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The William Howard Taft Presidency
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#27 (US) WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT (PRESIDENT) 1909 - 1913
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Thanks for the post, Bentley. The following looks like a good read, written by one of the best in the field:
by Lewis L. Gould
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This appears to highlight his term on the US Supreme Court which was post-Presidency. 
William Howard Taft, the President Who Became Chief Justice,by William. Severn
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Yes, thank you indeed. There are very, very few books that cover just this period of his life, sadly. It seems Taft really only wanted to be a judge and not president. Evidently, his wife steered him toward politics.
Here is the other:
by Alpheus Thomas MasonHere is the Univ Kansas Press on his presidency:
by Paolo Enrico ColettaPringle is a historian that focused on this time period, and here is his 2 volume on Taft:
Henry F. PringlePublisher info:
It is not improbably that William Howard Taft would disapprove of certain parts of this biography. Outwardly, he was the soul of decorum; too much so, perhaps, for his own good. Beneath the decorum, however, was a man with very pronounced views. He had emphatic opinions about people as well as issues and these opinions were often set forth in his private letters. “Confidential and personal” was the warning on many of his communications. Taft would have been scandalized had they been published while he was alive.
This life of Taft is authorized but not official. The distinction is vital. The author was given unrestricted access to all the hundreds of thousands of letters in the Taft collection at the Library of Congress and to all other available material. This was due entirely to the very unusual position taken by Robert, Charles and Helen Taft (Mrs. Frederick J Manning). They are the owners of their father’s papers and are his literary executors. They permitted the author to wander at will through the enormous treasure house which the collection is. He could quote as he pleased. He could draw what judgments he liked. The sole restriction was the logical one against involving the Taft estate in a libel suit. This book, then, has no trace of official, family endorsement. The literary executors did not even ready the manuscript in its present, final, revised form. (From Pringle’s foreword, continued in volume two.)
Here is one that covers his personal and political life:
by Judith Icke Anderson
Great Elizabeth, thanks so much! I haven't heard about this one.
Donald F. AndersonMy library shows a subtitle
William Howard Taft: a conservative's conception of the Presidency
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: " Donald F. AndersonMy library shows a subtitle
William Howard Taft: a conservative's conception of the Presidency"
Helpful; it would be an interesting read, possibly more favorable.
More additions, yay! I become more intrigued about him with everything I learn, and admittedly some of it has been not so positive. Tim Egan paints a fairly unflattering picture of him in this book, which covers the west's largest forest fire ever and occured on his watch. The book covers far more info on TR, but was still a great read and covers some info on Taft as well. It does feed into the notion that Taft was more interested in the US Supreme Court than the Presidency, which I find all the more intriguing because I think he was the only one to have made that leap.
by
Timothy Egan
Alisa wrote: "More additions, yay! I become more intrigued about him with everything I learn, and admittedly some of it has been not so positive. Tim Egan paints a fairly unflattering picture of him in this bo..."Thanks, Alisa, it looks like a good book. From what I have read, his wife, Helen, was a pushing him into politics and the presidency. TR probably helped too. I wonder if he ate food to compensate for his unhappiness...just a wild idea.
He may have. Egan seems to suggest the more miserable he was the bigger he grew. One could preceed the other, just not sure in what order.
Bryan wrote: "Alisa wrote: "More additions, yay! I become more intrigued about him with everything I learn, and admittedly some of it has been not so positive. Tim Egan paints a fairly unflattering picture of ..."It was a great book, a real page turner and story well told.
Here is a new book I got this year:
by Lewis L. GouldIt is part of the University of Kansas Press series, although I thought they covered it with another writer. Odd.
Product info:
The only president to later serve as chief justice of the United States, William Howard Taft remarked in the 1920s that "I don't remember that I ever was President." Historians have agreed, and Taft is usually portrayed, when written about at all, as nothing more than a failed chief executive. In this provocative new study, the first treatment of the Taft presidency in four decades, Lewis L. Gould presents a compelling assessment of Taft's accomplishments and setbacks in office. Rich in human interest and fresh analysis of the events of Taft's four years in Washington, Gould's book shows why Taft's presidency is very much worth remembering on its own terms.
