Congressional quarterly, he calls the presidency of wikileaks William Mckinley. This is just over one hour. applause good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to kansas city public library. Robert merry, this is his second representation. Y applause he is a graduate of the university of washington. He has a masters degree from Columbia University school of journalism. He has been a reporter for the observer, the wall street journal, managing editor, executive editor and editor in chief of congressional quarterly, and more recently, editor of the National Interest in the american conservative. The american conservative he says its collaborative, but it sounds a lot like robert merry. This is a description of their philosophy. We believe in constitutional government, fiscal prudence, sound policy, clearly needed borders, protection of civil liberties, and mixed with diplomatic we had here closely to our institutional maximum ideas of ideology principles one could wish that there was more of that kind of true conservatism wandering around rather than someone who professed to be conservative. He is also the author of books of his ultimate journalistic insider stewart and joseph wilson. Hes written the sense of empire, and analysis and something laterally, a country a vast designs, rehabilitation of james polk. President james poke. Now president mckinley, architect of the american century. Both polk and mckinley, he makes the case the export unsafe expansion of the american in a pure geographical sense and extending our batteries any other than Thomas Jefferson and louisiana purchase. Mckinley, and the non colonial imperialism, that did bring Us Geographical expansion with the annexation of hawaii with the acquisition of puerto rico, but more importantly, the expansion of american concern and engagement as a role power manifested in the spanish american war, the battles in cuba and the battles in the philippines. And the control over cuba and philippines for a standing period of times. Youve been door in china and vast expansion of the american economy. Polk has been called the most successful president. What he proposed to do as president , incorporate california, texas, reduce the tariff and reinstate independent treasury. You could see me after class to explain that one. We are all accomplished. He is the only president who saw his entire Program Written in the law. Hes also told one of our most because of the shenanigans associated with the mexican war, which make part of that program possible. Robert merry sides with a diagnosis of him as a successful politician. With mckinley, he gives us a more subtle case that there was a lesser version that perhaps just as important a program for the president give the United States a new place in the international stage. You only stated program of the mckinley campaign for the president was on the tariff, with which he was more than anyone else identified, the high tariff. Historians have had a hard time discerning a Foreign Policy in his plans but he makes a strong case that he was the guide who gave us empire. It was not lodge or roosevelt or john hay, but the deliberate and very subtle mastery of William Mckinley. This book is a continuation of an ongoing effort of robert merry to reverse the trend of contemporary academics to i quote him, devour our heritage through acronyms, moralizing for the safe distance of as such, he has created a sympathetic character study and one of the architects of the american century. Ladies and gentlemen, robert merry. applause thank you. Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. So great pleasure to see all of you here. This is actually my third time at this library. Ive spoken at a number of libraries. Not a lot of five star libraries. He didnt mean to. I entitled my introduction to this volume on mckinley, the mystery of William Mckinley. I was pleased to see the wall street journal sort of picked up on that and writing a headline over the review of my book, which by the way was very favorable. That is my effort to emulate donald trump. laughter i have to say that i did not set out to solve the mystery of William Mckinley i did not understand mckinley enough when i started this project to understand theres something strange. Theres something mysterious about him. It can be explained in perhaps two sentences, which is given all the consequential things that happened on his president ial watch, why does he not rise higher in americas historical consciousness of today . Put another way, given he was such a non flamboyant and undramatic personage, how did all those consequential things happen on his presidency . So as i guided through the project, i have to say the guy started driving me crazy because i had a hard time getting a handle on him. He was not a forceful man and get all of these things happened under his presidency and i was having a hard time sort of bringing this to life. The historical consensus on him was that, yeah big things happened under his watch, but he had nothing to do with it. He was just president. That didnt really strike me as being totally credible. That is what i call if you relief in the wind theory of William Mckinley. An example is a book by alan lichtman, which i quote a lot. Its a very good book. Its not just about mckinley, it is about how the presidency works. But they have a chapter on mckinley and they write that he enjoyed quote, one of the more successful incumbencys in American History. But then they add that he found himself quote, benefiting in part from circumstances beyond his control. Theres the rub. Beyond his control. He was seen as less than the sum of his deeds. What struck me also was in the academic polls, which ive written about and talked about in this hall some years ago, that in those polls he comes in, not exactly lower average, maybe middle average. He comes in 15th or 16th 14th occasionally. Often he is below such an distinguished or failed president s such as chester