Karl Rove on the election of 1896

today on uncommon knowledge the man who knows more about presidential politics in the 21st century and the late 19th century than anyone else alive Karl Rove uncommon knowledge now welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson a native of Colorado Karl Rove attended the University of Utah the University of Maryland George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin as president of karl rove and company he directed the campaigns of some 75 Republican candidates for the house for the Senate and for a number of governorships in 2000 he became the principal architect of the winning presidential campaign of George W Bush and then in 2004 he became the principal architect of george w bush's reelection campaign mr. Rove also served in the Bush administration throughout nearly all eight years now a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a commentator for Fox News Karl Rove is also an author his latest the triumph of William McKinley why the election of 1896 still matters Karl welcome thanks for having me let's start with the candidate himself William McKinley born in 1843 fought for the Union in the Civil War became a leading lawyer in Canton Ohio represented Ohio for three terms in the House of Representatives served from 1892 to 1896 as governor of Ohio and then in 1896 is elected the 25th President of the United States and is assassinated at the age of 58 in 1901 now if most Americans share my education you've got a sense of the founders Washington Adams Jefferson the next peak is Lincoln and then there's a big empty space until you get to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and your man lies in that empty space and you say he's important yeah look the election of 1896 has been studied by political scientists for decades as one of the five Great realigning elections in American history there are five points at which American politics is one way before a presidential election and then after that point is something distinctly different the election of 1800 with Thomas Jefferson ending the Federalist era 1828 with the election of Andrew Jackson and the birth the modern political party 1860 in the election of Abraham Lincoln and there and the arrival of the Republicans 1932 and FDR and the New Deal and 1896 where we spend more time talking about the guy who lost the election William Jennings Bryan and the guy who follows McKinley Theodore Roosevelt who plays a minor yet is somewhat important role in the 1896 campaign and more importantly the 1896 campaign makes the future of Theodore Roosevelt possible but only by Roosevelt being a complete weasel a self a self-important ambitious weasel who who who takes advantage in the 1896 campaign to position himself for the job that gives him his future namely the assistant secretary of the Navy so let's try to place McKinley himself a couple of spectrums on one end of the spectrum you've got Abraham Lincoln born in a log cabin and what was that a very remote part of America frontier man and then on the other end of the spectrum you've got both of the Roosevelt's born to wealthy families born in the most cosmopolitan city New York exquisitely educated at private schools in Harvard where in this spectrum does William McKinley fall McKinley lies closer to Lincoln that he does to Roosevelt by by background he is born of the son of a higher nature in in Northeast Ohio which is part of a rapidly growing and rapidly industrializing part of the Midwest he grows up he's born in in what is small-town Ohio and grows to see it become in the aftermath of the Civil War a great commercial and manufacturing center but we don't you know what the amazing thing about it is we know a lot about most of our presidents and we recognize the name and clearly we have no understanding most people do not have any understanding whatsoever what a remarkable human being is he's he is like Lincoln largely self-educated he goes to a little school called the Poland Academy in Poland Ohio sent there his parents moved from Niles where he's born to pull him because there's a better school there he spends one semester at Allegheny College in readville Pennsylvania but his ill and has to return home and after after the war he becomes a lawyer bye-bye literally the old-fashioned way that he goes to Albany Law School for less than a year outside of in New York but like Lincoln he studies for the law by being taken in by a patron a local judge in Youngstown Ohio named Glidden who allows him to read for the law in his office but one amazing things to me about it is is we know nothing about his background as a war hero hmm you know we honor JFK for pt-109 we know we honor 41 for being the youngest torpedo bomber pilot in the Navy in World War two William McKinley enters the Civil War in April of 1861 he shows up with the Poland militia at Camp Jackson outside of Columbus Ohio for 90-day enlistment Lincoln is called for 90-day volunteers when the man the young men all in their 18s and 19's show up in Poland from Poland Ohio show up at Camp Jackson they're told the 90-day quota has been fulfilled you have two options go home or enlist for three years or the duration whichever is longer and almost to a man they enlist for three years or longer he enters the war is a private he ends the war at the age of 18 he ends the war at 22 as a major having received three battlefield commissions for valor he is recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor but refuses to be considered saying I was only doing my duty he undertakes two suicide missions one suicide mission he develops for himself at the Battle of Antietam the other which is one of the most magnificent moments you could imagine is 1864 the battle occurrence down in the Shenandoah Valley here this this 19 year old has developed into an astonishingly able