Gould argues that Taft wanted to be president and had an ambitious agenda when he took power in March 1909. Approaching his duties more as a judge than as a charismatic executive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft soon found himself out of step with public opinion. Gould shows how the Payne-Aldrich Tariff and the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy squandered Taft's political capital and prepared the ground for Democratic victories in the elections of 1910 and 1912. His seamless narrative provides innovative treatments of these crucial episodes to make Taft's presidency more understandable than in any previous account. On Canadian Reciprocity, Dollar Diplomacy, and international arbitration, Gould's well-researched work goes beyond earlier stale clichés about Taft's administration to link his tenure to the evolution of the modern presidency. Taft emerges as a hard-working but flawed executive who lacked the excitement of Theodore Roosevelt or the inspiration of Woodrow Wilson.
The break with Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 doomed the Taft presidency, and Gould supplies an evenhanded analysis of the erosion of their once warm friendship. At bottom, the two men clashed about the nature of presidential power, and Gould traces with insight how this personal and ideological rupture influenced the future of the Republican party and the course of American politics. In Gould's skilled hands, this neglected presidency again comes alive. Leaving the White House in 1913, Taft wrote that "the people of the United States did not owe me another election." What his presidency deserved is the lively and wise appraisal of his record in office contained in this superb book.
Here is a book on Taft's view on foreign policy:
by David Henry BurtonProduct info:
This book is a study of the internationalism of William Howard Taft. In the months after war broke out in 1914, Taft was second only to Woodrow Wilson in his awareness of the need to preserve the peace of the world through a new version of international organization. Built upon a synthetic interpretation of Taft's foreign policy ideas and initiatives, the book encompasses the whole of his public career as a statesman, from his years as civil governor of the Philippines through his tenure as chief justice of the Supreme Court. During those years, he moved from a basic belief in the theory and practice of balance of power to the application of dollar diplomacy. In response to the calamity of World War I, Taft came to recognize that world peace must be based upon a combination of idealism and realism, of high-minded principles placed and kept in effect by force, deliberately chosen and carefully applied.
If you ever need to look at the primary sources, the Ohio University Press has been putting them together in a great way:
by
William Howard Taft
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
by
Doris Kearns GoodwinSynopsis
After Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin wields her magic on another larger-than-life president, and another momentous and raucous American time period as she brings Theodore Roosevelt, the muckraking journalists, and the Progressive Era to life.
As she focused on the relationship between Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Lincoln and his Team, Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. With the help of the “muckraking” press—including legendary journalists Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, William Allen White, and editor Sam McClure—Roosevelt had wielded the Bully Pulpit to challenge and triumph over abusive monopolies, political bosses, and corrupting money brokers. Roosevelt led a revolution that he bequeathed to Taft only to see it compromised as Taft surrendered to money men and big business. The rupture between the two led Roosevelt to run against Taft for president, an ultimately futile race that resulted in the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the diminishment of Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive wing of the Republican Party.
Like Goodwin’s chronicles of the Civil War and the Great Depression, The Bully Pulpit describes a time in our history that enlightened and changed the country, ushered in the modern age, and produced some unforgettable men and women.
William Howard Taft and the First Motoring Presidency 1909-1913
Michael L. BromleySynopsis
William Howard Taft declared, "I am sure the automobile coming in as a toy of the wealthier class is going to prove the most useful of them all to all classes, rich and poor." Unlike his predecessors, who made public their disdain for the automobile, Taft saw the automobile industry as a great source of wealth for this country. The first president to acquire a car in office (Congress granted him three automobiles), Taft is responsible for there being a White House garage in 1909. This is a meticulously researched reappraisal of the oft-maligned Taft presidency focusing particularly on his cars, his relationship to the automobile and the role of the automobile in the politics of his day. Appendices provide information on the White House garage and stable, Taft's speech to the Automobile Club of America and a glossary of terms and names.