garfield. Nevertheless, he was a caretaker president. Martin van buren was a failed president and presided over a terrible recession and get depression he could not control. Rutherford hayes who became president under the basis of one of the great stolen election scandals of our history. Grover cleveland who, as we all know, was the only president who served two non consecutive terms. He was rejected by either his party and voters after each, this making him the only twotime one term president in our history. And John Quincy Adams who was swept away in a populist wave at the behest of andrew jackson. So the mystery deepens when you think about what happened on his watch. Im going to urge you to not think about what im about to take off as just bullet points on a piece of paper. Think about the Political Drama likely to attend many of these things. Well, he led us into a world of spain in 1898. He ended up being a huge success. It was a three month war. We destroy the spanish empire essentially in the process. We destroyed two spanish fleets, theyre atlantic and pacific fleets. We became an empire by acquiring from spain, puerto rico, guam and the philippines. We liberated cuba in the caribbean. We could have kept it also, but we had already made a commitment that we wouldnt. He kicked spain out of the caribbean and turned the caribbean into an american lake. For good measure, as far as we noted, he acquired a white through negotiation and annexation. He set in motion the events that led eventually to the panama canal. Pr gets an awful lot of credit for that, and he deserves it, but it was really mckinley who reversed the policy of his predecessor, cleveland, was an anti expansionist. He said no, we are going to move on this can now and set in motion the studies and the actions and the planning that led to the canal. He brought about the open door to china which basically saved china for being carved up by the industrial powers, european and japanese powers. He created the concept of trade reciprocity, which when i was covering trade policy in the 19 eighties, when it was a hot issue in the wall street journal, reciprocity was really was then called fair trade. Make it even so that we can have these exchange of goods back and forth across borders. He crafted the concept of non colonial imperialism, which i believe ultimately was picked up by Franklin Roosevelt when he was transforming the world through world war ii and putting america at the center of it. It was on his watch that we established the special relationship with britain. Just a few years earlier, under the cleveland administration, we almost went to war with britain over a silly border dispute in south america. But after that, we never ever had anything like that in terms of tensions with Great Britain because of this special relationship. And he created the gold standard, we tend to look down on gold standards these days, but in those days it was a big deal. He ran when the currency issue was probably the hottest in our history. He essentially soft that in his first term. This is a big collection of accomplishments or developments that occurred on his watch. The question is, to what extent does he deserve the credit . I myself came to conclude that the idea, belief in the wind theory, was a myth. I set out to expose that mitt in this book. I will let you decide whether i succeed in that. Im happy to do that because you cant decide unless you buy the book. laughs so who was this man . Born in 1843, he was the seventh of the nine children. Eight of whom lived to adulthood. He grew up in ohio, a small town in ohio. He was imbued with what you might call the ohio culture of the time which was a reflection of what people of those times considered christian values of thrift, optimism, modesty, hard toil. His father ran and owned blast furnaces around ohio. He worked very hard. His mother had a strong sense of civic and religious duty. She was a very civic minded and worked very hard for her church and community. They were in poland for most of the growing up years of william. His mother was also imbued with those christian values i just talked about. One of my favorite stories about her when she took a train to columbus later in her life to visit her son, the governor of ohio. The lady next to her struck up a conversation, are you going to columbus . Yes i am, she said. Oh, do you have family there . I have a son there. That is all she said. She did not feel any need to explain that her son was the governor of the state. So at 17, young William Mckinley goes to college in pennsylvania. The first year, he developed some kind of an illness, in ailment, and it was never quite explained or understood what it was. But he had to return to poland where he recuperated. By the time he recuperated, he could not go back to college because economic difficulties had rendered a need for all of the family members to go to work. So he got two jobs. He was a schoolteacher, 17 at that time, and he was a postal clerk. Then comes the civil war. I cant say that he enlisted immediately. He gave himself two days to think it over and sort of try to figure out with his cousin whether this was the right thing to do. His family was very strong abolitionists, his mother particularly. She subscribed to a weekly tribune which you could get in the mail which was reinforced of that sentiment. He and his cousin, william osborne, decided within a day and a half or so that they simply could not stay out of that war and enlisted. He had, i think i can accurately describe it as a Pretty Amazing war record. He entered as an 18 year old private. Immediately, his commanding officer, Rutherford Hayes, later president and great mentor for him. But Rutherford Hayes was an officer and became a general, he was wounded five times in the war. He became a congressman and a governor and then president. Hayes saw that this man had a remarkable organizational ability. So he made him a sergeant and made him quartermaster