young staff officer and he has ordered by his brigade commander on the morning on a September morning in in 1864 Jubal Early's Confederates break out of the forest and begin to collapse the Union left and his brigade commander in charge of five regiments realizes that the regiment to the extreme right of the line the 13th West Virginia has not received the order to make it orderly withdrawal before they before they're chopped up so he Florrick looks around sees McKinley his most able staff officer and orders McKinley to ride to the 13th West Virginia which means right in front of the Union line diagonally across the battlefield getting ever closer to the Confederates to get to the 13th West Virginia which is in an orchard and sheltered from the battle that's emerging around them and about ready to be cut off and shot to pieces and McKinley's tent-mate Russell hastens letter himself a general said we thought it was a suicide mission and McKinley gets on his horse and begins to ride in front of the Union line and all hell has broken loose cannon shells are going off musket fire everywhere he's going through you know a cloud of smoke on the Omni on the Battlefront and and and his men are watching it make this ride and thinking there that he's gonna die and at one point a cannon shell goes off right near him and Hastings says we thought he was dead and he said the lady rode out of the crowd cloud and gray smoke came the small brown horse with the erect Horseman McKinley makes it to the 13th West Virginia just in the nick of time the the startled commander of the of the 13th West Virginia says can we at least give them around or forms up the thirteenth West Virginia they walk out of this orchard that they're in the rebels are approaching them they stop they take one you know blast at the rebels decimating their front ranks and then orderly retreat McKinley rides around the back of the Union forces and and arrives back at the 'kathy commanders tent his brigade commanders dead he walks in his brigade commander turns around and as a guest Colonel Rutherford B Hayes says to my god I never expected to see you in this life again the 23rd I Ohio out of hundreds of northern regiments had two future presidents and one future Supreme Court justice in its ranks so by the time he's 20 this man whom very few of Americans including I have only the vaguest notion of William McKinley although all over the Midwest every County Courthouse has a statue to William McKinley because of the assassination he was so modest effect everywhere I go I was in Los Angeles so the mixen librarian guy comes over to me he says I wondered why I went to Nick to McKinley Elementary in in Southern California there was a generation long ago that really revered him and you're telling us why caryl one other spectrum on the spectrum presidents on one hand you've got Richard Nixon constantly calculating illa Dee's a formidable man in all kinds of ways no doubt but illa DS and then on the other hand you've got let's say FDR and Ronald Reagan and bolian to put you at ease immediately whereas William McKinley as a human figure what would it have been like to be as president well first of all he would have been closer to two to Reagan he was a he was but he was a little bit more introverted a lot more restrained and modest mm-hmm but he was beloved he was a man who made friends easily and kept them for a long time and he was he listened and when he spoke he was well prepared and knowledgeable on the subject and even as adversaries came to respect him enormous Lee his friends and his compete reott sin the Republican Party were you know he was a protege of the Republican leader on the Ways and Means Committee pig-iron Kelley of Pennsylvania and pig-iron was blown away with the first speech that McKinley gave on the floor and gave him increasing responsibilities as a young member but Thomas Brackett read the absurb ik Republican Speaker of the House once complained he said you know my adversaries in the house go at me tooth and nail but they always feel obliged to apologize to William before they call him names and you know this is an era of intense partisanship and one of the weird things about it that I found out is if you were if your party lost control of the House of Representatives and you had won a narrow re-election they kicked you out McKinley is first elected in 1876 he is reelected in 1880 comfortably in a swing district and in 1882 again and in his swing district wins re-election by seven votes and the Democrats taken retake control of the house and what happens is is that they kick him out they refused to seat him well they held a dance they see them provisionally but then the elections committee here is a challenge to him and after a reasonable period of time they kick him out and when they kick him out something unusual happens this is routinely done when the Republicans took control they looked for every Democrat particularly in the south that they could kick out on an election challenge when the Democrats took control they looked for every Republican particularly in the south and the Midwest that they could kick out that they came in anything close to and so they kick him out and when did they do seven Democrats break party ranks and among them are his leading opponents on the issue of protection in a very short time he's a junior member and he's in his third term he has become the one of the if not the leading spokesman for Republicans on economic policy and his greatest adversaries free trade Democrats from the South in particular stand up and as in mark of respect they know that he's gonna be tossed out but they want to show their respect for him and they vote for to retain him in the house and and that happened very early on in it and that of friendship and appreciation respect for him only grew over time so you just mentioned