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I probably should write up one on Taft, especially since he's perennially on my list of "least evil" US presidents. Who knew not wanting to be president at all might make you less prone to delusions of grandeur?
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Mar 21, 2018 18:56
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axeil posted:I would also really like to read this as all I know about him was that he was real fat and he and Teddy Roosevelt played spoiler to each other and let Woodrow Wilson win in 1912. Basically he was a surprisingly thoughtful person for his time; he often provided public statements only if he personally felt knowledgeable, for example. While conservative, he was fairly self-consistent and extremely anti-trust, moreso than Roosevelt because he felt there was no such thing as a good trust and competition required real choices. He also was known to generally be supportive of workplace safety and workers' rights though he didn't like the progressives because he was afraid of commies. His administration of the Phillipines as Governor was notable for his pushing hard for Phillipine self-governance and for not applying tariffs to their goods as a US territory because he sincerely wanted them back on their feet and made an independent nation. Basically he saw them not as a colonial holding but rather as his charge, being a custodian until they had the infrastructure to be free. His main blind spot was his immense fear of socialism, but he was a man of his time and feared a slippery slope from progressivism. Someone mentioned how Hoover would have been a good president if there were no crises, and Taft is an example of what that kind of presidency looks like: low-key, competent, but generally focused on stabilizing existing institutions and curbing excesses.
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Mar 23, 2018 19:21
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Grouchio posted:And this is where *I* would be having anger strokes. Self-righteous racist starry-eyed cocksucker. Taft would have been better, too. Wilson in retrospect was the worst of the three choices.
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Apr 26, 2018 11:46
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Alter Ego posted:Grant had discovered the presence of an illicit cotton black market trade in the district where he was military governor. The money was funding the Confederates and prolonging the war. Grant’s response? General Order 11, which expelled “Jews, as a class”, from the district. Grant believed that Jewish trade merchants were violating regulations. The Dollop podcast has an episode entirely on General Order 11 and, as hosed up as it was, in his post-war career Grant ended up doing more for the rights and representation of Jewish Americans than just about any president in history. If I recall there is no proof of it being driven by guilt, but in the end he won over the prominent Jewish figures of the time who hated his actions during the war.
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May 7, 2018 11:40
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axeil posted:Ross Perot and Robert La Follette would be interesting too. All you ever wanted to know about Ross Perot
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May 9, 2018 20:35
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Android Apocalypse posted:As for Taft's years, the Philippine-American War is going to be a fun read. I just remember learning that Taft called Filipinos "Our Little Brown Brothers" felt kinda patronizing to me. So as the resident Taft apologist/advocate, I was shocked to learn he was probably the only US leader to respect and have genuine good interests for them. He integrated Phillipino people with the US colonial government and pushed for the US to fix the mess it made and give them independence as their own nation. He was, in that regard, far less racist than his contemporaries and he (at least in my read) saw them as their own people rather than having a paternalistic attitude. His main downside was his incredible fear of creeping socialism in his later years, but even then, he hated corrupt companies because he saw them as a threat to good capitalism.
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May 15, 2018 22:01
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Hypnobeard posted:Adams or Taft. I might do Taft if I stop feeling lazy.
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May 31, 2018 17:42
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Android Apocalypse posted:What I remember about Washington as a general was that Lafayette pretty much won the war for the colonists. Don't forget von Steuben, and Kościuszko. Basically foreigners saved our rear end hard.
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May 31, 2018 18:28
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boner confessor posted:eh gates and daniel morgan were pretty important also And the fortifications Kościuszko designed made any advances from the British a living hell.
