ABSTRACT
For much of the twentieth century, Mark Hanna, the wealthy Cleveland businessman and Republican boss, was portrayed as a nasty fellow, as greedy, tough, and ruthless. Although very successful in business, his most important achievement was in politics—he “made” William McKinley president of the United States. This chapter considers four long-standing misrepresentations. It reviews first the role of Hanna and his achievements. It then does the same for McKinley. The third, a related matter, is the use of a deprecatory statement about McKinley attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. The statement was frequently cited as providing “definitive” support for that widely accepted misreading. The fourth misrepresentation involves Andrew Carnegie, once described as the world’s richest man. The question to be considered is his power and influence. The long-standing misrepresentation of the Hanna-McKinley relationship continued to appear, one recent account reporting that “Karl Rove was frequently referred to in the press as a modern-day Hanna doppelganger who controlled George W. Bush.”
