Letter to the editor: American history lesson in order
To the editor:
As part of his effort to return America to the 19th century, Donald J. Trump celebrated a former president in his inaugural address with a shallowness of historical knowledge that would be shocking coming from most anyone else. “A short time from now,” said Trump on Jan. 20, “. . . we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley [Denali], where it should be and where it belongs. … President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent — he was a natural businessman — and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama.”
In reality, of course, after years of negotiation by both Republican and Democratic administrations, two canal treaties were ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1978, and control of the canal itself passed to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999.
Clearly, Trump also praised McKinley’s vice president and successor, Theodore Roosevelt, seemingly ignorant of the fact that Roosevelt was not a McKinley “loyalist” and became a champion of many of the Progressive Era reforms that Trump and company have targeted for elimination. During the early 20th century, Roosevelt and his progressive Republican supporters battled spoilsmen and sought tough enforcement of civil service laws, fought for the graduated income tax, and championed pure food and drug regulations, among other “big government” programs regulating big business and benefiting the “common” working man and woman.
Virgil W. Dean,
Lawrence