William Howard Taft, as twenty-seventh president of the United States and a chief justice, failed to rise adequately to the challenges of the times, despite his many strong qualities.
Background
Ethnicity:
His father and his mother were of early New England families of English descent.
William Howard Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Ohio to Louisa Torrey and Alphonso Taft. He had five siblings. His father, a prominent Republican of his time, was a lawyer who served as Secretary of War and Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant.
Education
He received his primary education from Woodward High School and went on to attend Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a very good student who excelled in academics and was also active in sports like golf, tennis, and wrestling. He graduated in 1878.
After graduation he went to the Cincinnati Law School, earning a Bachelor of Laws in 1880. Soon he was admitted to the Ohio bar.
An outsize, congenial young man with a tendency to procrastinate, Taft took an active interest in Republican politics. He was rewarded with appointments to various offices. Between 1880 and 1890 he served successively as assistant prosecuting attorney for Hamilton County, Ohio, collector of internal revenue for Cincinnati, and judge of the Superior Court of Ohio. Named solicitor general of the United States in 1890, he distinguished himself for his thorough preparation and won 15 of the first 18 cases he argued in the Supreme Court.
Taft accepted appointment to the Sixth Circuit Court in 1892. Though he again distinguished himself for thoroughness and technical command of the law, he was inhibited by his lack of imagination. Yet he was in no sense a reactionary and in some respects not even a conservative.
In 1899 Taft turned down the presidency of Yale University, partly because he believed his Unitarianism would offend traditionalists. Then, in March 1900, he reluctantly acceded to President William McKinley's request that he become president of the Philippine Commission. The 4 most creative years of his life followed. Overriding the will of the autocratic military governor, Gen. Arthur MacArthur, he instituted civil government and became in 1901 the archipelago's first civil governor.
In the Philippines, Taft established an educational system, built roads and harbors, and negotiated the purchase of 400, 000 acres from the Dominican friars for resale on generous terms to the Filipinos. He also pushed limited self-government rapidly.
On February 1, 1904, Taft succeeded Elihu Root as U.S. secretary of war. The duties again proved surprisingly congenial, largely because he became one of President Roosevelt's most intimate advisers and his principal troubleshooter. His most important mission was to Japan; it culminated in the secret recognition of Japan's suzerainty over Korea. He also helped suppress a threatened revolution in Cuba in 1906.
Impressed by Taft's "absolutely unflinching rectitude" and "literally dauntless courage and willingness to bear responsibility, " as he phrased it, Roosevelt decided in 1907 to make Taft his successor as president. Both men believed mistakenly at the time that they agreed totally on public policy. Yet by February 1908, after several thunderous messages to Congress had revealed the real depth of Roosevelt's progressivism, his wife urged him not to "make any more speeches on the Roosevelt policies."
Nevertheless, the presidential campaign of 1908 was waged mainly on the "Roosevelt policies." Though Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan handily, his plurality dropped about 1, 500, 000 votes below Roosevelt's in 1904. Moreover, the election of numerous Progressive Republicans and Democrats shifted the balance in Congress.
Taft's troubles started early. True at first to his campaign promises, he called a special session of Congress to revise the tariff. The resultant bill was not a bad measure by Republican standards, but it failed abysmally to meet expectations. Disguising his disappointment, Taft called it "the best bill that the party has ever passed" and signed it into law. This alienated many insurgent Republicans, most of whom were already seething over his refusal to support their effort to reduce the powers of Joseph "Uncle Joe" Cannon, the czarlike Speaker of the House.
Taft's replacement of Roosevelt's secretary of the interior contributed to the polarization of the party. The new secretary, Richard A. Ballinger, was a moderate conservationist and a strict legal constructionist in the manner of Taft himself.
Ironically, Taft's relentless prosecution of trusts further exacerbated his relations with Roosevelt. Unlike the former president, he believed that dissolution rather than regulation was the preferred solution. He gave Attorney General George W. Wickersham free rein to institute proceedings, and by the end of 4 years almost twice as many actions had been initiated as in 7½ years under Roosevelt. Among these were proceedings against the U.S. Steel Corporation, which had absorbed the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company during the Panic of 1907 with Roosevelt's tacit approval.