Alisa wrote: " The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of JournalismJust got that for Christmas. I'm reminded a lot of when I got Team of Rivals several years before. This one should be just as good.
by
Doris Kearns Goodwin
I got this book for Christmas, too, Greg, and I am on chapter two.I am really happy that someone of this stature is writing about Taft. I would love to see a cradle to grave biography of him come out.
by
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Yeah, all I ever really heard about him while in school was that he was big, and of course teachers could always get a laugh out of the bathtub story.I'm just on chapter 1, but I can't help but feel here's a guy that should never have been president, should have just gone right to the Supreme Court, which is what he always wanted.
Still, I do get the sense as well that he was an able president. I really need to get cracking on this book!
Indeed, Greg, his father liked being a judge, so it seems he got that same sense, too.
I just started The BULLY PULPIT by Goodwin. I love TR and look forward to reading more about the split between TR and TAFT.
Great, TH, let us know how it goes. The two of them seem very different people.Don't forget to cite:
by
Doris Kearns Goodwin
William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative
by Jonathan Lurie (no photo)Synopsis:
In this new biographical study of the only American ever to have been both President and Chief Justice of the United States, Jonathan Lurie reassesses William Howard Taft's multiple careers, which culminated in Taft's election to the presidency in 1908 as the chosen successor to Theodore Roosevelt. By 1912, however, the relationship between Taft and Roosevelt had ruptured. Lurie reexamines the Taft-Roosevelt friendship and concludes that it rested on flimsy ground. He also places Taft in a progressive context, taking Taft's own self-description as a believer in progressive conservatism as the starting point. At the end of his biography, Lurie concludes that this label is accurate when applied to Taft.
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Release date: November 3, 2014
Chief Executive to Chief Justice: Taft Betwixt the White House and Supreme Court
by Lewis L. Gould (no photo)Synopsis:
As our 27th president from 1909 to 1913, and then as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930, William Howard Taft was the only man ever to lead two of America's three governing branches. But between these two well-documented periods in office, there lies an eight-year patch of largely unexplored political wilderness. It was during this time, after all, that Taft somehow managed to rise from his ignominious defeat by both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election to achieve his lifelong goal of becoming chief justice.
In the first in-depth look at this period in Taft's singular career, eminent presidential historian Lewis L. Gould reveals how a man often derided for his lack of political acumen made his way through the hazards of Republican affairs to gain his objective. In the years between the presidency and the Supreme Court Taft was, as one commentator observed, "the greatest of globe trotters for humanity." Gould tracks him as he crisscrosses the country from 1913 through the summer of 1921, the inveterate traveler reinventing himself as an elder Republican statesman with no visible political ambition beyond informing and serving the public. Taft was, however, working the long game, serving on the National War Labor Board, fighting for the League of Nations, teaching law and constitutional history at Yale, making up his differences with Roosevelt, all while negotiating the Republican Party's antipathy and his own intense dislike of Woodrow Wilson, whose wartime policies and battle for the league he was bound to support. Throughout, his judicial ambition shaped his actions, with surprising adroitness.
This account of Taft's journey from the White House to the Supreme Court fills a large gap in our understanding of an important American politician and jurist. It also discloses how intricate and complicated public affairs had become during the era of World War I and its aftermath, an era in which William Howard Taft, as a shrewd commentator on the political scene, a resourceful practitioner of party politics, and a man of consummate ambition, made a significant and lasting mark.
Thanks, Jerome, this should be good.
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by Lewis L. Gould (no photo)Synopsis:
In this fascinating study, Lewis L. Gould has brought a shadowy first lady into the light and restored her to a rightful place as a patron of music. Helen Herron Taft came to the White House intent on establishing Washington, D.C., as the nation's cultural capital. A stroke in May 1909 made her a semi-invalid, impaired her speech, and disrupted her agenda. Historians have written her off as a shrewish figure who pushed her portly husband into the presidency.
