William
Howard Taft (No. 27) – Cincinnati, OH
September
30 – October 1
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| William Howard Taft (source: menu at Taft's Ale House) |
Taft is most remembered
for his weight, which reached as much as 350 pounds. That is unfortunate,
because he had a long career serving the United States, culminating in the presidency and the
Supreme Court. He is the only person to serve both as president and chief
justice.
Consider: Taft was
appointed a judge while still in his 20s, after graduating first in his class
at Yale Law; named solicitor general; a judge on the 6th Circuit
Court of Appeals; civilian governor of the Philippines, secretary of war under
Roosevelt, and then vice president under Roosevelt. He also was in charge of
the Lincoln Memorial Commission.
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| Taft throwing out the first pitch. |
He was the first
president to throw the first pitch at a baseball game, in 1910 at Griffith
Stadium before a Washington Senators game. (Now he is one of the Washington
Nationals’ Racing Presidents, with Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Teddy
Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.) He was
also the first president to have a primitive air conditioning system installed
at the White House.
Taft’s legacy suffers
because he followed Roosevelt, considered one of the four greatest presidents.
Unfortunately, his house
doesn’t compare to Roosevelt’s, either.
So our tour there was
disappointing. But that’s because of the history of the Taft residence itself.
It was sold and turned into an apartment house. Then, the National Park Service
turned the downstairs into classrooms when it bought it. The upstairs is a
historical exhibit, which is full of information about the entire Taft family.
Only two rooms are on exhibit – the library and the parlor - and they are full
of reproductions. There isn’t even a display of White House china. But Taft only lived the house through high
school although he and his wife, Nellie, did live in the house for a month after marriage
before they moved to a different part of Cincinnati.
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| Our tour. |
And our guide, Paula,
was quirky. “Been here since
2001—you wouldn’t believe the things I know,” she spouted as she rattled off
the birth weight and length of Taft (9 lbs., 8 oz. and 21 inches).
* * *
Taft was not a natural
politician. It was his wife, Nellie—a
strong, independent woman—who pushed him into politics. If she couldn’t be a politician, she could be
the next best thing—a politician’s wife.
(It’s ironic that she had a stroke not long after Taft won the
presidency and was challenged fulfilling her role as first lady. One thing she did manage to do was accept
Japan’s friendship gift of cherry trees, which were planted along the Tidal
Basin and still thrive today.)
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| A young Taft sits on the post outside his boyhood home in the mid-late 1800s. |
Taft was more interested in contemplating
questions of policy than in the political process (Gould, 2009). He gravitated toward a judgeship with his
appointment to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (Moore, 2007).
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| The house today--same post. |
* * *
As the election of 1908
loomed, TR knew he needed to be true to his word and not run for a third term. He convinced his vice president and friend, Taft,
to carry on his legacy. TR advised Taft
and campaigned
hard for him. It was TR who advised Taft to overcome his objections and take
political contributions. In the end,
Taft won the presidency with twice as
many electoral votes (321) as long-time presidential aspirant, William Jennings
Bryan (162).
But his presidency was
not spectacular.
Taft
went against the Republican grain of high tariffs and wanted to lower
them. Congress passed a bill with
moderate reductions in tariffs and Taft signed it.
Taft
promoted “dollar diplomacy” which combined diplomacy with economic
considerations such as promoting trade (i.e., selling battleships to Argentina)—not
dissimilar to what goes on today.
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| Taft family. His son Robert (right) became a huge political figure in his own right and was known as Mr. Republican. |
Taft continued U.S.
involvement in Central America when he dispatched 100 marines to quell an
uprising in Nicaragua. Our involvement
in Central American politics would continue until the end of the century.
TR and Taft’s friendship
frayed almost from the start of Taft’s presidency. TR had assured his former Cabinet officers that
Taft would surely keep all of them in place.
But Taft removed most of them including replacing the Secretary of the
Interior with pro-business Robert Ballinger.
Roosevelt was miffed.
And Taft moved in a more
conservative direction than the progressive TR.
Philosophically, Taft believed in operating strictly within the
limits of the Constitution (like Franklin Pierce). Taft said:
“We have a government of limited power under the Constitution.” (Gould, 2009)TR, on the other hand, believed
that a president could do anything that was not explicitly prohibited by the
Constitution (like Barack Obama or Donald Trump).
By
1910, Roosevelt was convinced that Taft’s policies were not aligned with
his. TR sat on the sidelines and watched
as Taft unraveled his legacy. TR said of
Taft, “He is a flubdub with a streak of the second-rate and the common in him,
and he has not the slightest idea of what is necessary if this country is to
make social and industrial progress.”
(Gould, 2009). And much of the country agreed with TR—the Democrats won back the
House in 1910 for the “first time since 1894.”
