WHY TAFT?

In 1908, Teddy Roosevelt was at the height of his popularity, and his reelection to a second full term was all but reassured. Yet he passed on this sure bet, and instead, chose to support a prominent lawyer, but reluctant politician, who admittedly had his eye on a place in the Supreme Court, but not in the White House. William Howard Taft could never have become President on his own, but was effectively dragged into the office by his illustrious promoter. The question before us is “Why Taft?” and the answer is easy to come by. Because Teddy Roosevelt had already decided to drop out, and there was no one else of merit in his party to support and promote.

Nor was there anyone else in the Democratic Party at the time to call Teddy’s “bluff” and to challenge Taft for the job of President. Their perennial challenger William J. Bryan had already made a joke of himself by his series of runs all ending in defeat, and apparently the uncommitted non-partisan public would now want to vote against him again just for sport.

With such powerful auguries in his favor, Taft was it; and he served out his first and only term without too much distinction. The antitrust actions he undertook, went as far as TR’s, and possibly beyond, but his generally lackluster performance left them either unnoticed or ignored by the Progressives, who resolutely took arms against his overall conservative views and aimed to undermine his automatic bid for the second term. A disappointed in his protégé Teddy, recently back from his African safari, and from his post-presidency slumber, eagerly lent himself to the cause, putting himself at the head of the Progressives. Having thus split the Republican Party, both he and a totally disinterested Taft lost their respective bids to the Democratic candidate, who, after a rough start when he almost lost the nomination, went on to become a distinguished two-term president, counted among the top ten in many historical presidential polls. The Democrat’s name was Woodrow Wilson. (See my entry about him: Imperialism Benign And Bespectacled, posted on June 16, 2011.)

As for Taft, he never campaigned for himself for President, and consistently never suffered from his defeat. Eight years later, in 1921, when the Republicans were back in the White House, President Harding fulfilled Taft’s greatest dream, nominating him for the suddenly vacant position of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Quoting from Wikipedia, “Taft enjoyed his years on the court and was respected by his peers. Justice Felix Frankfurter once remarked to Justice Louis Brandeis that it was “difficult for me to understand why a man who is so good a Chief Justice... could have been so bad as President.” Taft remains the only person to have led both the Executive and Judicial branches of the United States government. He considered his time as Chief Justice to be the highest point of his career; allegedly, he once remarked “I do not remember that I was ever President.”

As an afterthought, I have been wondering why Teddy Roosevelt, an authentic American patriot and a very wise man, would engage his erstwhile protégé, and now a reluctant President Taft in an election brawl that was bound to end up undermining the Republican Party and delivering victory to the Democrats? He must have realized that by splitting the Republican vote he was leaving no chance for his own success, and thus committing a political harakiri. Was he deliberately sabotaging a bad deal offered by the Republican Party, in favor of a better deal for America, offered by the competitors?

Ironically, this trick of running against your own party was repeated by Ronald Reagan against Gerald Ford in 1976, by Ted Kennedy against Jimmy Carter in 1980, and of course by Ross Perot, denying President G. H. W. Bush his likely chance to be reelected by splitting the Republican vote in a three-party race in 1992.

In a way, by thus rising against your own party with little to zero chance of personal gain, such a man rises above partisan politics, which is a commendable action when it is done by a strong political leader on principle. I have no doubt that in TR’s situation that must have been the case. With some of the later examples, though, I suspect external political manipulation more than personal conviction. But this is a matter for the historians of the future to decide. I do hope that sometime down the road history shall come out of its present-day coma, and settle the outstanding scores.