Gould challenges this outdated narrative with new information on Helen Taft's campaign to bring the best of classical music to the White House during her four years. He draws on prodigious research about the musicians who performed there--including violinist Fritz Kreisler, pianist Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, and contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink, and reveals for the first time how Nellie Taft enlisted a diverse array of top-notch artists for her musicales, recitals, and social events. The result is a major contribution to a better understanding of the White House as a cultural center at the turn of the last century.
Beyond her musical agenda, Helen Taft enhanced the appearance of Washington with the planting of the cherry trees from Japan that now bloom each spring. Gould also delves with insight into Mrs. Taft's role in the politics of her husband's administration. He provides the most complete recounting into her part in the dismissal of Henry White as ambassador to France, a key moment in the emergence of her husband's split with Theodore Roosevelt. He discusses the nature of her stroke, based on letters from her husband and her doctors, and reveals how Mrs. Taft, her daughter Helen, and the journalist Eleanor Egan crafted the first ever memoir of any first lady. Drawing on memoirs and manuscripts not used before, Gould re-creates memorable occasions at the Taft White House, when dramatist Ruth Draper delivered her monologues, Charles Coburn staged Shakespeare on the White House lawn, and Lady Augusta Gregory of the Irish Players dropped by.
Gould's path-breaking study of Helen Taft is a significant addition to the literature on first ladies and a tribute to a complex and brave woman who overcame illness and adversity to leave her own special imprint on the history of the White House.
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by Carl Sferrazza Anthony (no photo)Synopsis:
On the morning of William Howard Taft's inauguration, Nellie Taft publicly expressed that theirs would be a joint presidency by shattering precedent and demanding that she ride alongside her husband down Pennsylvania Avenue, a tradition previously held for the outgoing president. In an era before Eleanor Roosevelt, this progressive First Lady was an advocate for higher education and partial suffrage for women, and initiated legislation to improve working conditions for federal employees. She smoked, drank, and gambled without regard to societal judgment, and she freely broke racial and class boundaries.
Drawing from previously unpublished diaries, a lifetime of love letters between Will and Nellie, and detailed family correspondence and recollections, critically acclaimed presidential family historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony develops a riveting portrait of Nellie Taft as one of the strongest links in the series of women -- from Abigail Adams to Hillary Rodham Clinton -- often critically declared "copresidents."
Thanks Jerome, all good additions.
My Dearest Nellie: The Letters of William Howard Taft to Helen Herron Taft, 1909-1912
by William H. Taft (no photo)Synopsis:
Few presidential couples enjoyed a closer relationship in the White House than Will and Nellie Taft. Throughout William Howard Taft's rise in American politics, she had been his most intimate confidant. When circumstances separated them, as when Helen Herron Taft became incapacitated by a stroke and was unable to accompany the president on his storied travels—or was herself on recuperative trips—she pressed him for letters, and he obliged with gossipy correspondence that provides a fascinating account of his presidency at decisive moments in his single term.
These 113 letters, all but a few never before published, represent a rare glimpse into the mind of a chief executive speaking candidly about individuals and issues. In them, Taft commented on political issues he encountered and decisions he made-as well as his growing disillusion with Theodore Roosevelt, his unhappiness with Congress, and his struggles with his weight and golf score. Breathing new life into a bygone era in all of its complexity and humanity, they also open a new window on Washington early in the twentieth century—providing Taft's reactions not only to social figures of the Progressive Era but also to the impact of innovations like the automobile and rudimentary air conditioning.
Sometimes indiscreet and frustrated with his political prospects, Taft comes through as a man who worked hard at a job for which he was not well suited. Indeed, Taft has been written off as a failed chief executive who was pushed into office by his wife; yet, as he insisted to Nellie, he was a creditable chief executive confronted with a changing political environment. Taft's letters may not warrant calling him a great president, but they reveal a more thoughtful occupant of the White House than scholars have acknowledged.