one of the big issues we've got a couple of shoes by the way Walter Russell Mead and reviewing you this this book this book praises you for taking on the Herculean task of explaining the meaning of tariffs and monetary controversies to 21st century readers all right Hercules I need you to take on the phone right now none of us so obviously this is this is film so as briefly as you can to make us understand what we need to understand the monetary issue in 1896 what difference does it make what did we had hard money or soft money what was hard money what was well hard money was money backed by gold right soft money was money backed by silver the difference being that the way that you defined the weight of a silver dollar it had 52 cents worth of silver in it a gold dollar the way you defined it in law had $1 worth of gold so what would happen is is that if you coined had unlimited coinage of silver if you had silver from anywhere in the United States or anywhere in the world all you had to do was show up at the mint they were obligated to buy it to pay you a dollar for 52 cents worth of silver which immediately was would inflate them the currency and then they would coin that into silver dollars and add them into conservations late the economy so it's a fight about the money supply that's right but there's a deeper battle in it and it's sort of hard for us to understand you know gold versus silver today but in his cross a gold speech William Jennings Bryan defines this in a way that might seem reasonably familiar to Americans at the heart of the battle over currency he said in his famous cross of gold speech is this there are two ideas of government the Republicans believe if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous then their prosperity will leak through on those below Democrats believe if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it this was the issue of the 1896 campaign were you going to favor economic policies that made the wealthy prosperous and trickled down to those lowest they were or were you favoring those to make the people at the bottom of the pyramid wealthy so their prosperity would move up would you would you favor the a system that award that rewarded the wealthy or would you rebalance a system by being concerned about the inequality of wealth between those at the top and those at the month okay we'll come to McKinley in a moment but first the second issue the second great issue of the day tariffs that is levying taxes well a tariff means on an export or an import but we're talking substantially about levying taxes on import well there's one fact that both both parties agreed upon tariffs were the principal source of revenue for the government this was long before the federal long before you know look this goes back to you know eighteen 1812 and Henry Clay and the American system is Speaker of the House he favors it jefferson is an advocate of protective tariffs Hamilton and Washington are advocates of protective tariffs Lincoln was a firm advocate but the both parties agreed tariffs were the principal source of revenue for the government democrats looked at that and said we want tariffs as low as possible in order to keep the federal government small they were the small government party of the time in addition they were anti tariffs because they said tariffs are not paid by the foreign and foreigners who send their goods here but by the Americans who buy them so does a tax upon the working people at the bottom of the of the other pyramid we're causing farmers and working-class people to pay more for crockery and ant farm implements than they would otherwise in order to fund the federal government Republicans looked at it and said this is a way to protect the nascent growing industries in America cheap foreign labor will will flood our country with Goods and with goods that are made by cheap foreigners and that will keep us from developing our domestic industries and then of course there were great many people in the Republican Party particularly industrialists who favored the tariff system because they could game it by keeping out foreign goods they could they could have higher profit margins McKinley was a moderate his reputation is as a high tariff man but he really was a moderate care of man he really believed his was about the working man so he wanted to protect their jobs and win as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee people would come before him and argue for higher tariffs his argument to them was don't tell me how much you need to make tell me what we need to do to protect the working man got it so Carl you're subtitled here is why the election of 1896 still matters so let me just while we're on trade just a little parenthesis here since 1980 at least since the election of Ronald Reagan at least the Republican Party the current Republican Party has been free trade the freer the trade the better and along comes Donald Trump and says no you're hurting the working man we need to raise tariffs it's 1896 all over again is Donald Trump reaching back to an honorable Republican tradition well he's reaching back to what the Republican Party used to stand for but let it be very careful of yes we have to be careful that's why matters because look that that's not the lesson the lesson of 1896 has to be understood in this way the politics of the American political system is broken before 1896 we have five presidential elections in a row in which nobody gets 50% of the vote we have two of those presidential elections in which somebody wins a majority in the electoral college that actually loses the popular vote we have a third election which somebody wins the popular wins the electoral college and a plurality of the popular vote by 7,000 votes over his Democratic opponent nationwide we have complete divided government twenty out of twenty