# 1900 Presidential Election The McKinley-Bryan rematch, with the addition of [[Theodore Roosevelt]] as McKinley's new running mate — a placement engineered by Republican machine politicians who wanted Roosevelt out of New York and away from policy influence. [[Mark Hanna]] famously asked his fellow Republicans, "Don't any of you realize there's only one life between this madman and the Presidency?" Less than a year after the inauguration, McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt was President. McKinley won the rematch decisively — 292 to 155 electoral votes, 51.6% to 45.5% in the popular vote. The election was fought principally over the **annexation of the Philippines** and the broader question of American overseas empire after the [[Spanish-American War]]. McKinley defended imperialism as the responsibility of a great power; Bryan ran on an explicitly anti-imperialist platform, calling the Philippine occupation a betrayal of American founding principles. Bryan also continued to advocate for free silver, despite the 1900 [[Gold Standard]] Act having settled the currency question in March of that year. ## Result - **[[William McKinley]]** (Republican) — 292 electoral votes, 51.6% popular - **[[William Jennings Bryan]]** (Democrat) — 155 electoral votes, 45.5% popular - Eugene V. Debs (Socialist) — 0 electoral votes, 0.6% popular - Total: 447 electoral votes ## Right-wing relevance The 1900 election's right-wing relevance is twofold. First, it ratified American overseas empire as a permanent feature of national policy — the operational precedent that runs forward through the Theodore Roosevelt Corollary, the Wilson WWI intervention, the post-WWII permanent military-industrial complex, the Cold War interventions, and contemporary anti-China hawkishness. Second, it produced the Roosevelt vice presidency that would, via assassination, install the most consequentially Progressive-Era president — restructuring the Republican Party away from the McKinley-Hanna corporate-imperial formula and toward the trust-busting regulatory-state formula. ## Connections - [[William McKinley]] — Reelected; assassinated 10 months into second term. - [[William Jennings Bryan]] — Lost a second time; would run again in 1908. - [[Theodore Roosevelt]] — New VP; ascended to presidency on McKinley's death. ---