Abstract
William Howard Taft’s name has long been associated with political failure. Elected as president in 1908 as the heir apparent to Theodore Roosevelt’s highly consequential eight years in the White House, Taft found himself in a bitter contest with the leaders of a cresting Progressive movement and eventually Roosevelt himself, who viewed Taft’s troubles as an opportunity to return to past mastery. Although Taft and party regulars were able to withstand TR’s strong challenge for the Republican nomination, the Colonel’s 1912 Progressive Party campaign, a full-throated defense of the causes that reformers had been championing for the better part of a decade, sealed the incumbent president’s fate. Taft finished third in this contest, running behind both Roosevelt and the Democratic candidate, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, who was ultimately elected president. Not only did Taft suffer the worst defeat an incumbent president has ever suffered in American history, but his core campaign principles, dedicated to a defense of the Constitution as he understood it, appeared to be routed as well. The combined votes of Wilson, Roosevelt, and the Socialist candidate Eugene Debs, whose 6 percent of the vote represented the high tide of socialism in America, exceeded 75 percent.
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Notes
For example, see Jonathan Lurie, William Howard Taft: The Travails of a Progressive Conservative (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Peri E. Arnold, Remaking the Presidency: Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson, 1901–1916 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), chapters 4 and 5.
William Howard Taft, “The President and His Powers,” in David H. Burton, ed., The Collected Works of William Howard Taft (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003), 6: 104.
George W. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912 (New York: Harper, 1958), 226.
Ibid., 180.
Ibid., 227.
Taft to W. R. Nelson, February 23, 1909, cited in Paolo E. Coletta. The Presidency of William Howard Taft (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973), 45–46.
Roosevelt message and letter to White found in Elting E. Morison, ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 6: 1392–93.
For a discussion of Roosevelt’s public campaign for the Hepburn Bill, see Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 97–116, and Elmer Cornwell, Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), 24–26.
Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (New York: Harper, 2009).
Cited in William Henry Harbough, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar Strauss and Cudahy, 1961), 384.
William Howard Taft to L. O. O’Brien, January 21, 1911, William Howard Taft Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC [hereafter cited as Taft Papers].
John A. Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978), 8.
John C. O’Laughlin to Roosevelt, March 28, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
James Madison, “Federalist 10,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, the Federalist Papers, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 62.
Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Columbus, Ohio,” September 16, 1859, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 3: 423–24.
Charles E. Merriam, A History of American Political Theories (New York: Macmillan, 1903), 326.
George Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1946), 228.
William Howard Taft, “The Sign of the Times,” Address given before the Electrical Manufacturers Club, Hot Springs, VA, November 6, 1913, Taft Papers.
Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 291.
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909; reprint, New York: Dutton, 1963), 278–79.
For a detailed discussion of the Progressive Party vote, see Sidney M. Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 252–60; and Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 131–56.
Report of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1937), 53. The President’s Committee on Administrative Management, headed by Louis Brownlow, played a central role in the planning and policies of New Deal institutions. Charles Merriam, an influential advisor to TR in 1912, was an important member of this committee. On the link between Progressivism and the New Deal, see Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation ofthe American Party System since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 9, no.1 (March 2011): 25–43.
Jason Heller, Taft: 2012 (Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2012), 115.
Justin Crow, “The Forging of Judiciary Autonomy: Political Entrepreneurship and the Reforms of William Howard Taft,” The Journal of Politics, vol. 69, no. 1 (February 2007): 73–87.
Myers v. United States 272 U.S. 52 (1926); Humphrey’s Executor v. United States 295 U.S. 602 (1935).
Alpheus Thomas Mason, William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), 120.
Justice John Roberts’s balanced decision in the case testing the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, delivered in the midst of a presidential campaign shaped in large part by the constitutional issues it raised, testifies to the enduring importance of Taft’s ambition for a modern-day court. See National Federation of Independent Business, et al., Petitioners v. Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al., 567 U.S. 2012.
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© 2013 Joseph Postell and Johnathan O’Neill
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Milkis, S.M. (2013). William Howard Taft and the Struggle for the Soul of the Constitution. In: Postell, J., O’Neill, J. (eds) Toward an American Conservatism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137300966_4
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