In Congress, meanwhile, a coalition of Progressive Republicans and Democrats drove through half a dozen reform measures. Some were supported warmly by Taft, some halfheartedly, and others not at all. But all owed their passage to the Progressive ferment Roosevelt had done so much to create during his presidency and after his return from abroad in 1910. They included amendments for an income tax and the direct election of senators, the Mann-Elkins Act to increase the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, creation of the Children's Bureau, a corporation tax, safety standards for mines, Postal Savings and Parcel Post, and workmen's compensation legislation.
By 1912 Taft had so isolated himself from his party's Progressive and was under such heavy fire from Roosevelt and Senator Robert M. La Follette that the Progressives were prepared to support either Roosevelt or La Follette for the presidential nomination. Taft lost to the former president by more than 2 to 1 in the 13 state primaries that winter and spring. However, his control of Republican party machinery gave him enough delegates to win renomination in convention. Embittered further by Roosevelt's decision to run on the Progressive ticket, Taft waged an angry, defensive, and ineffectual campaign. He finished behind Woodrow Wilson and Roosevelt.
Taft's best qualities, especially his capacity for disinterested public service, again became dominant after he left the White House and accepted the Kent chair of constitutional law at Yale. His views on World War I were closer to President Wilson's than to those of interventionist Republicans like Roosevelt and Lodge, and he generously backed the President during the period of neutrality. His work as joint chairman of the War Labor Board contributed greatly to the relatively smooth course of labor-management relations during the war. He afterward gave broad support to Wilson's plan for the League of Nations Covenant.
On June 30, 1921, President Warren G. Harding fulfilled Taft's "heart's desire" by appointing him chief justice. Taft brought to his new position a consuming belief in the rule of law, an unshakable conviction that the protection of property rights was crucial to orderly government, and a driving determination to perfect the administration of justice. In 1916 he had bitterly opposed Wilson's nomination of Louis D. Brandeis. Now, as chief justice, he discouraged Harding from considering men like Benjamin Cardozo, Learned Hand, and Henry Stimson because they might "herd" with the liberals, Holmes and Brandeis. Yet, he also said, it would be equally unwise to have too many men as reactionary as James McReynolds. He was largely responsible for the selection of Pierce Butler in 1922.
As chief justice, Taft compiled a mixed record. Although he succeeded in massing the Court along generally conservative lines, few of his opinions ring down through the years. One exception was his dissent in 1923 from the majority finding in the Adkins case that a minimum-wage act interfered with freedom of contract. Otherwise, as a careful student of Taft's chief justiceship writes, "Taft endorsed decisions, sometimes writing the majority opinion, that seemed to fasten both the national government and the states in a strait jacket." He wrote the majority opinion in the second child-labor case. He ruled, again for the majority, that a Kansas statute for compulsory arbitration of wage disputes was unconstitutional. And he declared, once more for the conservative majority, that an Arizona limitation on the use of injunctions against labor violated due process. He also held in the famous Coronado case that labor unions could be sued under the antitrust laws.
Conversely, Taft sanctioned the exercise of broad regulatory powers by the Federal government under the commerce clause. He also sustained the presidential power to remove executive officers.
As an administrator, Taft ranks with Melville W. Fuller and Charles Evans Hughes; he was notably successful in effecting administrative reforms. He wrote more opinions than any other member of his Court, expedited the hearing of cases, and won congressional authorization to create a conference of senior circuit judges. He also shaped and influenced passage of the Judge's Bill of 1925, which gave the Court wide discretionary power and enabled it to reduce the number of unimportant cases that came before it. In addition, Taft was preeminently responsible for the decision to construct the Supreme Court Building. However, he made little enduring impression upon constitutional law. He retired in February 1930 and died in Washington on March 30.
To the diversity of faith that Freemasonry supports, Tast was a member of the First Congregational-Unitarian Church which he joined at an early age through his parents.
It is suggested that as he rose in government, he spent little time in Cincinnati. and attended the church infrequently worshiping when he could.
Politics
He was a Republican with a rich political history and a leader during the Progressive Era which saw widespread social activism and political reform across the United States.
