Building a future US Navy from 1898 starts ashore

How should someone given control of the US Navy in 1898 build for the next thirty years?

Build the political, industrial, logistical, and training foundation first, then expand a balanced fleet as technology and capacity mature.

The answer begins with the political coalition and industrial capacity needed to sustain naval expansion, even if that means working with objectionable but influential legislators. Shipyards, repair capacity, education, fuel, and a professional personnel pipeline determine what later fleets can actually build and operate. Spreading yards, foundries, and employment across congressional constituencies would also make a destructive construction holiday politically harder to impose. The central lesson is that foreknowledge of future war does not remove the need to create institutions in the order that money, technology, and Congress permit.