four years is divided government two years a Republican president Republican House Republican Senate two years a democratic president Democratic House Democratic Senate and they hate each other the animosity in Congress is not merely partisan it's covered deeply by the Civil War in fact when the Democrats win control of the house for the first time since 1858 in 1874 it's called the victory of the brigadiers because of all the Confederate generals and officers who get elected to take back the the House of Representatives so it's a broken political system and both parties are right up against each other like this sort of like how we've been over most of the last several decades of constant turnovers in government and divided government and along comes McKinley modernizes the Republican Party dramatically changes it's coalition and then governs as he said he would and creates a dominant Republican majority for most of the next 36 years for most of the next 36 years Republicans controlled the Senate for 30 the White House for 28 the house for 26 we would have controlled it more at more years if we hadn't split in 1912 for four years we control more governors and state legislatures than we do for the next 90 years and most of the mayors and most of the towns above the mason-dixon line Boston New York Philadelphia Cleveland Cincinnati Chicago st. Louis San Francisco Los Angeles most of the mayors during these periods of time are Republicans and it's because McKinley is in is a political leader who sees that his party is at risk of being demographically overrun that the black Republican vote in the south is being wiped out so the Republicans have no chance of electoral votes in the south and few opportunities for votes in the House and the Senate in the entire south in 1896 there's one u.s. senator who's a Republican from the south Jeeter Pritchett of North Carolina and a handful of Republicans from upcountry districts and despite the fact that we have four states that are black majority and there are no election Republicans from those states and on the other hand he says my party is being wiped out in the north because it is the white anglo-saxon Protestant party the largest interest group in the country is a virulent ly anti-catholic anti-immigrant group called the American Protective Association so what I take from 1896 is not any particular issue the Republicans were for bigger government and higher tariffs Democrats for smaller government and and and lower tariffs our free trade Democrats were also in favor of repression of black voting rights in the south and the Republicans were in favor of support for them so the parties had different agendas back then what I take away is the activity of a visionary leader who conducts a campaign that is about bringing us together that you know William Jennings Bryan is saying if you're against me you were a tool of the of the magnets on Wall Street you were a you know are you are a pawn of the money power and McKinley says we're all in this together okay terrific and I've got a half a dozen questions one about ask about that well let's put Bryan Bryan deserves a I mentioned two of his own yeah and again I'm I'm reading your book here let me hold this up because it is a beautiful read and everybody ought to memorize this cover don't buy the thing available on Amazon available on Amazon I'm sure or if you're in dependable Barnes ha so the other fascinating parallel here that I'd like to out to the extent that it is a parallel how far can we push this is William Jennings Bryan who seems to come out of nowhere captures his party's nomination on the strength of one ruling speech and becomes as far as I can tell what we would recognize is the first modern populist now here's what I want to say am i stalking sense here you've got William Jennings Bryan hype list in 1896 he runs for president two more times defeated all three times but there's a movement there's something going on there you see it again in Henry Wallace who one of Franklin Roosevelt's vice presidents he runs for president himself on the Progressive Party ticket 1948 gets wiped out but he represents something and then maybe even George McGovern but of course the question I have is is there something that we can see in William Jennings Bryan that we also recognize in Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders or is that ridiculous well what do you think yes I know totally totally first of all you're absolutely right he wins the Democratic nomination on the basis of a speech a speech which itself as a result of seven accidents occurring in the days leading into it any one of which if any one of these seven moments some of which are trivial in nature had gone a different direction he would not have been able to give that speech and galvanized the convention for example one of the moments is is that is it on the first day of the convention he's considered to be temporary chairman but but people say you know he's not a delegate yet Nebraska's delegation is under is under a protest we've seeded provisionally the gold delegates from Nebraska he's a silver man he can't be considered for temporary chairman because he's not a delegate yet and if he had been he might have been elected temporary chairman and unable to give that speech the final accident occurs 15 minutes before he gives a speech and with that it without that accident taking place he would not have given that speech and might not have uttered those those famous lines of about to cross a gold but but yes look he represents two strains that we see in this election in my opinion in the kernel in the current election he is first of all an economic populist he is Bernie Sanders only at the age of 36 74 year old Bernie Sanders and 36 year-old William Jennings Bryan sound the same the man at the top is getting rich you're getting