McKinley, according to Theodore Roosevelt (via Edmund Morris)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/presidents/william-mckinley-1417412.html.
(Yes, I'm citing a UK paper for a pic of an American President.)

Mt. McKinley was renamed Denali. It's notable to me, personally, because my cousin Carolyn had just visited Alaska. We were discussing the mountain last week, and how Denali is the local name for the mountain.

According to history books, it was named by explorer Dickey. Later, however, he claimed to name it after McKinley to troll the miners (free silver people) that had harangued him for days with their politics. (Note to self: campsites are probably terrible places to have long-winded political argument.)

As expected, Ohio Republicans are freaking out, though their arguments contain some anachronisms.

Now, McKinley was president over a hundred years ago, and like many presidents who died in office, he was probably most remembered in our history texts for dying in office. Sometimes such an untimely end often cheats some presidents of greater prominence and admiration (see James A. "I-write-math-proofs-in-my-spare-time-when-I'm-not-working-my-way-out-of-poverty-or-fighting-corruption-or-defeating-superior-confederate-forces" Garfield). But in McKinley's case, he had the good fortune of dying in office and being overshadowed by a charismatic and influential successor.

To be fair, McKinley was wildly popular at the time of his death. He presided over a period of economic prosperity (rightly or wrongly attributed to "sound money" policies and protective tariffs). America had just fought the Spanish-American War and won decisively. This was the first major war fought by America against a foreign power since the Civil War, and so it played an often understated role of helping unify the country together in a way that Reconstruction and the Gilded Age hadn't, or couldn't.

His policies? Well, pretty pure Gilded Age stuff. But you can read about that elsewhere; Morris paints a far more interesting image of the man.

Some delightful quotes on McKinley from The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris. (Bold emphasis added by me.)


McKinley as a drug-addled empty suit

Swaying gently against the cushions of the Presidential carriage, relaxed after a day of stiff formalities. William McKinley appeared to best advantage. Locomotion quickened his inert body and statuesque head, and the play of light and shade through the window made his masklike face seem mobile and expressive. Roosevelt could forget about the too-short legs and pulpy handshake, and concentrate on the bronzed, magnificent profile. From the neck up, at least, McKinely was every inch a President--or for that matter, an emperor, with his high brow finely chiseled mouth, and Roman nose. "He does not like to be told that it looks like the nose of Napoleon," the columnist Frank Carpenter once wrote. "it is a watchful nose, and it watches out for McKinley."

Not until the President turned, and gazed directly at his interlocutor, was the personal force which dominated Mark Hanna fully felt. His stare was intimidating in its blackness and steadiness. The pupils, indeed, were at times so dilated as to fuel suspicions that he was privy to Mrs. McKinley's drug cabinet. Only very perceptive observers were aware that there was no real power behind the gaze: McKinley stared in order to concentrate a sluggish, wandering mind." (612)


McKinley as a less-than-competent political leader (beholden to moneyed interests)

"The November Congressional elections were disastrous for the Republican party, due mainly to an unpopular tariff measure which William McKinley [then Speaker of the House] had pushed into law at the end of the last session. With prices on manufactured goods rising daily, voters threw the culprit out of office--severely damaging his presidential prospects--and filled the House with the largest Democratic majority in history." (436)


McKinley as a bought-and-paid-for pol

Mrs. Storer was a wealthy and formidable matron whose eyes burned with religious fervor, and whose jaw booked no opposition from anybody--least of all William McKinley, whom she considered to be in her debt. The Presidential candidate had gratefully accepted $10,000 of Storer funds in 1893, when threatened with financial and political ruin. Mrs. Storer was now, three years later, expecting to recoup this investment in the form of various appointments for her near and dear. (563)*


McKinley as a Jefferson Davis/flip-flopper/opportunist

"Not since the campaign of Crassus against the Parthians," in Roosevelt's later opinion, "has there been so criminally incompetent a General as Shafter." [the commander of forces invading Cuba during the Spanish-American War] Yet it was hard in the early days of June 1898 not to sympathize with that harassed officer, for President McKinley was proving an exceedingly erratic Commander-in-Chief. Bent, apparently, on acting as his own Secretary of War, he had been sending Shafter contradictory orders ever since the Battle of Manila. Dewey's overwhelming victory had turned both the President and Secretary Long into war-hawks overnight; their first reaction ot the news had been to endorse Roosevelt's naval/military invasion plan, over the objection of Commanding General Miles, on 2 May. General Shafter was ordered to prepare for immediate departure from Tampa (although the Volunteers were still in training), and on 8 May the President had increased the project landing force from ten thousand to seventy thousand. But then McKinley discovered that there was not enough ammunition in the United States to keep such an army firing for one hour in battle, and an urgent cancellation order flew to Tampa. Shafter's force force was scaled down to twenty-five thousand by the end of May, and the telegrams from Washington became querulous: "When will you leave? Answer at once" Shafter wired back that he could not sail before 4 June." (655-656)

*To be fair, sucking up to her is how the celebrated Theodore Roosevelt got his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Roosevelt illustrates the differences between France and America at the turn of the century

In 1910 Theodore Roosevelt was engaged in a speaking tour of Europe, following his Smithsonian-led, Carnegie-sponsored African safari. Roosevelt was in Berlin, speaking with Kaiser Wilhelm, when he received a telegram. President Taft asked Roosevelt to represent the United States at the funeral of the British King Edward VII. What follows is an excerpt of Roosevelt's interactions with the French minister of foreign affairs, Stephen Pichon. Below, italcized text represent Roosevelt as quoted by Edmund Morris in Colonel Roosevelt; standard text represents Morris' writing.