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May 31, 2018 18:41
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" already, it's been 240 years and he helped more than he hindered
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:What superweapons existed in 1778? A bigger cannon? Poland's Not-So-Golden Boy Tadeusz Kościuszko was Lithuanian-Polish, and at the age of 30 he decides "human rights are great, let's help these loving colonists!" and fucks off to America with a cadre of other European military officers. Trained as an architect and artist as well as going to French military academies by auditing classes and haunting their libraries (he was ineligible to actually attend), he was something of a polymath, and after several attempts to gently caress with his country by the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians, he was unable to further his career in his native land. Not to mention his brother poo poo away his family's wealth and he was unable to elope with his lover because oops, he tried to elope with a provincial governor's daughter and he wasn't high class enough. Poland's Boy Genius Catches the Democracy Bug  Arriving in the US, he gets a commission in 1776 and sets to work fortifying the country, including: - Setting up Fort Billingsport - Helping the Fort Ticonderoga with a campaign of sabotage to roads and bridges to slow the chasing British - Surveyed the battlefield at Saratoga, and designed the Continental fortifications. For his work there, General Gates praised him: General Gates posted:"[T]he great tacticians of the campaign were hills and forests, which a young Polish engineer was skillful enough to select for my encampment." Then he decided to compose a Polish dance for the harpsicord, because in the Age of Enlightenment, you have to be MAXIMUM POLYMATH. He also helped to fortify West Point under General Gates, then served under General Nathanael Greene as his chief engineer building and surveying anything needed. After the war, despite getting the Order of Cincinnati, he wasn't getting paid. Running low on cash, and knowing America was free, he was ready to return home and preach rule by the people. Kościuszko, Defender of Poland Post-war he returned to his native Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, nearly broke and down on his luck until finally in 1790 he got a commission in the army there. All was not well, though, as Austria and Russia invaded not long after. See, the Commonwealth had just become a constitutional monarchy and well, reactionary neighbors wanted all this revolution business squashed. Kościuszko thought the constitution hadn't gone far enough but enthusiastically supported the peaceful shift toward a more free society and wanted to defend his home. Unfortunately, our man Kościuszko had all his grand strategies to coalesce forces and try to crush one of the main Russian forces rejected in favor of a traditional defense, which meant getting their asses kicked by being spread too thin. But, he learned in the Revolutionary War how to retreat like an rear end in a top hat and made life hell for the Russians, using the terrain and impromptu fortifications to win engagements where he was sometimes outnumbered 5 to 1. Offered praise and a royal award from his king, Kościuszko refused, citing his republican ideals. Revolutionary France gave him honorary citizenship as well for his success fighting evil monarchies. Ultimately, though, the Commonwealth sued for peace and ceded tons of territory to Russia. Finding himself something of a man with no country, he watches as the first and second Polish partition carve up his country like a Christmas goose and the constitution Kościuszko saw as his country's future destroyed as a condition for peace. The Kościuszko Uprising: the last gasp of Polish Sovereignty Angry, vengeful, and deeply patriotic, he saw no choice but to try and retake his country. The Kościuszko Uprising in 1794 was a bloodbath despite all his good intentions of raising a volunteer army of peasants and resisting on home soil. After several tactical victories but no strategic gains, he was wounded and captured by the Russians, who then slaughtered his army in the Battle of Praga and then did their usual massive civilian murders thing Russians are wont to do. The third Polish partition more or less meant the end of any Polish country for over a century. Only the hatred Tsar Paul I had for Catherine the Great helped get him get pardoned and released in 1796, and he promptly hosed off to the US for a time to recover, but, under threat from the Alien and Sedition Acts and known as a Democratic-Republican sympathizer, he didn't have a long-term plan for staying so long as Adams was president. Then he heard about Napoleon allowing Polish troops to fight Prussia and Russia to take back his homeland, and his itch for revolution returned. With the help of a fake passport from Thomas Jefferson, he was off to France. But, for a bit of hosed upedness, here's something I just learned about his love of freedom, hatred of slavery, and douchebaggery of good old TJ that happened before he left: Wikipedia posted:Before Kościuszko left for France, he collected his back pay, wrote a will, and entrusted it to Jefferson as executor. Kościuszko and Jefferson had become firm friends by 1797 and thereafter corresponded for twenty years in a spirit of mutual admiration. Jefferson wrote that "He is as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known." In the will, Kościuszko left his American estate to be sold to buy the freedom of black slaves, including Jefferson's own, and to educate them for independent life and work. Several years after Kościuszko's death, Jefferson, aged 77, pleaded inability to act as executor due to age and the numerous legal complexities of the bequest, which was tied up in the courts until 1856. Jefferson recommended his friend John Hartwell Cocke, who also opposed slavery, as executor, but Cocke likewise declined to execute the bequest. The case of Kościuszko's American estate went three times to the U.S. Supreme Court. He had made four wills, three of which postdated the American one. None of the money that Kościuszko had earmarked for the manumission and education of African Americans in the United States was ever used for that purpose. Though the American will was never carried out, its legacy went to found an educational institute for African Americans in the United States—at Newark, New Jersey, in 1826, bearing Kościuszko's name. Polish Freedom Fighter 2: Electric Boogaloo Arriving in France, Kościuszko realized he hosed up. Napoleon was clearly a dictator that would kill the French Republic and in turn, Napoleon hated him right back and wasn't going to give him the real chance to have an independent Poland. Until he died in 1817, Kościuszko continued to try and create a free Polish state, or at least to help those left behind to emigrate elsewhere as he did. His legacy was that of a globe-trotting freedom fighter, a lover of all things democracy, and a military engineer and leader. Kosciuszko has his name on many bridges in the US, and his home he recuperated in after the uprising is a national historic landmark in Philly. All things considered, he always had his heart in the right place, man of his time or not. Dude was legit. Blindeye fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jun 1, 2018 |
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Jun 1, 2018 01:25
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axeil posted:These are also excellent and I made a new bonus section of the OP for non-Presidential characters like this but who still are interesting. Well now I'm just embarassed at how many typos my writeup had. I cleaned it up now that I don't have a puppy distracting me while I write. Hopefully this weekend I'll start working on a Taft effortpost.