poor you know the system is rigged against you in in Brian's case it was the money power of Lombard Street the British of the British wall street and the and the idle capital holders of Wall Street remember we're a developing country in 1896 so we our economy goes I don't think about up Brazil India today we go only in 1896 because we got foreigners investing in our countries right but he is angry at that he also represented cultural populism which is not Bernie Sanders it's Donald Trump the America you see in front of us is changing dramatically all the old Khmer er touch tones are changing because we're becoming a rapidly industrializing country no longer agrarian in nature and we are to a rapidly diversifying population before 1896 actually before the civil war and shortly thereafter we were a country of immigrants but they came from familiar places right Germany the United Kingdom England Scotland Northern Ireland Northern Europe afterwards they now started coming from Central Europe and southern Europe and he is representing a strain that says you know what that that threatens us he eaten its cross a gold speech remember he he says if your great cities are burned to the ground and you leave our farms alone the cities will spring up again but if your if the if if our farms are raised those cities the grass will grow in their streets and when he leaves Lincoln Nebraska to go accept the Democratic nomination in in in New York City in early August he says at the at the train depot and Lincoln I go into the enemy's country meaning that you know the rural agrarian rest west and south versus the urban and industrial izing midwest and n east you close the book the triumph of William McKinley with a number of lessons now we don't have time again it's this is video but a couple of these lessons the triumph of William McKinley am quote McKinley conducted a campaign based on big issues while McKinley initially resisted tackling sound money and wanted to campaign exclusively on protection he came to understand that many Americans wanted to hear where he stood on both so my first reaction to that is you know enough in a certain sense this is touching it's reassuring what Carl is saying is that in 1896 democracy worked mm-hmm he stood for big issues and the country responded yeah today's big issues well I think one of the big issues is economic insecurity I don't think it's economic inequality I don't think people begrudge Bill Gates his fortune for having founded that company what I do think people our city are increasingly insecure about their place in the economy do I have the skills to compete well my kids have the skills to compete is the system rigged against me is-is-is why is it that I don't seem to be getting ahead when I'm working so hard what about my family security am I going to be able to provide for them are the social safety nets going to be there and and the idea of somebody stepping forward and saying we must all focus our energies and efforts to put in place the policies that will allow people who work hard to get ahead and for our economy to grow at a faster rate so the prosperity spreads to every corner in every community of America where we have people willing to dream big take the personal responsibility and work hard is is I think an important and compelling message as it was in 18 and that was essentially McKinley's message the issues of tension together he says and he says let us not pit capital and labor against each other neither capital nor labor can be prosperous without the other being prosper the triumph of William McKinley once again McKinley won because he broadened the electoral battlefield he brought in the electoral battlefield now you've consumed a professional that you are you actually mean the battlefield right he fought in more States than it would have been expected for a Republican to do is that correct yeah absolutely the battleground states in the gilded era are 5 Indiana Ohio New York New Jersey and Connecticut and McKinley fights in those states but he also fights in most importantly the border and upper South now he does not win in Tennessee and nor Carolina and Virginia but he carries and he does not win in Missouri because the Republicans split among themselves there's a battle between two very interesting characters one who is loyal to McKinley and the other one who claims to be loyal to McKinley but it's really out for himself the old man is his nickname but McKinley wins Kentucky which had not been won by the Republicans since the Civil War West Virginia which again had not been won since 1864 Maryland which had never gone Republican and Delaware and he then also holds the states in the Midwest which were in which he was losing in July and August in July and August he's losing Iowa McMillan the Iowa Chairman Republican chairman is conducting to canvass back then they didn't take polls instead they had their precinct chairman go to everybody in their precinct devine who they were for and report on every single voter in their precinct to the county chairman who bundled those together and reported them to the state chairman so McMillan says were losing 25 percent of our Republican farmers we're going to get beaten and beaten badly but McKinley then wins these battleground states in North Dakota and in Minnesota and Wisconsin in Illinois and Iowa and and thereby you know keeps a Brian from his majority and again he does it by taking on these big big big issues okay Carl a few final questions listen you write a column for The Wall Street Journal that's a deadline a week you're a commentator for Fox News that means they pay you to get you on the air when they want you and this coming year they're gonna want you a lot how do you how does your life work how do you hit fine time to research and write a really fine work of history that's not just me talking all