McKinley, I think, of all American Presidents, best fits the description of an
iron hand in a velvet glove. He is a person of impeccable manners, a person
who was known and beloved for his restraint, his politeness, his manners.
Americans knew, for example, that his wife was an invalid, who was susceptible
to seizures, and McKinley would take her to state dinners and when she would
have a seizure, he'd very quickly put a napkin over her face and he personally
would wheel her out and take her, to the White House bedroom and make sure
that she was comfortable. The American people knew that this relationship with
Mrs. McKinley had essentially been based on the rather tragic loss of two
infant daughters. So McKinley was seen as a person who was sensitive,
generous, concerned about others. He was a person who, when he spoke, unlike
politicians in the 1890s or later, was not bombastic. He was not a person who
raised his voice and shouted. He didn't use excesses of rhetoric. What he
did, instead, was to try to use reason. He was a very calm speaker. One of my
favorite descriptions of McKinley speaking is, a senator who went over to hear
in the House when McKinley was in the House of Representatives and said that
McKinley was a very persuasive speaker, that he had a voice that was bell like
with a hint of a thrill. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but what I
think it does mean is that he was able to get people's attention and he did it
not by yelling at them, but by reasoning with them and by cajoling them and by
flattering them. He was exceptionally good at this. His Secretary of War,
Elihu Root, once said that McKinley's genius was that he could make other
people believe that his ideas were their own, and that he was able to work on
these people, usually indirectly, until, as, I think Root put it very nicely,
"all of the fruit on the tree was his."
McKinley always got what he wanted. He suffered very few political,
set-backs, especially after he became President. And he did this in a way that
was not public, that was not, bombastic. It was a particular mannerism and
style that I think was peculiarly 19th century, and yet he did get what he
wanted. He is, I think, the person who started the modern American Presidency.
He is the person who, for example, figured out how to use the
commander-in-chief powers in the American Constitution so that he could just do
about anything he wanted to do with the US military and the US navy. He sent
American troops almost literally half-way around the world without consulting
anyone except a few close advisors. He certainly never consulted with Congress
before he sent US troops of the mainland of Asia. And yet very few people
complained about this. He was able to deal with people in way that they came
away feeling good even when they disagreed with him.
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