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Of paramount importance was a successor who would sustain and advance his agenda, and there was no man he trusted more to uphold the progressive cause than William Howard Taft. Reporters were fascinated by “the deep, unbroken friendship” the two shared, “like unsophisticated schoolboys when together,” one journalist expounded, “each apparently under the spell of a romantic affection, a strong, simple sense of knightly companionship in the great field of moral errantry and patriotic adventure.” Roosevelt knew he would have to proceed carefully to help his friend get elected. “I am well aware,” he told William Allen White, “that nothing would more certainly ruin Taft’s chances than to have it supposed that I was trying to dictate his nomination.” Nevertheless, he defiantly continued, “it is preposterously absurd to say that I have not the right to have my choice as regards the candidates for the Presidency, and that it is not my duty to try to exercise that choice in favor of the man who will carry out the governmental principles in which I believe with all my heart and soul.”

To that end, Roosevelt launched a private campaign of persuasion, engineering a boom of support for Taft’s candidacy. In personal letters and meetings, he repeatedly insisted that he would “do all in his power” for Taft, though he could say nothing in public. To visitors, he extolled Taft’s “boundless courage,” emphasizing his absolute freedom from “any possible corrupting or beguiling influence.” In off-the-record conversations with journalist friends, he swore that “he would crawl on his hands and knees from the White House to the Capitol” to secure Taft’s election, but if they quoted him, he warned, he would disavow any such statement. A ditty in the Kansas City Times compressed the president’s stance perfectly:

IMPARTIAL MR. ROOSEVELT
Says Roosevelt: “I announce no choice,
To no man will I lend my voice,
I have no private candidate,
I care not whom you nominate—
Just so it’s Taft.”

Indeed, the ferocity of Roosevelt’s desire for a Taft presidency far exceeded the candidate’s own. Taft’s declaration of his candidacy was so tepid, so lacking in conviction that it sounded as if he had decided not to run: “I wish to say,” he began, “that my ambition is not political; that I am not seeking the presidential nomination, that I do not expect to be the Republican candidate.” Still, he avowed, “I am not foolish enough to say that in the improbable event that the opportunity to run for the great office of President were to come to me, I should decline it, for this would not be true.” This tentative announcement prompted speculation that an unwilling Taft had “been drawn into the maelstrom of Presidential politics,” finally yielding to “the persistent pleading of the President and strong personal friends.” Even after announcing his candidacy, Taft indicated a preference for working “behind the scenes” and pursuing his duties “irrespective of politics.” He found the prospect of soliciting support repugnant and “was very much averse” to burdening his friends with requests for assistance. William Taft, observed a Chicago Tribune reporter, seemed to have “an almost morbid fear of being placed in the attitude of struggling for the Presidency.”

Initially, Taft’s reluctance appeared a winning quality, evidence that the office should seek the man rather than the man the office. “Taft is not a politician in the sense that he is a wire-puller and a seeker of power,” commended The Washington Post, “but as a natural statesman and leader, he draws all men to him. Let him appear at a public reception, let him make a speech before a large audience, let him attend a private gathering and when he leaves, at least fifty percent of the people will be his friends.” The New York Times too observed that while Taft might be ignorant of “the little details of politics, the methods of juggling a ward primary, and of playing horse with a caucus,” he nevertheless commanded “a bigger, broader kind of politics . . . the kind that is frank and open.”

Taft’s peculiar diffidence over his presidential hopes also freed him to take a principled stand when faced with trouble brewing in Ohio. In late March 1907, Roosevelt’s nemesis, the reactionary senator Joseph Foraker, openly assailed Taft’s candidacy, declaring his intention to challenge Taft for the endorsement of the Republican State Committee. The press predicted that a state committee endorsement of Foraker for president could prove crippling to Taft’s candidacy.

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Drawing on his executive experience, he aspired to nothing less than reform of the administrative structure of the entire federal judiciary, making it fully equal in independence, power, and dignity to the White House and Congress. “I love judges, and I love courts,” he once enthused. “They are my ideals on earth of what we shall meet afterward in heaven under a just God.”16 And Taft was able to achieve as chief justice the constitutional vision that had eluded him as president, exercising executive leadership that had been absent from the Court since the tenure of the greatest chief justice, John Marshall. The legal scholar Robert Post has written that “it was Taft who, as former chief magistrate of the Executive Branch, transformed the role of Chief Justice into something analogous to a chief executive for the judicial branch of government.”17 Taft was convinced that “the efficient administration of justice” would help the federal judiciary defend the Constitution against populist threats posed by state legislatures and juries and also keep the president and Congress within their constitutionally appointed bounds. And in so doing, he created the modern federal judiciary as a separate and cohesive branch of government.

Chuka Umana posted:

by centerting Taft's fatness instead of his merits you're committing an act of fat genocide on behalf of thinness. It's time to interrogate the violence of your thinness,

Quotey posted:

he wasnt even that fat tbh

Xaris posted:

Ssthalar posted:

That is, uh, an interesting tie-pin there.

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Nothing but respect for the large American sons.

frankenfreak posted:

frankenfreak posted:

Quotey posted:

virgin voter: wow, extra sessions!

chad aunt delia: wow, extra servings!

frankenfreak posted:

frankenfreak posted:

frankenfreak posted:

the sex ghost posted:

Working hard, thank you!

the sex ghost posted:

Working hard, thank you!

the sex ghost posted:

I've spent five minutes trying to rewrite the theme from Shaft but with Taft and I'm too stupid can someone else sort this tia