the reviewers said whatever you think of Rove this is a good work of history well look at first of all I do this well I have 18 bins of archival material and I had some really great research assistants to help me pull it all together but I literally was and I have a huge I mean I was touting I read nothing for three years except Gilded Age memoirs and Gilded Age books but I was really I was so fascinated with this story that I was writing on airplanes and you know hotel rooms and you know Beach I'm sitting on the beach and I mean it was fat it was just fun to write because there's so many interesting characters and there's such an interesting drama and turned out not to be dry anonymous forces of culture and politics working their way through the American political system it's human beings making mistakes and making great judgments you know and you found these guys good company oh they're wonderfully McKinley you enjoyed mark Anna him payment well I mean he's not his campaign manager think of him as Don Evans to George W Bush the great friend of the candidate the campaign manager for the general election to the degree that there's a strategic jet brain its McKinley himself but the campaign managers a 31 year old kid really McKinley meets him when he is a young lawyer in Lincoln Nebraska in 1894 the kid actually comes to Columbus and says you knew my dad if you run for president I'm for you and then he meets him again in October of 1894 when he goes to Lincoln campaigning in the midterm elections and the kid is said I'm working on Wyoming in North Dakota and I got some guys lined up for you here and in Nebraska then the kid decides to move to Chicago at the age of 29 in January of 85 this is going to be the most important state in the Republican presidential battle and everybody knows that right from the beginning New York and Pennsylvania the two biggest delegations controlled by the combine the Republican Machine bosses then Ohio which McKinley is desperately trying to keep together and the next biggest delegation is going to be Illinois and everybody knows that may decide the contest so what does McKinley do he takes the 29 year old kid who's moved to Chicago and says you're in command of my campaign and the kid is such an incredible leader he has three people with his name Charles G Dawes oh of course okay and McKinley McKinley says Tim you're in charge he has two older Republicans who were lifelong Illinois Republican activists who are twice his age both of them Civil War generals they start calling him the general in a loving way because he is so meticulous so well organized tall thin redhead parts is here in the middle smokes a corncob pipe occasionally that he can never get right so as always it's always turned sideways and hot ashes a hot tobacco is falling on him his wit he swears he yells Hellfire and Maria and and the and these two generals become so so committed to him that that they start calling him the general any weds when he wins the Illinois Republican convention against the Chicago machine this this one of my Kimi's advisor says this is the Gettysburg of the contest and when he wins it McKinley sits down that night and writes him a letter which is how I really stumbled across him because it just it says something the letter says so much about him about how McKinley thought about him he writes him this letter saying in his beautiful handwriting I cannot close the day without sending you a message of appreciation congratulations there is nothing in all of this long campaign so signal and significant as the triumph that Springfield I cannot find words to express my admiration for your high qualities of leadership you have one exceptional honor you had long ago won my heart so firstly at water and then karl rove are working in the tradition of bright young men established by charles jean das who later goes on to win the nobel peace prize be the first director in the Bureau of the budget comptroller the currents at the age of 32 vice president United States and first ambassador first aid of the reconstruction Finance Corporation ambassador to Great Britain okay 29 one weekend okay Rove I'm not talking to you again until you win the know he's not happening listen one other question about that campaign Bryan barn storms rebelled not barn storming that wasn't the term in those days but he travels all around the country he speaks over a hundred times in a hundred different place over 600 times that I can find 600 times the chair context of 600 speeches fast on 18,000 miles on a train and until October 7th he's mostly getting up in the morning buying his own train ticket grabbing a meal at one that had a Depot stop hoping to god that somebody has a room for him that night when he arrives wherever he's arriving it's not until October 7th of the Democrats carry together enough money to put him in his own private railcar and by contrast your man William McKinley is staying right at home literally in his own home in Canton Ohio and giving speeches each day or nearly every day from his front porch to different groups that the Republican Party arranges to bring in and these speeches are carefully written thoughtful tailored to each group so it's not as if it's not like a stump speech that a candidate would give today where well you know I'm an old speech writer you give essentially the same speech because that's all the candidate can keep in his mind three and then you change the thank the people you think no no no these are quite different speeches so here's the question that campaign was conducted largely through the medium of print mm-hmm McKinley speeches are carefully written to be heard surely by his audience but to be read in newspapers across the country to be reprinted and mailed one of the things I found so striking is that there are literally millions of pieces of mail that