Taft's conduct of foreign policy was governed by an uncritical extension of the concepts behind the Open-Door Notes of 1899 and 1900. Disregarding Roosevelt's warning that the United States should accept Japanese preeminence in eastern Asia and abandon commercial aspirations in Manchuria and North China, he pursued a policy of "active intervention to secure for our merchandise and our capitalists opportunity for profitable investment."
In the Caribbean, Taft was even more ingenious than Roosevelt in devising means to protect the Panama Canal. He put American troops into Nicaragua in 1912 to install and maintain in power a conservative, pro-United States party. And in what came to be termed "dollar diplomacy, " he encouraged American capital to displace European capital elsewhere in the region. The end result was security for the canal and ultraconservative and often repressive government for the Caribbean peoples.
Views
Quotations:
"Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them."
"Repeat mantra: Donuts are not vitamins, donuts are not."
"The man with the average mentality, but with control, with a definite goal, and a clear conception of how it can be gained, and above all, with the power of application and labor, wins in the end."
"Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment."
"If they will play fair I will play fair, but if they won't then I reserve all my rights to do anything I find myself able to do."
Membership
President Taft was made a Master Mason at Sight in Kilwinning Lodge No. 356, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1901.
That made him a member at large, until the Grand Lodge issued a demit to Taft when he became a regular member of that lodge. Somewhat active, Taft was very supportive of Freemasonry.
Personality
Taft was cheerful, friendly, a typical hail-fellow-well-met with an infectious chuckle. Always popular, he had many friends, but, surprisingly, few intimates. “One of the astonishing things about Taft’s four years in the White House,” wrote biographer Henry F. Pringle, “was the almost total lack of men, related or otherwise, upon whom he could lean…For the most part, he faced his troubles alone.” He was not happy as president. The break with his predecessor and former mentor, Theodore Roosevelt, weighed heavily on his mind; he was often irritable, depressed, at least once in tears. He regained his good spirits in retirement and as chief justice.
Physical Characteristics:
Taft stood 6 feet 2 inches tall, had chestnut hair, blue eyes, and a rather high, soft voice, and wore a great handlebar mustache. The heaviest president, he struggle all his adult life with a weight problem. He graduated from college a pudgy 243 pounds, and by 1904 he was up to 326 pounds. He then went on a diet, losing 75 pounds in two years. But as president his weight soared to 332 pounds. He had grown so bulky that he got stuck in the White House bathtub and had to have an outsized model brought in for his use. After stepping down as president he again began to watch his calories. By 1929 he, at 244 pounds, had regained the relatively trim figure of his youth. Except for the strain that his weight placed on his heart, Taft generally was in good health. However, in the Philippines in 1901 he nearly died from dengue fever.
Quotes from others about the person
"Many years before Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, there was another prima donna general, the renowned John C. Frémont. For issuing orders authorizing the emancipation of slaves in Missouri without presidential permission, Lincoln fired him on the spot. As for MacArthur, he should have known better: the same thing had also happened to his own father. Back in the early 1900s, General Arthur MacArthur, military governor of the Philippines, made the stupid mistake of not recognizing the superior authority of the civilian governor, William Howard Taft, who later became president. Years later, when MacArthur's turn came to be promoted to Army Chief of Staff, Taft blackballed him."
Seymour Morris Jr., American History Revised: 200 Startling Facts That Never Made It into the Textbooks (2010), p. 314-315
"A little before eight-thirty the President and Mrs. Taft and the family would come down to the private dining room for breakfast. As a rule he would eat two oranges, a twelve-ounce beefsteak, several pieces of toast and butter and a vast quantity of coffee, with cream and sugar. In looking through my diaries of this period I find that on November 27th, 1911, I have a note which reads: "The President weighs 332 pounds and tells me with a great laugh that he is going on a diet but that 'things are in a sad state of affairs when a man can't even call his gizzard his own.'"
Housekeeper Elizabeth Jaffray, Secrets of the White House (Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1926), as quoted in Famous Quotes from White House Workers, The White House Historical Association.
Interests
Golf
Connections
He married Helen Louise Herron in 1886. The couple had three children. His wife played a prominent role in the progression of his career and was one of his key political advisors.