This was the beginning of his political career. After getting local coal miner acquitted of rioting, this won him the respect of blue-collar workers for years to come. With these new votes he won the Republican nomination for Ohio’s congressional seat. At the same time, Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated for president and McKinley, while running his own congressional campaign, also campaigned for Hayes. Although they both won, McKinley’s pay while holding a seat in Congress was practically cut in half from his job as a lawyer. During his fourteen years in office, “he served as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and became known as a proponent of economic protectionism, in the form of high tariffs on imported goods.” …show more content…
He was extremely well-liked and the people did appreciate a president finally listening to them. McKinley is often overshadowed by his successor, Theodore Roosevelt. Yet it seems that McKinley did more for American foreign policy in his five years as president, than most can do in eight. During his tenure as President, he acquired new territories, fought and won a war against a European power, and recovered from the “Panic of 1893.” His political skills made him able to make the right decisions, even if they were not popular. All of this was at the same time he was taking care of his ill wife. William McKinley worked well as a president, even though he did not reinvent the presidency, and he was taken from the world much too