are mailed to Republican prospects for the Republican voters is that gone can you have that kind of intellectual caliber right through McKinley at least really right through the 30s you can still say that speeches were written to be read that the American voter remained literate is that gone you know I know I don't think so I think I think you'd have to to adopt the fact that today you can't stay in one place but you could do what McKinley did which is you could you know McKinley took great interest in his speeches and a great interest in you could have a candidate who loose around the country who has a common theme but in front of different audiences sports that common theme with different with different ways of expression but but look it is a different time but I think the fact that he had a unifying positive message consistently through those speeches and he and he won the reasons he stays in Canton Ohio as he says I need to think before I talk and he didn't want to go on the road he'd been on the road in 1894 he'd been on the road in 1890 in the midterm elections he'd barnstormed the country before he knew it and he he knew what the drain was on him and he would rather I mean he this is not like it was a light load I mean some days he speaks to he gives 16 speeches in a day and some of the weekends there are a hundred and fifty thousand people who parade through Canton Ohio and and you're right each one of them is methodically prepared but he to end today he could think about this if he were forgiving not 16 but let's say five or six speeches in a day he could dominate several news periods during that day by saying something slightly different which is what I did right now if the audience's are diverse this is where what was smart they did they invited lots of different kinds of people I mean not typical Republicans they had Bohemian beer beer mice had federate veterans well this is one of my magnificent moments October 9th 1896 no Republican presidential candidate has ever met with an organized group of confederate veterans no republican president has met with a Confederate Veterans and McKinley invites through the auspices of current of Reverend Funkhouser of Harrisonburg Virginia invites two thousand Confederate veterans to come to Kent and they start arriving for tea train car loads of the veterans and their their spouses they get off of the train they're met by the wives of the general that the Grand Army the Republic the northern veterans group and an honor guard from a ban an honor guard and an unmanned escort honored escort they're presented a beautiful silk banner to commemorate their day they're each given a pocketknife with a favorite phrase of McKinley's drawn from Washington's farewell address no East no West no North nor South but a common country they're taken to the to the Tabernacle fed lunch some of their compatriots are arriving late because their train was delayed they wait until they arrive then they form up Union veterans and confederate veterans alike in the courthouse square and led by flags and banners and and bands they march up they march out of the square and march up North Market Street towards McKinley's home the streets are lined with thousands upon thousands of people singing patriotic songs many of them openly weeping at this vision of blue and grey together they arrive in front of McKinley's house McKinley emerges and I can tell from reading the speeches what it you know you can tell the ones that are formulaic you can show also the ones that are deeply personal and this is deeply personal in short he says sectionalism was surrendered at Appomattox not the Confederacy not this or that but sectionalism the idea that we were not one together he says if we're ever forced to fight again and God forbid that we are we will fight together as brothers under a common flag and I mean people are weeping openly at this site 2,000 veterans stand up march across walk across his front porch shake the majors hand they're fed dinner they then conduct until midnight a concert by that goodbye the Confederate bands in the Courthouse Square before they are escorted to the Train midnight to return to Virginia and this has never happened in American politics before and you can just imagine the coverage around the country and how this this galvanized the country because here's a man saying we're all in this together at the same time that the populist is saying it's us versus them it's us versus the the bad guys you know where the were the good guys there's nothing but evil on the other side Carl once again last couple questions for you the triumph of lee mckinley quote the bigger stronger electoral coalition the mckinley built for his party endured for nearly four decades making the period between 1896 and 1932 a time of GOP dominance the republican party was no longer a shrinking and beleaguered political organization composed largely of white anglo-saxon Protestants instead it was a frothy diverse coalition of owners and workers longtime Americans and new citizens lifetime Republicans and fresh converts drawn together by common beliefs and allegiances now that is not just as extinct summary of McKinley's accomplishment that is a summary of the Republican dream at least since 1980 how can we make it permanent how can Republicans continue to reach out and yet here we are in 2016 and boy is there a lot about the GOP that still seems to be in a defensive Crouch why is this so hard you made no secret that during eight years of george w bush's presidency trying to reach out trying to broaden trying to recreate the McKinley accomplishment why is this so hard well for us it was hard because we faced the war 9/11 that's just so so many changes made it hard I mean we had that kind of coalition in the 2004 election remember we're grossly outspent in 2004 we're in the middle of an unpopular