The William Howard Taft Presidency
It is the last Sunday of the month, making this week’s book of the week our 27th president, The William Howard Taft Presidency by Lewis L. Gould.
William Howard Taft was born September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio to the second wife of Alphonso Taft, who had been attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant and American minister to Austria-Hungary under Chester A Arthur. Alphonso Taft had three sons with his first wife and five children with his second wife, Louise Torrey Taft, of whom William Howard was the second born but the first to survive.
Taft went to Yale College, graduating in 1878, and was a member of the secretive Skull and Bones society. He studied law at the Cincinnati Law School and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1881. In 1886 he married Helen “Nellie” Herron and the couple had three children, Robert, Helen, and Charles II. He served as solicitor general under President Benjamin Harrison, which means he represented the government in cases that went before the Supreme Court where the United States was one of the named parties.
He served as solicitor general for two years before being appointed to the Federal Court of Appeals in the Sixth District, which covered the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee. And he was a happy judge and while some of his court rulings didn’t win him friends with organized labor, he was by all accounts good at his job. If he had not served in that federal capacity under Harrison, then Cleveland, he might not have come to the attention of William McKinley, who tapped him to be the governor of the Philippines following the Spanish American War. Which he really wasn’t excited for, but with a father who had served a distinguished public service career, Taft was talked into accepting the position which he didn’t really want, arguing that he had been against the acquisition of the Philippines.
And here is where his life really took a turn. See, he was quite adept as an administrator. And came to enjoy the work, enough that when Roosevelt wanted to appoint him to the Supreme Court in 1902, he declined based on his work in the Philippines was not quite done yet.
A year later, then secretary of war Elihu Root stepped down and Roosevelt tapped Taft to step into the role, which Taft accepted in early 1904. This close relationship continued for the remainder of Roosevelts term and through his second term as president until June 30, 1908, when Taft accepted the Republican nomination for president and had to step down in order to campaign. And it’s not unreasonable to believe that part of why his run was successful is based on Roosevelt’s own popularity and that the people knew Taft was Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor.
At first, Taft was given a positive review by the press, and his leadership style was praised as being calmer than Roosevelt’s frenetic pace. But it wasn’t long before the press began to turn on him, referring to him as lazy. He wasn’t. Not at all. What he was, was a judge. He was looking at the legalities of the laws congress was passing, seeing if they met requirements under the Constitution. When Congress attempted to slide an income tax into a law, he vetoed it and said if they wanted an income tax, it should be passed as an amendment to the Constitution. Which Congress then did, so thanks for that asshole, but still! He wanted to keep things within the confines of what was legally allowed. Which, compared to Roosevelt’s executive style, was seen as a snail’s pace. He did propose a corporation tax, an excise tax on corporations and joint stock companies of 2 percent of their net income annually, which would also provide information about corporate organization and represent “a long step toward that supervisory control of corporations which may prevent a further abuse of power.”
This was initially adopted by the Republicans to avoid having an alliance of progressives and low-tariff democrats draft a new bill with an income tax and the corporation tax was adopted. Along with an income tax several days later. At the same time, he approved passage of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, which was basically a joint house-senate bill which raised some key tariffs, but also allowed for the creation of a tariff board to study tariff modification in full for the use of Congress and the President in future considerations. The Republican party, at its core, believed in protectionist tariffs; however, progressive Republicans, who had a massive insurgence under Roosevelt’s rule, argued that protectionist tariffs led to monopolies. Which they weren’t wrong on. But Taft’s defense of the bill led to deeper rifts in the Republican party.
The next problem that Taft faced was when he replaced Secretary of the Interior James Rudolph Garfield, who had served under Roosevelt, with Richard A Ballinger. Ballinger overturned several conservation policies that Garfield had enacted, making him grossly unpopular with conservation Republicans, and by extension Taft’s popularity waned, as he had appointed Ballinger. The head of the US Forest Services, President McKinley appointee Gifford Pinchot, became convinced that Ballinger was looking to entirely stop the conservation efforts, and accused Ballinger of siding with private trusts to the detriment of conservation efforts. Additionally, one of Pinchot’s friends, Louis Glavis, provided Taft with a fifty-page report that accused Ballinger of improper interests in coal field claims in Alaska.
Taft didn’t just wave these away, he took the allegation to Attorney General George Wickersham and ultimately issued a public letter that exonerated Ballinger, and dismissed Glavis for insubordination, which was all above board and perfectly legal; however, Pinchot took this personally and openly rebuked Taft, which left Taft with no choice but to dismiss Pinchot also for insubordination. Pinchot was a close friend of Roosevelt, and this contributed to the divide between the two presidents. Now, this entire affair was fully investigated twenty years after the fact by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes who found that Taft and Ballinger had acted entirely correctly, and that Pinchot was a publicity seeking vindictive man. But, in 1909/1910 when all this went down, it was scandalous, to think that the president might be protecting his own man at the expense of conservation movements and helped contribute to Taft’s unpopularity.
