Big ambitions

● From early in his career, Taft aspired to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. His
ambitious wife, meanwhile, set her sights on becoming first lady.
● Historians believe Helen "Nellie" Herron saw a broader career for her husband beyond a
series of judicial appointments.
Career from the start
● William Howard Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father
was Alphonso Taft, a prominent Republican attorney who served as secretary of war and
attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant, then ambassador to Austria-Hungary
and Russia under President Chester A. Arthur.
● Young Taft attended Woodward High School in Cincinnati, finishing second in his class.
● The younger Taft attended Yale University (graduating second in his class) before
studying law at the University of Cincinnati.
● He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1880 and entered private practice.
● William Howard Taft's first public office was as Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor, in
1881.
● In 1886, Taft married Helen “Nettie” Herron, the daughter of another prominent local
lawyer and Republican Party activist.
● 1887 when he was named to fill the term of a judge in Ohio Superior Court. He was
elected to a five-year term himself the following year.
● In 1890, he was appointed as U.S. solicitor general, the third-highest position in the
justice department.
● Taft was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as a judge of the newly created
Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, at age 34. He served on that court from
1892-1900. At the same time, he also served as the first Dean of the University of
Cincinnati College of Law
● In early 1900, President William McKinley called Taft to Washington and tasked him with
setting up a civilian government in the Philippines, which had become a U.S.
protectorate after the Spanish-American War. Taft was widely praised for his work in the
Philippines, in sponsoring land reform, road building, and honest and efficient
government. In the Philippines, Taft demonstrated that his talent as an administrator was
equal to his prowess as a jurist.
● After McKinley was assassinated in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt twice offered
Taft a Supreme Court appointment, but he declined in order to stay in the Philippines
● In 1904, he agreed to return and become Roosevelt’s secretary of war.
● Teddy Roosevelt and Big Bill Taft became good friends, and Roosevelt, who had made
a pledge (which he later regretted) not to run again in 1908, picked Taft as his
successor. Taft promised to carry out the "trust busting" and other progressive policies of
the Roosevelt administration. With the popular Roosevelt's strong support, he trounced
Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan to become the twenty-seventh
President of the United States.
Presidency
● Despite his pledge, Taft lacked Roosevelt’s expansive view of presidential power, as well
as his charisma as a leader and his physical vigor.
● Though he was initially active in “trust-busting,” initiating some 80 antitrust suits against
large industrial combinations–twice as many as Roosevelt–he later backed away from
these efforts, and in general aligned himself with the more conservative members of the
Republican Party.
● In 1909, Taft’s convention of a special session of Congress to debate tariff reform
legislation spurred the Republican protectionist majority to action and led to passage of
the Payne-Aldrich Act, which did little to lower tariffs.
● Though more progressive Republicans (such as Roosevelt) expected Taft to veto the
bill, he signed it into law and publicly defended it as “the best tariff bill that the
Republican Party ever passed.”
● President Taft, for all his administrative talent, lacked the political savvy to unite, or at
least mediate between, the two factions. His presidency drifted, and became mired in the
troubles within his own party-troubles not of his making, but beyond his ability to solve.
● The progressives wanted Teddy Roosevelt back in the White House. When the
Republican convention of 1912, controlled by the conservatives, renominated Taft, they
bolted and formed the Progressive, or "Bull Moose" Party, to support Roosevelt.
● Once Roosevelt was on the ballot, Taft was doomed. Though Roosevelt and Taft
together outpolled the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, by over a million votes,
the spilt gave an overwhelming Electoral College victory to Wilson. Taft came in third,
carrying only two states (Vermont and Utah).
Legacy
● Taft was a large man -our biggest president- standing 6'4" and weighing more than 300
pounds.Constitution Daily looked at the whole bathtub myth in detail back in 2012. While
Taft was a big guy, he had a special tub put in the White House before he became
President. The myth started decades later. But despite his distinguished career, some
people best remember Taft because of the bathtub myth.
● Taft's presidency is remembered as honest, civilized, and middle-of-the-road.
● He began the presidential tradition of throwing out the first pitch of the baseball year at
the season opener between the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics on
April 14, 1910
● After the Presidency, Taft went back to his first love, the law -first as a professor of law at
Yale. He taught law for eight years, and was then nominated by President Warren
Harding to be the ninth Chief Justice of the United States.
● Upon his elevation to Chief Justice, he proclaimed: "I don't remember that I was ever
President."
● Taft served as Chief Justice from 1921-30, retiring shortly before his death in March
1930.
Citations
http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/william-howard-taft/
https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/william-howard-taft