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Jun 1, 2018 14:45
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William Howard Taft, everyman (with a little dab of privilege) Born in Cincinnati to a family that, at the time, was from a family with roots in America dating to the 1600s made up of educated professionals (Taft's grandfather was in the Vermont legislature, for example), but lived by oddly modest means in 1857. His father Alphonso had worked his way up to becoming Secretary of War for President Grant during Taft's formative years, and in turn this might have influenced their thought of Taft as being hardworking but not exceptional in intelligence. However, for a family of politicians, it should be noted that Alphonso was not considered a corrupt politician even in the shitshow of the Grant administration, so the young Taft was surrounded with good models to live by. Taft was a product of one of the first public High Schools, Woodward High School, in Cincinnati before heading to Yale College and then Cincinnati Law School. Once again, his reputation was being a straight shooter, a hard worker, and not being not particularly brilliant. And he wasn't always super heavy. Here's his Yale photo to prove he was a lot better looking than some ghouls we elected to office:  Taft the lawbringer In 1880, Taft ended up becoming a prosecutor in Cincinnati, turning down an offer to turn a part-time journalism job covering legal cases into a full-time job for more pay. This first job only lasted a year, but you can already see his preference for service over pay. Under Chester A. Arthur, Taft was appointed as a tax collector, which lasted a little over a year but during which time he refused to ditch people for political reasons. Leaving to start a private practice in 1883, Taft was already becoming active in the Republican party. As fate would have it, the 29 year old lawyer was given a year to fill a vacant seat on the Ohio Supreme Court in 1887, and was able to win his first election to a 5 year term. Also during this time, he met Helen Herron "Nellie" Taft, his wife and, in my opinion, the real reason he ended up being president. An ambitious woman, Nellie pushed Howard to aim higher throughout their 43 year marriage. She never stopped Taft from pursuing his own goals, but time and again you find her whispering in his ear to pursue politics over law. Taft goes to the big time So, before I go into this next stage of his life, let me explain something about Taft. He was super into law. Like, absolutely uninterested in policy unless he understood the policy personally. His lifelong ambition was being on the Supreme Court, and at the age of 32, he thought he might have an opening. With a vacant seat in 1889, and the support of the Governor of Ohio, he lobbied to get nominated by President Harrison but to no avail. To be fair, while he lobbied hard, part of him knew it was a longshot. But that did mean he got on the President's radar, and was made Solicitor General instead. Our man Taft won 15 of 18 cases before the court, but Nellie was very disappointed at their social life. For her, dining with Supreme Court Justices and lawyers was beneath what Taft could do; she wanted to meet Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, their families and other legislators. In 1892 however, Taft decided on taking a judgeship in the newly expanding 6th Circuit Court. To supplement the comfortable lifestyle Nellie wanted and Taft seemed fine with, his federal income was supplemented by cash from his successful brother Charles (who at one point owned both the Phillies and the Cubs baseball teams). This is really the point where we start to see Taft's nuance as a legal scholar. In an era of union-hating sycophants, Taft sincerely seemed to believe in the right of unions to organize against flagrant abuses from employers. His legal mind is starting to form, where he believes unions themselves are legal to form and to strike, but injunctions can be used to stop strikes and that secondary boycotts (strikes sympathetic to other strikers) was not legal because it hurt businesses that were tangential to the issue at hand. Undoubtedly conservative, he ultimately believed that abuses, especially those that reduced competition, were a threat to capitalism. Taft was still a Republican, but the rise of McKinley was not something he endorsed; to him the man was unpopular even in his own party, and he hoped a rival would emerge. Once William Jennings Bryan ran away with the 1896 Democratic nomination with his Cross of Gold speech, however, he was fully committed to seeing McKinley win, fearing gold hording and economic instability. While hoping for another crack at the Supreme Court, Taft was snubbed in 1898, but that hadn't meant he was forgotten. Soon his life was about to make a complete right turn, and he was going to make his mark as a real leader.... Blindeye fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Jun 2, 2018 |
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Jun 2, 2018 03:16
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JonathonSpectre posted:For some reason he's still lionized and no one knows about Vinegar Joe Stilwell. But yeah, gently caress MacArthur. In my next Taft post I'm planning to cover how the rotten apple didn't fall far from the tree. Arthur MacArthur was military governor of the Philippines for a year and let's just say he liked occupation more than cooperation.
