x, for what it's worth, I have somewhere in the files a Taft speech from approx. 1910/12 to an Irish audience in which he tells them that the Irish are the least troublesome of immigrants.
I suppose this comes of the labor agitation of the period, which was perceived to have been caused by eastern Europeans. Anarchists and socialists did not generally have Irish names. I don't think a national politician of the 1850s would have said any such thing.
The stereotypes were well set, however. See this from Taft's ADC's diary, about a banquet at the Waldorf for the Sixty-Ninth (Irish) Regiment: "...made up of Irish Catholics and a husky looking lot of paddies there were too. But I felt that they could fight when called upon. They had certainly been feasting well before we got there for it was difficult that the President could speak he was so often interrupted by hilarious but good natured yells from enthusiastic irishmen."
And this, from a banquet of the "Republican Hungarian Club," the ADC noted, "before sitting down I presented over four hundred of them. Imagine presenting four hundred Austro Hungarians by name! No wonder I slept until eleven the next day."
Chong, more apropos.
I was referring to the Irish of the 1840s and 1850s.
Politicians a century ago seem really to have been looking to win every vote, rather than cynically seeking to win some groups and write off others. Doubtless there were the cynical manipulators and wire-pullers behind the scenes, but they had the smarts to stay in the wings, and not get in the way of the candidates on the stage of public discourse. Today the analysts and spin doctors are almost the stars. Politicians today can woo everyone, but there's so much talk of key demographics and who's aiming to win over which group, that we don't take what candidates say at face value, but always look for a hidden agenda. We know, or think we know, which statements to roll our eyes at, and find little to trust in political speeches.
Taft's reputation seems to have benefitted from his sincerity. Since he didn't especially want the Presidency, people are more inclined to accept that he really believed what he said, or at least that he wasn't simply saying it for personal advantage, but out of civic-mindedness and public-spiritedness. Nor were their great unconscious drives behind his comments as was the case with Wilson, Roosevelt, and others. So even to some who disagree with the stances Taft took, he seems to look more like a Washington, and less like a partisan, ideologue, or self-seeker. Unfortunately, such people don't often rise to the top or if they do, don't stay there for long, since you can't take the "politics" out of government.