Other than those that Harry Truman wrote to Bess, there is no comparable archive of modern presidential letters to a spouse that equals the letters to "Dearest Nellie" that Will Taft sent. Edited and introduced by a leading historian of the Progressive Era, Taft's letters not only reveal the inner workings of a presidency at decisive moments but also humanize a chief executive to whom history has been less than kind.
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by Henry F. Pringle (no photo)Synopsis:
First volume of two-volume biography of William Howard Taft.
Published in 1939 by Farrar & Rinehart Inc.
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by
Doris Kearns GoodwinSynopsis:
Doris Kearns Goodwin, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Team of Rivals, captures the Progressive Era through the story of the broken friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, culminating in their running against one another for president in 1912.
One of the Best Books of the Year as chosen by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Time, USA TODAY, Christian Science Monitor, and more. “A tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue” (Associated Press).
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air.
The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history.
The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure.
Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men.
The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history—an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.
Awards:
Audie Award for History/Biography (2015)
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction (2014)
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Judith Icke Anderson (no photo)Synopsis:
This book deals with the impact of Taft's numerous inner conflicts and his decision-making ability--and, in particular, on his frequent failure to make decisions at all. Here is the evolution of Taft's conflicts and extraordinary dependencies, which began in childhood, were exacerbated by certain kinds of success--all of which were peculiarly illuminated by fluctuations in his weight.
We also see his marriage to Helen Herron Taft, a woman whose influence was powerful--and that is perhaps the most significant key to our understanding of Taft's career. We see for the first time how the reluctant Taft was pushed into office by his indomitable wife. Here, too, is an analysis of his unique personal relationship with Theodore Roosevelt, a tragicomic affair that, when it broke up, left Taft demoralized. Perhaps far more than most men who have achieved great public office, Taft was a product and a victim of his ties to those he loved.
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by David Henry Burton (no photo)Synopsis:
This book is a study of the internationalism of William Howard Taft. In the months after war broke out in 1914, Taft was second only to Woodrow Wilson in his awareness of the need to preserve the peace of the world through a new version of international organization. Built upon a synthetic interpretation of Taft’s foreign policy ideas and initiatives, the book encompasses the whole of his public career as a statesman, from his years as civil governor of the Philippines through his tenure as chief justice of the Supreme Court. During those years, he moved from a basic belief in the theory and practice of balance of power to the application of dollar diplomacy. In response to the calamity of World War I, Taft came to recognize that world peace must be based upon a combination of idealism and realism, of high-minded principles placed and kept in effect by force, deliberately chosen and carefully applied.
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by Donald F. Anderson (no photo)Synopsis:
Review from Amazon:
A very fair and well balanced bio of Taft up to the end of his presidency (with a small chapter related to his Supreme Court era as related to his views of the Executive Branch). Taft is one of the lesser known presidents and the more I read the more likable he is. This book adds to the knowledge and shows how difficult a position anyone would be in to succeed Teddy Roosevelt. Taft ruled within the confines of the Constitution and while his term was limited, he did a fairly good job. Being overshadowed by Roosevelt on one end and Wilson on the other, he is frequently lost, but when he is studied, he is seen as one of the few that had true foreign affairs training, legal training and training of running large government organizations (The Philippines, the US Department of War). This was a very good book.
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by Lewis L. Gould (no photo)Synopsis:
The only president to later serve as chief justice of the United States, William Howard Taft remarked in the 1920s that "I don't remember that I ever was President." Historians have agreed, and Taft is usually portrayed, when written about at all, as nothing more than a failed chief executive. In this provocative new study, the first treatment of the Taft presidency in four decades, Lewis L. Gould presents a compelling assessment of Taft's accomplishments and setbacks in office. Rich in human interest and fresh analysis of the events of Taft's four years in Washington, Gould's book shows why Taft's presidency is very much worth remembering on its own terms.