This majority would last until the administration of his cousin, FDR (Gould,
2009).
It
was under the Taft administration that Congress proposed that a personal income
tax be made part of the Constitution. It
was eventually ratified in 1913 as the Sixteenth Amendment. (Up to that
time the federal budget was made up of tariffs and excise taxes.)
The
ongoing national debate about immigration continued during Taft’s
administration. Congress sent him a bill
to impose a literacy test to potential immigrants but his secretary of commerce
and labor, Charles Nagel, convinced Taft to veto the bill. Nagel said, “we need labor in this country,
and the natives are unwilling to do the work which the aliens come over to
do.” Congress almost overturned his veto
but were unable to do so (Gould, 2009).
As
the election of 2012 loomed, Taft began to play the race card to attract
Southern voters. He phased out black
office holders including Roosevelt’s appointment of William Crum as collector
of customs for Charleston, SC. He also
appointed southern Democrats as judges.
His logic was that blacks had nowhere else to go. They surely wouldn’t vote for the former
slavery supporting Democrats. And he was
right.
By this time, TR had
decided to run against his former friend Taft for the Republican nomination. But he was not successful. So, he left the Republican Party and ran as
the candidate of the progressive Bull Moose Party. Woodrow Wilson was the
Democratic candidate. Taft never had a
chance. He was soundly whipped and won only
8 electoral votes compared to Roosevelt with 88 and Woodrow Wilson—the runaway
winner—with 435.
* * *
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| Chief Justice William Howard Taft |
As chief justice, he
convinced Congress to let the Supreme Court choose the cases it would hear. He
also reformed the lower court system, and got the ball rolling on a new home
for the Supreme Court where it stands today. Until the new building was constructed,
the high court had a small space on the Senate side of the Capitol – so small
that the justices had to work at home. In his eight years on
the Court, he drafted 250 opinions.
But
his health declined and he retired from the Supreme Court in February
1930. He died a month later. Nellie
lived for another 13 years and is buried next to her husband at Arlington
National Cemetery. He was the first
president to be buried at Arlington.
* * *
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| The Taft Ale House was formerly St. Paul's church. |
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| Inside the Ale House. That's not an altar in the background. |
After our visit to the
house, we headed to a local B&B. We decided to take a quick nap before
exploring. But after about five minutes, Tom awoke to the feel of something (many
somethings) crawling on his arm. Black
dots. Bedbugs? “We’re leaving,” he said as he leapt off the bed. As he headed to
the main house to find the hostess, Cathy moved our luggage out to the street.
When the caretaker came by and asked her what happened, Cathy told him, “We
found bedbugs.” Sight unseen, he corrected us, “Those aren’t bedbugs. They’re
fleas.” Then the caretaker said something about using
mothballs to get rid of the sewage small.
Sewage smell? The hostess told
Tom something about fumigating the room because of squirrels. Squirrels?
Is that how your get rid of squirrels?
(We knew something was up when we walked in earlier and smelled
something like mothballs, or pesticides, or fumigants. And there were these two large fans plugged
in. These were not cute little fans – they
were industrial-sized “let’s blow that awful smell out of here before Cathy and
Tom arrive” type fans.) When we left,
the hostess ran after us to offer us a bottle of wine. But since we were flying we couldn’t take it. We promised her we wouldn’t name the B&B.
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| When the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge opened in 1866, it was the longest suspension bridge i the world. |
We then headed across
the Ohio River to Covington, Ky., where we stayed at the Renaissance. Despite
the large number of liquor stores nearby (including a drive-thru), it was a
great location. We walked to dinner in the Mainstrasse Village, a cute area
full of shops and restaurants along Main Street.
As on many of these
trips, Cathy went running the next morning. She ran along the Covington
waterfront, crossed the historic John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, and then ran along the
Cincinnati waterfront, before heading back over the bridge for a shower. Delightful!
We then ate brunch in downtown Covington at cute Rima's Diner where we tried goetta. This is a Cincinnati staple
created by German factory workers in the 19th century, who
added oats and other grains to their sausage to make the meat go farther.
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| Goetta at Rima's Diner. |
Directions
The William Howard Taft
National Historic Site is located at 2038 Auburn Avenue in Cincinnati. It is open seven days a week.
References
Current, Richard N., T.Harry
Williams, and Frank Freidel. 1975. American
History: A Survey. Fourth Edition. Volume II:
Since 1865. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, NY.
Gould, Lewis L. 2009.
The William Howard Taft Presidency.
University Press of Kansas.
Moore, Katheryn. 2007. The American President. Fall River Press. New York, New York.
Riccards, Michael P. 1995. The Ferocious Engine of Democracy. Madison Books. Lanham, MD
Videos
History
Channel. 2005. The
Presidents: The Lives and Legacies of
the 43 Leaders of the United States.
Websites
