William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft (1857-1930), 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and 10th Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930); he was the only person in US history to head two branches of the federal government.

The son of a leading Ohio lawyer and politician, Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at Yale University, graduating second in his class in 1878, and at the Cincinnati Law School, receiving his degree and commencing practice in 1880. Taft moved rapidly up through appointed offices, as Assistant District Attorney and internal revenue collector in Cincinnati in the early 1880s, later as a state judge, then as Solicitor-General of the United States (1890-1892) and judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals (1892-1900). He was an able lawyer and a jurist of moderately progressive social views, and he formed political connections and lasting friendships, the most important of which were with the future presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1886 he married Helen Herron of Cincinnati, who became his astute adviser and prodded him to pursue lofty ambitions.

In 1900 President McKinley appointed Taft head of the commission to govern the Philippines, and the following year he became the islands' first civilian governor, a post he filled admirably, setting up judicial and local government systems, starting social services, and dealing with native leaders and Roman Catholic Church officials over land disposition. His work drew favourable attention from the US press and made him a popular national figure. In 1904 President Roosevelt named him Secretary of War, a position from which he continued to supervise the Philippines, directed construction of the Panama Canal and started government in the Canal Zone, and contributed to the modernization of the army. Taft also helped to conduct the negotiations that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and he travelled to the Far East to settle a conflict with Japan over the United States' exclusion of Japanese and Chinese immigrants. Twice he declined Roosevelt's offer of a seat on the Supreme Court, which he wanted, because his wife persuaded him to remain available for the presidency. Receiving Roosevelt's nod for the 1908 Republican nomination, he capitalized on the incumbent's winning popularity and the party's strength, easily defeating the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan.

Taft was not a successful president, both because he faced a difficult situation and because he lacked political gifts. A deepening division within the Republican party between progressives and conservatives, which Roosevelt had smoothed over and evaded, dogged his administration from the outset. Taft's attempt in 1909 to revise the protective tariff, which had grown increasingly unpopular, became a fiasco when conservative Republican senators subverted the legislation. Taft, however, failed either to work out compromises or to fight for his programme, and he alienated his former progressive supporters. Relations with progressives deteriorated further in 1910, when, after a complicated administrative struggle, Taft fired the chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, the nation's leading conservationist and a friend of Roosevelt. Republican unity collapsed in the 1910 primaries when Taft unsuccessfully opposed several progressives supported by Roosevelt, and they and the Democrats scored big victories in the autumn elections. Those conflicts doomed the Taft administration politically, although it did compile a number of accomplishments, including establishment of the Federal Children's Bureau, vigorous antitrust prosecutions of big business monopolies, and a restrained, pacific foreign policy. Taft suffered a severe personal and political blow early in his term when his wife was partially incapacitated by a stroke (1909).

Taft's presidency might have ended quietly if Roosevelt had not run against him in 1912. Siding with progressive dissidents, Roosevelt won most of the primaries but lost the Republican nomination because Taft controlled the party machinery. Complaining of a “steal”, Roosevelt then left the Republicans to head the newly formed Progressive party (Bull Moose) ticket. By this time, Taft regarded Roosevelt as a dangerous demagogue, especially because of his criticism of court decisions, and he stayed in the presidential race without hope of winning, only to keep Roosevelt from being elected. Although he finished behind Roosevelt, carrying only Utah and Vermont, Taft split the usual Republican vote and threw the election to the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson. He was pleased at the outcome and left the White House with undisguised relief.

Taft's years as ex-President were among his happiest and most productive. In 1913 he became a professor at Yale Law School and finally succeeded in reducing his renowned weight below 300 lb. He remained active in the Republican party, and although he criticized Wilson's domestic policies from an increasingly conservative stance, he supported his successor's foreign policies and in 1915 headed the League to Enforce Peace, which advocated a league of nations before Wilson did. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Wilson appointed Taft cochairman of the National War Labor Board, and when the Republicans regained the White House in 1921, President Warren G. Harding named him Chief Justice of the United States, fulfilling Taft's long-held dream. Taft became one of the great Chief Justices in the history of the Supreme Court. He again showed his administrative ability by reducing the Court's backlog and securing passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925, which gave the justices more control over the selection of cases to be heard. Taft also impressed his judicial views on the Supreme Court, forsaking his own earlier progressiveness for a more conservative stress on property rights and governmental limitation. A majority of the justices retained his viewpoint until the late 1930s. In February 1930, Taft resigned the Chief Justiceship in failing health, and he died on March 8, 1930.