pplpod Episode 65 follows William McKinley from Civil War brevet major to tariff tactician, Ohio governor, and 25th President steering America into a new century. We trace the 1896 “Front Porch” campaign with Mark Hanna’s modern fundraising, the gold-versus-silver clash that birthed the Gold Standard Act, and a protective-tariff philosophy refined from the McKinley Tariff to the Dingley Act. Then the inflection point: the Spanish–American War—Cuba’s crisis, the Maine’s explosion, swift victories in the Caribbean and Pacific—and the postwar map that brought Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines under U.S. control, alongside the annexation of Hawaii and an Open Door stance in China. We close with the 1900 reelection, McKinley’s 1901 assassination, and Theodore Roosevelt’s sudden rise—how a measured conservative became the hinge between the Gilded Age and a global, modern United States.

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