employment opportunities ‘
Even more, we are becoming technologically and educationally backward. Ford developed many of his ideas while working at Edison Electric, Edison while working as a telegraph operator. They couldn’t have learned anything stocking shelves or flipping burgers, waiting tables.
Great technological advancement has come from workers in industry.
“How exactly do countries suck America dry when America buys more from them than they buy from us? That is one of Trump’s worst takes. The US could always buy less. But Trump wants to frame it as America being victimized. The whole thing smacks of narcissism. The US chooses to run a trade deficit and then blames other countries not itself.”
Great point Greg. As you and I know, this fault rests firmly in American Materialism. This Great Age of Materialism started in the middle 19th century but didn’t become dominant until after WWII. The powers that be decided the only way to keep the system going was to keep Americans buying and then adding to them with more immigrants. They wanted us as consumers not producers. Its Satanic.
But minimalism wouldn’t have changed the trade deficit dynamic. Its not like Americans buy luxury goods from overseas cheaply. We simply would be buying less but we would still habe a trade deficit. Meanwhile we’d habe to park all that unconsumee income somewhere. So, just more factors would’ve been overseas anyways. Returning to a areif regime is the first step in rebuilding American greatness. But its just a step. We still need to return to high work ethic and pride in our labor and craftsmanship. We need to also increase savings and reducing spending. But, Tariffs are the first step in that direction. Not minimalism.
Hunter, i was wondering whether you thought the US could absorb Canada easier than it absorbed the South? They talk a lot about their independence but they seem like they are on the same page with the Northeastern liberal US elite most of the time, although i am not that well read on their historical positions.
IIRC from The Nine Nations of North America, the South was the only cultural region unique to the US, with most of them shared with Canadian regions. (Well, or the Caribbean or Mexico.)
“When was America great?”
The last great president was Eisenhower:
Restrictive, quota-based immigration system (McCarran Act)
Immigration laws strictly enforced (Operation Wetback)
Peace: ended the Korean War, refused to get dragged into the Vietnam War
Sovereignty: put the Israelis in their place during the 1956 Suez Crisis – the last president who publicly stood up to the Israel Lobby
Warned about the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex
Praised General Robert E. Lee as the ideal of American manhood
Admitted it was a mistake to appoint Earl Warren to the Supreme Court
“When was America great?”
March 11, 1762
The Rhode Island Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Aaron Lopez and Isaac Elizer to be naturalized subjects, thus nullifying Parliament’s Naturalization Act of 1740 insofar as it applied to Jews.
Arguably the high water mark of White Protestant ethnocentrism on this continent.
Excellent review of what seems like an interesting book. Although I still would have backed Bryan in 1896 were I alive to do so, it appears that the quality of men found at the top of both major party tickets was superior than those now- almost to a point that it beggars belief. Truly a golden age, particularly for my beloved Dixie, which gained a great degree of home rule during this period.
This type of writing is what I like best from HW, and was what attracted me to this site in the first place.
Recommended for anyone new: I don’t have the link but years ago Hunter did an in-depth piece on how Southerners became their own distinct people. It was one of the finest articles I ever read, and should still be in the archives here.
The insider’s plan was to exterminate the Filipinos the way the Brits exterminated the abos (almost totally). McKinley was onboard with the extermination plan, which would have replaced the Filipinos with 1 million white immigrants.
Then he changed his mind. He stated he was not going to exterminate the Filipinos he was going to help them. He attributed this change to a dream. He said God told him in a dream.
So we really did not get any benefit from that Filipino war. Nothing but a very expensive dependency. Mark Twain was right. McKinley and his imperialism ruined our nation.
The Bully Boys were right furious with McKinley about that. Roosevelt in particular.
The Jews refer to those times as the age of Schiff, what some call the Gilded Era. But it was Schiff that controlled the money supply in those years. So I am less inclined to believe that God appeared to McKinley in a dream, and more inclined to believe Schiff dictated the change in policy