McKinley is largely forgotten today. Presidential historians often rank him in the middle of the pack. Such rankings are colored by a deep liberal bias—a February 2024 survey put FDR first and Trump dead last—but they do illustrate that McKinley is neither hailed for his greatness nor lamented for his failures. Rather, he’s just overlooked.
Part of this is due to the man himself; even in his own lifetime McKinley was regarded as somewhat bland. McKinley’s lack of personal papers and, as one biographer noted, his “tendency to listen as much as talk” also contributed to his obscurity. But it is also the result of his premature death. McKinley was murdered by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, on September 6, 1901, a mere six months into his second term. Some presidential assassinations grant their victims a level of immortality. Lincoln and John F. Kennedy come to mind. But others consign the dead to oblivion.
Indeed, for more than a century, McKinley has been overshadowed by his larger-than-life successor, Teddy Roosevelt. TR was young, dynamic, and image-conscious. He knew how to court the press and provide good copy for reporters. Roosevelt was 42 when he took office and seemed to embody the youthful nation that he led. He was also famously hyperactive and, at times, erratic.
The stolid McKinley was Roosevelt’s opposite. He was unknowable. The wife of one of his rivals in Ohio politics, Joseph Foraker, once charged that McKinley was a man of “masks,” his inner thoughts and emotions well concealed. Roosevelt’s own daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, famously said that her father wanted to be the “the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.” By contrast, the unassuming McKinley exuded the air of a man just happy to be invited.
Roosevelt took the helm right as America became a world power. He was the perfect president for the new media age. TR’s exploits, from hunting exotic creatures to brokering peace between Russia and Japan, served as perfect fodder for press barons like William Randolph Hearst.
But McKinley was popular in his lifetime, and he built the edifice that TR stood on. His death prompted widespread mourning. McKinley was the only president between Ulysses Grant and Woodrow Wilson—a span of nearly forty years—to be elected to two terms. And his electoral victories over his Democratic opponent, the perennial candidate, William Jennings Bryan, were resounding. In fact, they reshaped the American landscape.