[At a wake prior to the funeral, Pichon] got me aside and asked me in French, as he did not speak English, what colored coat my coachman had worn that evening. I told him that I did not know; whereupon he answered that his coachman had a black coat. I nodded and said Yes, I thought mine had a black coat also. He responded with much violence that this was an outrage, a slight upon the two great republics, as all the Royalties' coachmen wore red coats, and that he would at once make a protest on behalf of us both. I told him to hold on, that he must not make any protests on my behalf, that I did not care what kind of coat my coachman wore, and would be perfectly willing to see him wear a green coat with yellow splashes--"un plaetot vert avec des tauches jaunes" being my effort at idiomatic rendering of the idea, for I speak French, I am sorry to say, as if it were a non-Aryan tongue, without tense or gender, although with agglutinative vividness and fluency. My incautious incursion into levity in a foreign tongue met appropriate punishment, for I spent the next fifteen minutes in eradicating from Pichon's mind the belief that I was demanding these colors as my livery.

[The next day, at the funeral procession]

Friday, 20 May 1910, was a day so beautiful that all London seemed to want to be outdoors and see the procession scheduled to depart from Buckingham Palace at 9:30 A.M. Hours before the first drumbeat sounded, a mass of humanity blocked every approach to the parade route along the Mall to Westmisnter Hall. There was little noise and less movement as the crowd waited under a cloudless sky. Green Park was at its greenest. The air, washed clean by rain overnight, was sweet and warm, alive with birdsong.

Rosevelt arrived early in the palace yard, where horses and coaches were lining up, and was again accosted by a furious Stephen Pichon. The Duke of Norfolk had decreed that because of their lack of royal uniforms, they could not ride with the mounted mourners. Instead, they were to share a dress landau. Pichon noted, in a voice shaking with rage, that it would be eighth in a sequence of twelve, behind a carriage packed with Chinese imperials of uncertain gender. Not only that, it was a closed conveyance, whereas some royal ladies up front had been assigned "glass coaches."

The landau struck Roosevelt as luxurious all the same, and he admitted afterward, in describing the funeral, that he had never heard of glass coaches "excepting in connection with Cinderella." But Pichon could not be calmed down:

He continued that "ces Chinois" were put ahead of us. To this I answered that any people dressed as gorgeously as "ces Chinois" ought to go ahead of us; but he responded that it was not a laughing matter. Then he hadded that "ce Perse" had been put in with us, pointing out a Persian prince of the blood royal, a deprecatory, inoffensive-looking Levantine of Parisian education, who was obviously ill at ease, but whom Pichon insisted upon regarding as someone who wanted to be offensive. At this moment our coach drove up, and Pichon bounced into it. I suppose he had gotten in to take the right-hand rear seet, to which I was totally indifferent.... But Pichon was scrupulous in giving me precedence, although I had no idea whether I was entitled to it or not. He sat on the left rear seat himself, stretched his arm across the right seat and motioned me to get it so that "ce Perse" should not himself take the place of honor! Accordingly I got in, and the unfortunate Persian followed, looking about as unaggressive as a rabbit in a cage with two boa constrictors.

[...]

Roosevelt sat well back, with the strange reticence that sometimes overcame him on ceremonial occasions, avoiding eye contact with the crowd. There was no indicating that he was being subjected to a further Gallic tirade:

Pichon's feelings overcame him.... He pointed out the fact that we were following "toutes ces petites royautes," even "le roi du Portugal." I then spoke to him seriously, and said that in my judgment France and the United States were so important that it was of no earthly consequence whether their representatives went before or behind the representatives of utterly insignificant little nations like Portgal, and that I thought it was a great mistake to make a fuss about it, because it showed a lack of self-confidence. He shook his head, and said that in Europe they regarded these things as of real importance, and that if I would not join him in a protest he would make one on his own account. I answered that I very earnestly hoped that he would not make a row at a funeral (my French failed me at this point, and I tried alternately "funeraille" and "pompe funebre"), that it would be sure to have a bad effect.

A Franco-American accord (Persia abstaining) was reached before the landau made its first stop at Parliament Square. Pichon agreed to wait and see where he was seated later in the day, at lunch in Windsor Castle, before making his placement a casus belli that might prevent France's attendance at the future coronation of George V.

-Colonel Roosevelt, p. 65-66

Great people, including presidents, read in the bathroom

I searched the train for him and finally discovered him in one of the white enameleed lavatories with its door half open.... He was busily engaged in reading, while he braced himself in the angle fo the two walls against the swaying motion of the train, oblivious to time and surroundings. The book in which he was absorbed was Lecky's History of Rationalism in Europe. He had chosen this peculiar reading room both because the white enamel reflected a brilliant light and he was pretty sure of uninterrupted quiet.

-- Lawrence F. Abbott, traveling companion and secretary for Theodore Roosevelt during his European tour, from Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris