Considering that most of his term went straight to Teddy Roosevelt, it's interesting to look at McKinley's roadmap for those first four Roosevelt years. Oddly enough, considering how knee-deep in corruption the Roosevelt administration spent its days, McKinley spent his first speech waving the flag and declaring that the problems that had plagued America for the past four years had, fortunately, been solved.

He paid particular attention to the fact that the Spanish-American war (which he assures us he never wanted to begin with) had been decisively won, leaving America in the best position to give Cuba and the Philippines America's favorite party favor: democracy.

By his calculus, the US was shiny, neat, and able to play big brother in the Western Hemisphere. While TR would pick up where McKinley left off in foreign affairs, he knew that America's domestic affairs were far from being sorted. While McKinley was happy so long as the economy was booming, Teddy Roosevelt cared a lot more about the corners businesses' cut on the way to prosperity.