sergeant. He was sort of taking care of supplies. At the battle of antietam, the single most bloody day of battle in our history, he was two miles behind the lines because his job was to provide provisions. He heard about a unit that had gotten caught, trapped essentially, in the area of the battle where they couldnt move or get out. Nobody could get in to help them. They were starving and had run out of water. The battle began very early in the morning, so they had not had breakfast and its Late Afternoon so they had no lunch and had run out of water well before noon. So these troops were inaudible . So Young Mckinley concocted the idea of loading up a wagon with some hard tax, some bread and water and a few other things and getting that wagon to these troops. He would have to go through the battle to do it. He gets a friend or some other young soldier to help them load up the wagon and get in the wagon and they cut out through the surrounding forests. They encounter two officers who say this is ridiculous, you can do this, go back. But after they left, mckinley and his associate ignored it and went on. They got to the clearing and then they made a run for it. Bullets were whizzing by, cannonballs overhead and the back of the wagon was shot away. But they managed to get the provisions to these troops. God bless the lad said one of the old grizzled veterans. Immediately, as a result of that, he was promoted to commissioning and became lieutenant. I wont go into all of them, but he had other experiences somewhat like that in which he put himself very directly in harms ways. Almost always voluntarily. And each time, he got another promotion. So he ended the war as a brief it major. A 22yearold major. So he goes back to poland and decides he wants to become a lawyer and run for Congress Like his mentor, Rutherford Hayes. He sends a letter, hes kind of a storied id letter to hayes saying he wants to do. Basically what you did, sir. I want to do what you did. Hayes writes back a letter and says, yeah thats pretty good, but you know, frankly, with all this industrialization going on, i think maybe you should go into business. You could become a wealthy man by age 40 and really take care of your life. Well, mckinley carefully preserved the letter, but discarded the advice. He knew what he wanted. So he moved to canton, ohio where his sister had become a schoolteacher. After, it becomes a lawyer and hands out his shingle and becomes a civic leader in canton. He joined everything. He joined veterans groups. He joined the church. He joined the chamber of commerce. And immediately, he was pulled up into positions of leadership. So there was Something Special about this guy that led people to turn to him for leadership even though he was not a flamboyant person. I have a little passage in my book here describing him after his civil war experience. I think we see here in the book the first hint of what becomes an element of the mystery of William Mckinley. I write, the civil war transformed young William Mckinley, much as his fathers whitehot for just transformed crude iron into a gets a pig iron ready for more sophisticated uses. He went to war as an unseasoned teenager with only a vague sense of who he was or what he would do with his life. He left the army in a doll and had been severely tested in questions of intellect, administrative ability, leadership and courage. He passed these tests and demonstrated that men gravitated naturally to his side and that many older men were drawn into roles of solicitous mentorship. Yet this new confidence and sense of self settled upon him softly without ostentatious or bravado. It matched with a simplicity of temperament to produce a demeanor of heavy quiet. He learned the power of mystique. Of leaving unsaid which that did not need explicit expression. Of people keeping people guessing as to his intentions are motives. If this led some to underestimate his intellect or resolve, he did not seem bothered by it. Thats emerged some of the enigmatic elements of his persona, a congenial and easygoing demeanor shrouding and increasingly restless ambition. So he does run for congress. He becomes a congressman and served 14 years. He becomes chairman of the ways and Means Committee where hes in position to push his pet issue, tariffs. Protectionism. High trade tariffs to protect American Manufacturing and agriculture in a time when america was burgeoning as a productive machine. He even crafts a bill, a tariff bill, a very high tariff bill. The mckinley tariff they called it, of 1890. It turned out to be a bad move. The tariffs didnt go into effect for quite some time and a lot of businesses took the opportunity to raise prices because they were going to raise it anywhere. They figured the American People did not like that very much and a result was a disaster for republicans in the 1890 elections. For mckinley is sitting in his office as the returns are coming in, disheveled and the office is all messed up with postage everywhere and papers and buttons. He is sitting there smoking a cigar and in walks his good friend, the editor of the newspaper. The editor says, jim freeze says, its all over. Mckinley says nothing. He says what am i going to say the newspaper . Mckinley looks up with a look on his face and says, in the time of darkest true veil, victory is nearest. What . He just, he couldnt get pessimistic about anything. Hes congenital it impossible for him. So he lost his seat, but a year later he runs for governor. He serves to two year terms and now he is ready to run for president of the United States. He begins his campaign in 1895. He sends his good friend and the man who served him so well, mike hanna, a very successful industrialist of ohio from cleveland. He sends into new york on an important mission. You want to find out from the big bosses in new york, who basically owned the Republican Party in that state. He wanted to know if them and their lesser bosses who worked under them, if they