William McKinley was both a great and a tragic American story. Shortly after the end of the Spanish-American War, when asked about his potential legacy, McKinley commented to his personal secretary, George Cortelyou: “That’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime – to set an example, and when he’s dead, to be an inspiration for history.” McKinley’s primary inspiration may have been unintended, but he was the first man to hold the office of President of the United States to execute an expansionist foreign policy etched in shades of imperialism. McKinley positioned American expansionism as “benevolent assimilation” – liberators, not oppressors – but the subjects of these invasions, who had little choice in the matter, struggled as the U.S.-controlled “period of liberation” stretched on for decades. In this regard, he was, in fact, an inspiration for history. Het set a precedent, as the war with Spain in 1898 was hardly the last time American might would be used to liberate other lands that were in the midst of various forms of civil war, revolution, or strains of instability. Watchwords of altruistic intent were often the public foundation for future American actions in places like Panama and Nicaragua in Central America, as well as Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, each leading to lengthy occupations that featured U.S. control over the host government and population. Fast forward to the early days of the 21st Century, and the theme was unveiled again by President George W. Bush after military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. In remarks at the White House in December 2002, Bush proudly proclaimed, “We’ll do everything we can to remind people that we’ve never been a nation of conquerors; we’re a nation of liberators.” This historical reference had indeed been inspired by McKinley, who had first declared a century before while fighting an insurrection and imposing a new form of government on the people of the Philippines and Cuba, “The liberators will never become the oppressors.” Moreover, when thousands of Iraqis took up arms in an insurgency against the Americans, President Bush declared, “We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq and pay a bitter cost of casualties and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins.” These sentiments were nearly identical to President McKinley’s remarks to the Home Market Club in 1899, in which he directly addressed Emilio Aguinaldo and his Filipino insurrectionists by declaring it was not “a good time for the liberator to submit important questions concerning liberty and government to the liberated while they are engaged in shooting down their rescuers.” McKinley and Bush were playing from the same American playbook, which was forced on these conquered native residents whether they wanted it or not. It was a fitting touch that the Bush administration housed enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the naval base that the Americans still maintained after forcing the Cubans to accept its establishment a century before in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. It would be unfair to claim that imperialism was McKinley’s sole gift for posterity. But it would be equally unfair to deny the existence of similar modern-day imperialistic actions, and eerily similar statements of magnanimous justification, that all trace their roots to the transformational presidency of William McKinley.