Gould argues that Taft wanted to be president and had an ambitious agenda when he took power in March 1909. Approaching his duties more as a judge than as a charismatic executive in the mold of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft soon found himself out of step with public opinion. Gould shows how the Payne-Aldrich Tariff and the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy squandered Taft's political capital and prepared the ground for Democratic victories in the elections of 1910 and 1912. His seamless narrative provides innovative treatments of these crucial episodes to make Taft's presidency more understandable than in any previous account. On Canadian Reciprocity, Dollar Diplomacy, and international arbitration, Gould's well-researched work goes beyond earlier stale clichs about Taft's administration to link his tenure to the evolution of the modern presidency. Taft emerges as a hard-working but flawed executive who lacked the excitement of Theodore Roosevelt or the inspiration of Woodrow Wilson.
The break with Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 doomed the Taft presidency, and Gould supplies an evenhanded analysis of the erosion of their once warm friendship. At bottom, the two men clashed about the nature of presidential power, and Gould traces with insight how this personal and ideological rupture influenced the future of the Republican party and the course of American politics. In Gould's skilled hands, this neglected presidency again comes alive. Leaving the White House in 1913, Taft wrote that "the people of the United States did not owe me another election." What his presidency deserved is the lively and wise appraisal of his record in office contained in this superb book.
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by Michael J. Korzi (no photo)Synopsis:
In Presidential Leadership at the Crossroads: William Howard Taft and the Modern Presidency, Michael J. Korzi examines Taft’s presidency against the backdrop of early twentieth century politics, placing particular emphasis on Taft’s theory of presidential leadership. Though Taft’s legacy is often overshadowed by those of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, his predecessor and successor, respectively, Taft’s model of presidential leadership was complex and nuanced, forged in a time of changing expectations, at the crossroads between traditional and modern views of what the role of a president should be. This focus on Taft’s leadership adds new dimension to our understandings of the Progressive era and presidential leadership in general.
Ultimately, Taft’s leadership represented a middle-ground position, one that faced serious challenges from both conservative as well as radical forces, particularly the latter. While embodying some features of the modern presidency, Taft’s model also represented a partial challenge to, and critique of, modern presidential leadership. Korzi reveals that Taft was considerably more modern in his leadership aspirations than previously thought and that his shift to traditionalism, or conservativism, only emerged with the threat of a third Roosevelt term on the horizon.
Presidential Leadership at the Crossroads makes an important contribution to our understanding of presidents and their leadership. Taft’s model is particularly relevant today, given the prominence of the modern presidency and its values and expectations. Taft’s moderate, middle-way position provides a foundation for critiquing the excesses of the modern presidency, while offering a vision for strong, if disciplined, presidential leadership.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Presidential Leadership at the Crossroads: William Howard Taft and the Modern Presidency (other topics)The William Howard Taft Presidency (other topics)
William Howard Taft: A Conservative's Conception of the Presidency (other topics)
William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker (other topics)
William Howard Taft: An Intimate History (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Michael J. Korzi (other topics)Lewis L. Gould (other topics)
Donald F. Anderson (other topics)
David Henry Burton (other topics)
Judith Icke Anderson (other topics)
More...
Distinguished jurist, effective administrator, but poor politician, William Howard Taft spent four uncomfortable years in the White House. Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the intense battles between Progressives and conservatives, and got scant credit for the achievements of his administration.
Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, he graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his "plate the right side up when offices were falling."
But Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other ambitions for him.
His route to the White House was via administrative posts. President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator. Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy, built roads and schools, and gave the people at least some participation in government.
President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.
Taft disliked the campaign--"one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life." But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.
Progressives were pleased with Taft's election. "Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft is the man to put it into the barn." Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt--the "mad messiah."
Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his predecessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt "ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends."
Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada, which Taft pushed through Congress, would have pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff, but the Canadians rejected it. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.
In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.
In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.
Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until just before his death in 1930. To Taft, the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote: "I don't remember that I ever was President."
Source: The White House Biography
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presi...