Trump’s Favourite President

At least it wasn't renamed "Mount Trump."

Last Monday was Donald Trump’s first day in office as President and he raced to issue a series of “executive orders”.  One would imagine that these reflected his highest priorities as well as those of the people who elected him.  And one of the very first ones was entitled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” It read in part:

President William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, heroically led our Nation to victory in the Spanish-American War. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed rapid economic growth and prosperity, including an expansion of territorial gains for the Nation. President McKinley championed tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive U.S. industrialization and global reach to new heights.

The Executive Order renamed America’s highest mountain to “Mount McKinley.” And it’s obvious why.  Trump’s description of the man’s achievements show how he hopes to be remembered.  Maybe some day a mountain might be named after him.  At the very least, he expects to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

But Trump’s Executive Order did more than list all of McKinley’s achievements.  He also mentioned his death.  McKinley, Trump said,  “was tragically assassinated in an attack on our Nation’s values and our success.”

Trump’s Executive Order failed to mention who assassinated McKinley and why.  Nor did he mention what came next.

The assassin was Leon Czolgosz, a 28-year-old who had very recently become an anarchist.  He was arrested at the scene, swiftly tried and sentenced to death by electrocution.  His final words were: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people — the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.”

Czolgosz learned that the anarchists — unlike socialists — had no problem with political assassinations.  After a short time as a member of a small socialist group, he met up with Emma Goldman — who later wrote a remarkable article defending the assassination of McKinley.  Goldman’s article was widely criticised by socialists and others on the left.

The result of Czolgosz’s act was that McKinley’s Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became President and a new era in American politics began.  It became known as the Progressive Era and was marked by extensive social reforms.  Within a few years, a powerful Left emerged in the country, led by the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs.  All this would probably have happened even if McKinley had lived.  As for the assassin, had Czolgosz not fired the fatal shot, he might well have found a home in that movement.

The assassin, new to the anarchist movement and quite naive, was nevertheless expressing widespread concern about a country with extremes of wealth and poverty at home while pursuing an imperialist foreign policy.  Sound familiar?

A century later, the issues that motivated so many working class people to vote for Trump are in some cases genuine issues — the decline of American industry, the growth of inequality, and a sense that privileged elites had all the power.  This echoes the situation America faced 125 years ago.

But the solution offered by McKinley and the Republicans did not impress voters for very long.  The rise of the Socialist Party was one result of the McKinley Republicans’ failure to deliver.

Donald Trump will not be president four years from now, and his party could well lose the midterm elections which are just 21 months away.  That will happen only  if the Democrats are open to the radical policies advocated by Bernie Sanders and others on the party’s Left.

If a new Democratic president is inaugurated in 2029, maybe his first act in office should be to rename Mount McKinley yet again.  Perhaps a return to the traditional name of Denali would work.  But Mount Debs has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?


This article appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.