war and yet Bush gets reelected by a comfortable margin and gets 44% of the latinos erases the gender gap 44% of Latino Latinos in 2004 erases the gender gap there is no gender gap we get the soccer moms to come across and he gets the highest percentage of of of the Jewish vote since Ronald Reagan 1984 and we essentially you know win reelection by Reif by reframing the Republican Party and growing it but the war was unpopular and you know I have the South Carolina primary and this is Marco Rubio Cuban American young standing next to nikki Haley the daughter of immigrants from India standing next to Tim Scott african-american u.s. senator son of a single mom single welfare mom what a picture that was and that's what the Republican Party needs to aim for and that's what McKinley aimed for well by bringing all those diverse groups to Canton Ohio he was signaling that the Republican Party was open to everyone when he becomes the first Republican presidential candidate to ever be endorsed by openly by a member of the Catholic hierarchy it is like a bomb going off when the Bishop of st. Paul Minnesota Bishop Ireland endorses him in an open public letter in early October it is like jaw-dropping because what this says to Catholics who are increasingly Democrat and are feeling estranged from the Republican Party that it says this guy accepts us and he's open to us and and but look not only did he run this way this is a book in about an election he also governed that way he carried that the the working man's vote the laborer vote which was a swing vote in 1896 he carries it overwhelming that carries the city of New York he carries the factory districts of Boston they're the stockyards of Chicago he wins the industrial America and then when he becomes president his economic policies helped the country to return to prosperity after the deepest depression that we have until the Great Depression and as a result he locks in working-class people working-class people saying the Republican Party stands for me and they say it for the next thirty some-odd year this may be something of a reach but I can't help wondering how would McKinley what's the right lesson to draw from his from his approach his constant embrace of more and more groups his defense of the working man what lesson can we draw from that for the McKinley I beg your pardon for the Scalia vacancy Majority Leader Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the very day of Justice McKinley's death said nothing doing we're not even going to consider a nominee by the current president this is shut down until after the next presidential election which may be right on in all kinds of ways but it looks like a defensive Crouch well it does I don't think there's any comparable item here the Democrats were incidentally obstructionists their of their own during the Gilded Age I mean 1891 they literally say the House of Representatives now taken over controlled by Republicans will not be allowed to consider a single bill they'll refuse to answer the roll call so that House Republicans can't take that take up a single measure so that was hardball that was hardball and in fact one of the Democrats stands up William Henry Hattie Martin a Texas six foot six inches tall thin as a rail mean as a snake fought the entire Civil War the hoods Brigade he points his finger at at Reid who himself is pretty big Reid 6-3 300 pounds looks like a bowling pin with a walrus mustache and Martin points his finger at him it says if any member will order me to remove this dictator from his position of power upon the podium I will do so by force and and run Reid says the Honorable gentleman from Texas is out of order and moves on the next day howdy Martin shows up takes a position on the floor right in front of read during the opening of the three-month long debate on whether or not he had the authority to do what he did and pulls out a 16 inch long bowie knife and begins to methodically sharpen it on his boots ol to Menace Reid now I don't remember Nancy Pelosi doing that in 2011 but I may have missed them out but that's how and so I thought all it takes was a guy so do you have advice on how ya look I do think that they need to say American we're in this together this decisions best left to the next president Republican or Democrat alike we will we will hear the nomination you know that that could be their choice but we do not think we think the country's unity demands that the next president we're too divided over this our country is too concerned about the executive overreach in this a decision left for the for the best interest of our country this is a decision left best to the next Prez Republican or Democrat we have not done this in a hundred years in almost 100 years it was 80 years ago that we settled the nomination in the middle of of a presidential election and it is better for our country if we love our country let us do the best thing for our country and leave this for the next president for him or her to decide Carl last question Clare Boothe Luce used to say that history had time to give even the greatest men just a single sentence Lincoln freed the slaves Churchill save Britain from Hitler what's one sentence that history will give William McKinley William McKinley changed American politics for the better by modernizing his party and confronting the worst elements of politics to bring the country together Karl Rove author of the triumph of William McKinley why the election of 1896 still matters thanks so much thank you I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge in the Hoover Institution thank you for joining us

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 20,647

Keywords: Election, Civil War, 1896, McKinley, Rove, Tariffs, President

Id: So2gCW659SE

Length: 46min 2sec (2762 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2016