27th President of the United States
SCOTUS in 1925, standing from L to R - Sanford, Sutherland, Butler, Stone, sitting - McReynolds, Holmes, TAFT, Van Devanter, Brandeis.
Posted on 03/08/2006 3:22:17 AM PST by Tarkin
Twenty-seventh President of the United States and its tenth Chief Justice, William Howard Taft was the only man in the history of the country to become the head of both the Executive and Judicial Departments of the Federal Government.
Elected to the Presidency to succeed Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 by a tremendous majority, both popular and electoral, he met overwhelming defeat four years later in the political catastrophe which wrecked temporarily the Republican Party, ruptured his long friendship with Roosevelt, who had brought about his first nomination for the Presidency, and resulted in the election of Woodrow Wilson.
The worst beaten Republican candidate who ever ran for the highest office in the nation--for he received only the eight electoral votes of Utah and Vermont--President Taft left the White House with his Administration discredited, although personally he had lost little of the esteem in which he had been held by his fellow countrymen.
His appointment by President Harding as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, an office which by both temperament and training he was better fitted to hold than that of President, came as a realization of a lifelong ambition, and was received with every manifestation of popular approval. It was a "come-back" unprecedented in American political annals. (...)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
27th President of the United States
SCOTUS in 1925, standing from L to R - Sanford, Sutherland, Butler, Stone, sitting - McReynolds, Holmes, TAFT, Van Devanter, Brandeis.
With Mrs. Clinton election, former president Clinton could be the next...
Stop it - don't even joke like that.......
It has been said, and it is a common platform expression, that it is well to prefer the man above the dollar, as if the preservation of property rights has some other purpose than the assistance to and the uplifting of human rights. Private property was not established in order to gratify love of some material wealth or capital. It was established as an instrumentality in the progress of civilization and the uplifting of man, and it is equality of opportunity that private property promotes by assuring to man the result of his own labor, thrift, and self-restraint.Some Taft stories and humor here: Taft pages.
When, therefore, the demagogue mounts the platform and announces that he prefers the man above the dollar, he ought to be interrogated as to what he means thereby -- whether he is in favor of abolishing the right of the institution of private property and of taking away from the poor man the opportunity to become wealthy by the use of the abilities that God has given him, the cultivation of the virtues with which practice of self-restraint and the exercise of moral courage will fortify him.
- "Taft Fires on His Opponents" New York Times, February 13, 1912
Wasn't he also governor general of the Phillipines earlier? [And did a great job?]
I don't know about the "tremendous (popular vote) majority" Taft got in 1908. He received less than 52% of the vote, but with third party candidates, the Dem got only 43%.
My dad used to say his father would see Taft walking the streets of New Haven back when Taft was a professor at Yale and my grandfather was a machinist. Interesting trivia. I wish I had asked my grandfather for more details about that.
Right on both counts. He successfully transitioned the Philippine occupation from military to civilian control and set the country on the path to self-government.
Taft's 1908 victory was strong. While taking just under 52% of the popular vote, he whipped Democrat Wm. Jennings Bryan who got 43%. The final 5% was shared by the Socialist, Prohibition, and assorted other parties. There was no strong third party movement in 1908. Taft won convincingly.
Taft walked and golfed for exercise. The Taft bridge (Connecticut Ave over Rock Creek Park) in Washington DC was named for him because he often walked it from his house in NW to work at the Capitol as Chief Justice, not a small walk. Downhill, yes, but a few miles. He'd get a ride back home in the evening...
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