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Jun 3, 2018 14:07
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The Phillipine-American War Before I go into the Taft Commission and his time there, I need to go over the Phillipine-American War, our first foray into the worst aspects of Imperialism. When fighting the Spanish, the US happily helped Emilio Aguinaldo's rebel forces fighting the Spanish for the past six years. Aguinaldo is a complex character, having forcefully taken control of the rebel movement including show-trials and executions of his rivals, and his declaration of Phillipine independence in 1898 wasn't recognized by either the Spanish or the Americans, ostensibly because it didn't form a government of the people. Keep in mind, when Aguinaldo spoke of a Republic, it was very much in line with the caste system the Spanish created; to him, the educated classes needed to rule as an oligarchy over the unwashed masses. Very much an enlightenment-era idea of what democracy was. Considering he'd end up leading a peasant army, he would always have to fight this inner conflict where rebel leadership had different goals than the rebel forces typically did. By 1899 Aguinaldo had tried to form a Republican government, saying that while in exile the US Consul Spencer Pratt and Commodore George Dewey had made a verbal promise to back his government if he helped them take the Phillipines. In actuality, once US forces had landed in the Phillipines, they pretty much told Aguinaldo to stay out of their way, even denying them a chance to fight for the capture of Manila. With the war over, McKinley's Proclamation of Benevolent Assimilation went over like a lead balloon with Aguinaldo, who began rallying his people to resist the ally turned enemy occupying their land and denying them the sovereignty they had fought for. Even so, it took American assholery for this to become as bad as it did. Then Military Governor of the Phillipines Major General Elwell Otis was in no business to be subtle or nuanced about his occupation, as seen from how the war started: wikipedia posted:On the evening of February 4, Private William W. Grayson—a sentry of the 1st Nebraska Volunteer Infantry Regiment—fired the first shots of the war at the corner of Sociego and Silencio Streets, in Santa Mesa. Upon opening fire, Grayson killed a Filipino lieutenant and another Filipino soldier; Filipino historians maintain that the slain soldiers were unarmed. This action triggered the 1899 Battle of Manila. The following day, Filipino General Isidoro Torres came through the lines under a flag of truce to deliver a message from Aguinaldo to General Otis that the fighting had begun accidentally, and that Aguinaldo wished for the hostilities to cease immediately and for the establishment of a neutral zone between the two opposing forces. Otis dismissed these overtures, and replied that the "fighting, having begun, must go on to the grim end". On February 5, General Arthur MacArthur ordered his troops to advance against Filipino troops, beginning a full-scale armed clash. The first Filipino fatality of the war was Corporal Anastacio Felix of the 4th Company, Morong Battalion under Captain Serapio Narváez. The battalion commander was Colonel Luciano San Miguel. You might be wondering who this Arthur MacArthur prick is, and we'll get to him soon, but for now he's Otis' right hand man. Otis, for his part, wanted a military solution to this uprising, and fought with no considering of hearts and minds. Remeber these were guerilla fighters mostly using bolo knives or bows and arrows, not a massive standing army. Otis had no problem razing cities and towns, partitioning civilian populations, and making military decisions without consultation from Washington if he felt it would crush his enemy. In addition, he lied repeatedly about the treatment of US prisoners, claiming they were tortured. However, four reporters smuggled by Aguinaldo into his own ranks as well as returned US prisoners attested to the good treatment they received, even being offered. On the other hand, we'd started to learn some of the tools the Spanish developed for, let's call it...enhanced interrogation...  The "Water Cure" is a favorite of the Spanish Inquisition and its use in the Phillipines has a long history from Spanish rule all the way through the Marcos regime. Similar to waterboarding, it involves forced intake of water instead to induce the sensation of drowning and possible poisoning to get people to talk. Alguinaldo may have resisted use of toture but the Americans went hog wild. Of course, the military tried to keep it on the DL. In addition, the US was forming concentration camps, claiming that packing civilians in these "Suburbs of Hell" as one military officer called them kept them from the fighting and made friend-or-foe determination easier for US forces (if you're not in a camp, clearly you're the enemy!). US forces were rapidly becoming cruel to any Filipinos who dared resist their will. But, this was all on the military side of things, what the hell does this have to do with Taft? Well, while this war raged, the US was trying to establish a civilian government on the island. The First Philippine Commission (Schurman Commission) was the first attempt to figure out US goals for the country. General Otis and George Dewey were the military members of the committee, and while Dewey cooperated, Otis