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William Mckinley the Modern Campaign EPISODE TRANSCRIPT William McKinley The modern campaign EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Listen to Presidential at http://wapo.st/presidential This transcript was run through an automated transcription service and then lightly edited for clarity. There may be typos or small discrepancies from the podcast audio. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Just this past year, President Obama announced that the Alaskan mountain named after McKinley, Mount McKinley, would be renamed Denali -- its original Native American name. And not really, as we've seen in the case of some other monuments some memorials, not really because of any failings or controversies that had come to light about President McKinley, but just really because it had seemed inappropriate and insensitive to many in the first place that we had written over a part of Alaskan's heritage to commemorate a president from Ohio who had no connection to this mountain and who had never even seen Alaska. So, today there is no more Mount McKinley, and there are very few other cultural nods to McKinley today, either. So, other than his assassination, what else is a “Presidential” podcast episode on McKinley supposed to focus on? Well, you're going to find out. I'm Lillian Cunningham, and this is the 24th episode of “Presidential.” PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: There are actually quite a few directions that I thought about taking this McKinley episode in. We could have looked at the rise of American imperialism, which would have been really interesting, by talking about the Spanish-American War. McKinley had reluctantly entered that war and the U.S. helped free Cuba from Spanish rule and the U.S. also ended up gaining control over Guam, Puerto Rico and bought the Philippines. So, there's that. I also thought about potentially digging really deeply into the debates over the gold standard. But I ended up deciding that, for this episode, we're actually going to mostly skip over McKinley's time in the White House itself, and we're going to examine two other transformations that were brought on by McKinley. Now, one is that his assassination in 1901 prompted sort of the birth of the modern Secret Service -- we're going to talk about that at the end of the episode with my Washington Post colleague Carol Leonnig. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1 And the other thing, which we're going to look at for the bulk of the episode, is why Karl Rove -- who was the architect of George W. Bush's presidential campaigns and served as his chief of staff - - why it is that Karl Rove thinks McKinley's election in 1896 was one of the most important and transformational elections in American history. He feels so strongly about that that he recently wrote a book all about McKinley's election and the lessons he thinks American political campaigns today can take away from it. So, OK, so here we go. William McKinley, born in 1843. President from 1897 until 1901. McKinley's first vice president was Garret Hobart and his second was Theodore Roosevelt. And now let's see McKinley through the eyes of Karl Rove. I mostly want to talk to you about the 1896 election, but -- KARL ROVE: You bet. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Before we do that, just to make sure that everyone who listens to this podcast has a real image of McKinley in their head. Say I'm about to go on a blind date with him, and you know him and I don't. Can you describe this man for me? KARL ROVE: Well, William McKinley is the unknown president of the United States. The 25th president is mainly remembered for having been assassinated and then followed in office by Theodore Roosevelt. But he is a much different figure when you get to examine his life. He is a self-made man, came from a large family that lived in northeast Ohio. His father ran a iron smelter. His mother was a deeply religious woman -- 'Mother McKinley,' they called her. He was born in Niles, Ohio. But his parents, believing in the importance of education, moved to Poland, Ohio where there was a good school. And at the age of 18, in April of 1861, McKinley, encouraged by Lincoln's call, enlisted in what became the 23rd Ohio. And McKinley began the war as a private. He ended the war four years later as a major, having received three battlefield commissions for unbelievable valor. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, this is, of course, the Civil War, and he's fighting on the Union side. And well, you mentioned his bravery. In one particular instance, he rode straight across the open battlefield all by himself to carry a message to other Union troops, right? KARL ROVE: His tentmate said it was a suicide mission. At one point, a cannon shell goes off right next to him, and his tentmate Russell Hastings says, 'We thought he was gone.' But he wrote later, 'Out of the crack, the cloud of gray smoke, came the small brown horse with the erect horsemen.' Somehow or another, McKinley, once again, makes it through, just in the nick of time. He rides back, walks into the command tent, and his brigade commander turns around and is startled to see him there. His brigade commander, Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, himself a future president, says, 'My God, I never expected to see you in this life again.' And the rest of his life, he was a congressman, governor of Ohio, he was president of the United States. The title he preferred to be called above all others was 'The Major.' He said, 'I don't know Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2 about those others, but I know I earned that one.' LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Right, so he has this reputation for bravery. But what were some of the other hallmarks of his character? KARL ROVE: One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats could agree upon was the sterling character and personal charm of -- and friendship of -- William McKinley. Thomas Brackett Reed, the future speaker of the house said, 'My adversaries in the House go at me tooth and nail. But they feel obliged to apologize to William before they call him names.' He had enormous personal charm. He was completely, totally devoted to his wife. They lost two daughters -- one as an infant and one at the age of five. They never had any other children. His wife spiraled into a life of depression and -- LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Epilepsy. KARL ROVE: And seizures. She probably had epilepsy that came on from a fall during one of her pregnancies, and McKinley was totally devoted to her. And he's a man of enormous compassion for the working man as well. As a young lawyer, during his first race for Congress, he was asked to take on the defense of 22 minors who were accused of acts of violence against the mine owners, and no one would defend them. And he took them on, got all but one of them off, and then refused to take a fee for it because he felt that the money would be better spent to care for and feed the families of the miners who were out on strike, so he was enormously popular and appealing figure. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So when we look at his political rise from congressmen to governor, then to presidential candidate -- among the traits you've mentioned and then also ones you haven't yet mentioned, what do you think were some of the ones that are really key to his rise? KARL ROVE: Well, first of all, he was very hardworking. He was not a show horse. He was a workhorse. For example, in his first term in Congress, he did not immediately speak. He waited months before he made his first address. And when he did, he was thoroughly well prepared, and he was a good orator. He knew how to make an argument. As governor -- he became governor after he was defeated for re-election, and when the Republicans were wiped out in the 1890 elections, he was elected the governor, in large part, because of the support of working folks, you know, miners and factory workers who admired his leadership on economic issues and understood that he had a natural sympathy for them. So, in his race for the presidency, he runs the first modern presidential campaign -- both the first modern presidential primary campaign and the first modern presidential campaign. And a big focus of it was on the interests of working folks. I mean, there's a letter from one of his cousins, who writes him a letter saying, 'I reminded the executive committee of what you've often told us. It is with the interests of the working man that we must be concerned. Capital can take care of itself.' So, this natural empathy for working class folks shone through in everything that he did. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 3 LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: And so, his election is in 1896. This is essentially the height of the Gilded Age, which some people today would look back and see a lot of parallels between our time and then. And one of those is this idea that working people in the country were angry at the time, particularly about the widening income inequality. KARL ROVE: Well, I think they were less worried about income inequality than having a job and having an income themselves. America, as we approach the 1896 campaign, is in the midst of what is the greatest depression the country has ever suffered -- or will suffer -- until the Great Depression itself.
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