I think it inevitable that Taft was a somewhat anticlimactic personage. I am not sure if it was due to the fact that his book was measurably more boring that TR’s or if it just sucked for him to be the president after such an interesting guy but there it is. It’s a fact. Our jolly, oversized 27th president simply lacked the pizzazz and excitement that characterized Theodore Roosevelt’s administration and there’s nothing that anyone can do about that.
Of course, I can also blame the book. After some searching I decided to go with Judith Icke Anderson’s William Howard Taft: An Intimate History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981) because…well because…I’m not sure why. I think it was the use of “intimate” in the title. Ok, people, you can stop your sniggering right there! I was not using intimate in that way, it’s just that I thought I would be able to get inside Taft’s head with this particular work, in that intimate kind of way. And I really did. I feel like I know and understand gentle Taft after Anderson’s treatment but it was—well—rather boring.
William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati, OH on September 15, 1857 to a rather famous father. Alphonso Taft was a prominent Republican lawyer when he joined Grant’s cabinet, first as secretary of war and then as attorney general. During Chester Arthur’s administration, Mr. Taft Senior was the ambassador to Austria-Hungary and little William grew up in this politically-charged environment.
In 1874, Taft graduated as salutatorian from Woodward High School before going on to Yale for college. After Yale, he was immediately admitted to the Cincinnati School of Law and graduated in 1880. Over the next few years, Taft became a lawyer (not a very good one) and also the Assistant Prosecutor of Hamilton County. He never really cared for the profession of law and almost as soon as he was able, he moved into what he would always love best—being a judge.
The Herrons were old family friends of the Tafts from Cincinnati but it was in 1884 that William decided that he was in love with their daughter, Helen, or Nellie. Nellie was a very independent and well-read woman and at first did not want to marry Taft. However, he soon brought her around and just two years later they were married. Throughout the years, they would have three children: Robert, Helen, and Charles.
By 1887, Taft had made something of a name for himself in certain circles and so it was to his delight that he was named a judge of the Ohio Supreme Court. These were, for a time, some of the happiest years of his life. It was short-lived, however, because President Harrison appointed him the US Solicitor General in 1890 and the ambitions of his wife would not allow him to refuse. In 1892, he was appointed to the 6th Federal Circuit of Appeals.
In 1900, President McKinley appointed Taft to a major position in the new government, as the first American governor to the Philippines. Taft was not naturally a leader but he was level-headed and intelligent—the perfect combination of characteristics that would aid his sojourn in the Philippines. During this time, Taft also became increasingly closer to Theodore Roosevelt, leaving the Philippines regularly on any serious mission that TR might send him. After the 1904 election, TR promptly named his friend, William Taft, to the cabinet as secretary of war. Since the United States was faced with a time of great peace, Taft mainly continued to do TR’s bidding, not bothering himself with the affairs of the War Department.
As the election of 1908 neared, TR was in a bind. When he had been elected in 1904, he had made a capital error by promising not to run for a 3rd term. Because of his continued popularity, TR had to find a successor and then throw all his weight behind his choice. TR chose William Taft. Taft, who had been content to go where TR said to go, was unhappy with the thought of becoming president himself and of having to make his own decisions. In fact, not many Americans at the time even knew who he was! “A Washington Post editorial pointed out that with the exception of Rutherford B Hayes, Taft was less known to the public than any other Republican ever seriously considered for the presidency” (p. 100). Due to his thorough indifference to the outcome of the election, Taft spent most of the campaign playing golf and trying to keep his weight down.
Nothing seemed to help though. With TR and Nellie fighting for Taft’s presidential bid, the American people went along willing and in 1908, voted William Taft as the 27th President of the United States. On the day of the inauguration, Washington DC was hit with so big a snowstorm that Taft needed to be inaugurated inside that day. This bad weather seemed to be an ill omen for the Taft administration because things went even worse rather quickly.