Throughout his presidency, Taft traveled like 25,000 miles, crisscrossing the country several times, making public speeches at every stop, stumping for whatever republican needed a boost, and I kind of get the sense from 110 years removed that he was chasing the popularity that Roosevelt achieved naturally. Of course, I think Roosevelt was a narcissist, but this tactic did not work for Taft. I think he wanted very much to be loved by the people, and while he was in office, he just wasn’t. When Roosevelt returned from Africa and became so very discontented with how the country was being run under Taft, the friendship they’d had for 20 years broke.
Now, part of the problem is Roosevelt believed that the executive office…namely himself…could discern what was a good trust and what was a bad trust. Taft, however, believed that the Sherman Antitrust Act as written, passed, and signed into law, did not allow for the president to pick and choose who was the good guy and who was the bad guy…basically that the law needed to be applied equally. Which is, even today, a shocking thing for a chief executive to say. But say it he did, and even more, Taft actually applied the Sherman Antitrust Act equally to all, including friends of Roosevelt, namely, JP Morgan, who had essentially conned Roosevelt into looking the other way when United States Steel purchased Coal and Iron.
And rather than admit he had been conned; Roosevelt got all butthurt over Taft’s equal application of the law. And when the government filed suit against United States Steel on October 26, 1911, the lawsuit said explicitly that in 1907, then President Roosevelt “was not made fully acquainted with the state of affairs in New York relevant to the transaction as they existed.” That Roosevelt had not been fully advised. Basically, he’d been fooled and allowed himself to be fooled. Roosevelt took this language very personally, and this was the final nail in the coffin of their friendship and basically the moment Roosevelt determined to run again in 1912.
And when Taft won the Republican nomination, Roosevelt branched off and formed his own party, which ultimately led to Wilson’s election in 1912. And I kind of felt bad for Taft here, not just that Wilson won, as soon as Roosevelt started his own party, Taft knew Wilson was going to win. I mean, that kind of party split in the middle of an election year is virtually guaranteed to win the opposition the election. But Taft just wanted to win more votes than Roosevelt. Which clearly did not happen, as Wilson won with 435 votes, Roosevelt had 88, and Taft won just 8, only carrying Utah and Vermont.
But then something truly interesting happened. He handled his defeat with such dignity and grace that his popularity, which he’d been chasing for four years, soared, and he became the epitome of good sportsmanship.
But he now had to figure out what he would do post presidency. He was only 55 years old, and while he and his wife had been frugal during his time in the White House, he did not have enough to retire on indefinitely. He briefly considered returning to law; however, that option was quickly dismissed as he had appointed a large number of sitting judges in Ohio, and he would never be able to argue a case in front of them due to a conflict of interest. He had also been in the unprecedented position of appointing SIX Supreme Court Justices while he was President, so he would never be able to try a case there either for the same reason. The solution was handed to him when the administration of Yale University reached out to him and offered him a professorship in law. So, when he left the White House, he went to Yale where he taught law until 1921, when he was appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
I believe this makes him only the second former president to actually work post presidency. John Quincy Adams, who became a member of the house of representatives, became the first congressman to actually die in chamber, and then Taft, who served as Chief Justice until he resigned on February 3, 1930. He died just over a month later, on March 8, 1930, at his home in Washington DC, and he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
One of the things history most remembers him for is being the fattest President we’ve ever had, and when he was in office, he topped out at like 340 pounds. The author makes the point that this was likely stress eating, as once he was out of office, the weight more or less melted off, he lost 70 pounds in like a year and never again weighed over 300. When he passed, he weighed 244 pounds. I only mention this, because I think it’s sad that his weight is what he’s remembered for, when what he should be remembered for, is being the jackass that gave Congress the idea to codify an income tax with an actual amendment to the Constitution.
But seriously, I think his greatest misfortune is being the president sandwiched between Roosevelt and Wilson. In the decade immediately following his presidency, he was actually written about quite extensively, and there is a two-volume set out there that details his life more fully, but then in the intervening years, his own tenure has been overshadowed by Roosevelt and Wilson.
I do think this is a president where there is room for a more detailed analysis of his life, I mean this was a quick primer, and it covered some of the highlights, but I do feel like he’s had a bit of short shrift, historically speaking. He lived twenty years after leaving the White House, and none of that was covered in this, beyond mentioning he worked at Yale, then at the Supreme Court, two not insignificant job postings. One of the things he apparently covered in detail in his time at Yale was a strict adherence to the Constitution, which is clearly not being taught at law schools these days.
Anyway, this book was decent for what it covered, which was specifically how a little-known jurist from Ohio came to hold the most powerful position in the World for just four short years. I’m trying to decide where to place him in my personal ranking. I mean, I have a sense like he was likeable, and certainly progressive in his own way, he was the first President to appoint a woman to head a department in the federal government, appointing Julia Lathrop to head the newly created Children’s Bureau in 1912. But he was not progressive in his interactions with the black community, looking always to appoint patronage posts to Republican’s who were white, even if the position had long been held, without incident, by a Republican who was black. He sort of adopted the Democrat’s belief that the black constituents were like children who needed coddling. And then there is the income tax thing, which fucked us all for the next 100 years and counting. But is that as evil as Jackson’s treatment of the Native tribes? I gotta go with yes…no, no…because he didn’t do the income tax thing in a vacuum. Dang it, I don’t know. I’ll figure it out later.
This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on July 30, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.