First there was the tariff issue. Although the tariff fervor of decades ago had calmed down marginally, Taft re-raised the issue by having Congress work out another one, the result being the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. It was hugely unpopular. “Standing primarily as a symbol of the power of big business, the tariff aroused people both emotionally and politically, and one of the more dramatic episodes in Taft’s administration revolved around it” (p. 169). This new tariff was less than satisfactory and although Taft promised to veto it, he did not and this provoked an outcry against his repeated vacillations. “In retrospect, Taft’s refusal to veto the Payne-Aldrich Tariff perhaps did more harm than any other of his official acts. Although his travel, golf and general inanition provoked irritation, the tariff caused many people who had praised him formerly to condemn him now” (p. 176).
It didn’t help that Taft could not handle criticism any kind of criticism and the fall-out from the tariff issue sent him away from the capital in a long tour of the United States. Even this couldn’t save him though. Soon he was back in Washington and blundering into the Ballinger/Pinchot Affair. Basically this problem stemmed from the fact that Taft, when first elected, had declared that he saw eye to eye with TR over everything, especially conservation. It was soon realized, however, that Taft was really much more conservative at heart than his progressive predecessor and that didn’t really care about the same issues, which is how conservation got shunted to the side. It just so happened that one of TR’s best friends and adherents was Glifford Pinchot the head of the Forestry Service, under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Unfortunately, Taft appointed Richard Ballinger to head this department who was a “businessman’s lawyer who wanted to open the federal land in the West to private enterprise” (p. 181). It looked like Ballinger was not a conservationist and when it came down to verbal sparring between him and Pinchot, Taft came down hard on Ballinger’s side. Pinchot then went to TR (who was still overseas) and this fracas soon opened the chasm that was widening between TR and Taft’s long-time friendship.
Taft became dejected and depressed. His weight escalated. “More and more the president was referred to as ‘Taft the Blunderer.’ Deeply unhappy, he continued to gain weight, to vent his frustration in outbursts of temper, and rapidly to grow both older and sadder” (p. 188). His friendship with TR was irrevocably lost when his administration sued US Steel under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. TR had, during his presidency, allowed US Steel to buy out another corporation to keep the United States from going into a recession. It was due to this buyout that the Taft administration pounced on US Steel and TR took it as a personal insult. Taft declared that he had no idea that his attorney general had this planned but all that did was to convince everyone that Taft didn’t read all his paperwork.
On the other hand, Taft also did some good in office as well. “In the name of economy Taft abolished four hundred positions in the Department of the Treasury and one hundred in the Philadelphia mint. He reorganized the customs service and made large cuts in the military services. Because the federal government did not yet have a unified budget, Taft tried during his first year in office to centralize control of the budgetary process. He pruned an unprecedented $92 million from the original estimates and sent the first modern budget to Congress” (p. 198).
The election of 1912 was to be one of the most highly contested of the modern era. First of all, TR threw his hat back into the ring and although Taft won re-nomination by the Republicans, this effectively split the party and allowed Wilson to win (TR was nominated by the Progressive Party). During the campaign, Taft, as expected, did very little and soon it was apparent that it was really just Wilson vs TR. It was unfortunate that the bull moose had split the party because he garnered quite a bit of votes. There was one person in the US though that was absolutely not unhappy that Wilson had won. Taft was extremely pleasant and happy as Wilson’s inauguration day approached. “Taft looked forward to the relief from his duties, and he showed none of the depression or pessimism often associated with a rejected chief executive. Instead, he acted like a man freed of a great burden” (p. 249).
“The reporters assessed Taft as a pleasant, well-meaning man who had been caught up in a situation which he could neither understand nor control. He had been a weak president, they admitted, but a good sport” (p. 248). As a new private citizen, Taft was offered the Kent Chair of Constitutional Law at Yale in 1913 so his family moved up to New Haven, Connecticut. He stayed there 8 years, while also taking on a number of other tasks such becoming the joint chairman of the National Labor Board.
In June 1921, Taft was granted his greatest wish by President Harding—he was appointed to Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. He was not the best chief justice that we’ve ever had but he was a good one. It was under his direction that the Supreme Court would begin construction on the building that they are still in today.
In 1924, Taft suffered two heart attacks, one in February and one in April. By February 1930, Taft had to retire from the Supreme Court due to health reasons and by March 8th of that year, he was dead from heart trouble.
No comments:
Post a Comment