boycotted the commission, thinking it to undermine his authority. The commission generally was ratfucked by both the divisions between Filipino rebel groups and their goals and the absolute trash military leadership itching to crush dissent by force before discussing governance with the native population. Ultimately in January 1900, this commission published its findings, suggesting that the formation of a Bicameral legislature and eventual independence of the nation should be the end goal, but stated that the US needed to remain in order to help shape a national identity lest the country fall into civil war. The Taft Commission  Come 1900, President McKinley called Taft to his office to discuss a new opportunity for him. In exchange for the promise of the next vacant spot on the Supreme Court, Taft was asked to form a civilian government in the Phillipines. Taft only accepted if he could lead the commission and be responsible for his success or failure. By now Otis' right hand man Major-General Arthur MacArthur was not the military governor of the Phillipines, and like Otis, resented civilian control of anything so long as he had brown people to crush. The father of known monster Douglas MacArthur, Arthur had received the medal of honor in the Civil War for...wait for it... "Wikipedia' posted:At the Battle of Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863, during the Chattanooga Campaign, the 18-year-old MacArthur inspired his regiment by seizing and planting the regimental flag on the crest of Missionary Ridge at a particularly critical moment, shouting "On Wisconsin." Doesn't it make you wonder if the Medal of Honor used to be a lot easier to get? Anyway, MacArthur thought Taft's commission was a waste of time on a people not ready for self-rule, and so he clashed with just about every good thing Taft wanted until he was removed in 1901 with the capture of Alguinaldo, seen by many to be the beginning of the end of the war. MacArthur even refused to make room in the Malacañang Palace for Taft's civilian government, so Taft had to set himself up elsewhere on his arrival. The Commission functioned essentially as a proto-legislature, with the commission's head de-facto leader until it the position was renamed Civil Governor. Only after MacArthur's departure do we really see things kick into overdrive as Taft moved to establish a real government. When Taft spoke of "our little brown brothers," it hadn't yet become derogatory. Paternalist racism like Roosevelt had was common, and Taft ultimately saw his role as helping the Phillipines become independent over several decades of tutelage, rather than seeing the island as a strategic resource. In terms of their relationship with the US, some argued his vision was for a commonwealth similar to Canada's connection to the UK, but I can't find much to elaborate on this. But the military occupation force mocked his paternalism: quote:MacArthur’s soldiers sang a song about “our little brown brothers” which ended: He may be a brother of William H. Taft, but he ain’t no friend of mine! Keep in mind, Taft was a legal scholar in mindset, so formation of a government was probably his wet dream. Honestly, I can't fault him his reforms. Dozens of Alguinaldo's revolutionary government members were given high-level positions running the Phillipines, created a civil service system, a health care systems, and created a free public education system that ignored class lines (much to the chagrin of Catholic priests and the wealthy castes of Filipinos who were worried about mixing of poor and rich). He also invested in the island's infrastructure to improve transportation. Taft banned racial segregation from his official functions, and Nellie learned to speak Filipino and hold social functions with locals. Taft was known to attend local cockfights and make trips into the interior when most Americans were happy never to leave their compounds in the major cities, but he suffered for it with dengue fever and amoebic dysentery, as well as needing three operations for abscesses. One of the more memorable things he's known for though was his land reforms. See, as a Spanish colony, the Catholic Church had huge sway, owning large swaths of land and generally keeping the peasants from owning their own property. Taft used the 1902 Philippine Organic Act (which formalized the Taft Commission into a government and destablished Catholicism as the state religion) to negotiate directly with the Vatican for the purchase of over 400,000 acres of Friar lands for redistribution to Filipinos in the form of low-cost mortgages. He was largely successful, although through the 1910s-1940s land would consolidate among rich landowners once more, albeit without the same Catholic control. During this time, he also testified to the United States Senate Committee on the Philippines on the use of torture by US forces, a shock to those who called him to testify assuming he'd be a "safe" witness. Taft made a point of explaining the sincerity of Filipinos compared to Spaniards, and of the differing reactions to the establishment of the new government in different provinces, but it was his admission of "weak" men in the army that had committed war crimes that sent things into a tizzy, even if he did it in passing, claiming that any guerilla war was liable to bring out the worst of some elements in a large army. I'd give Taft a B+ on his efforts. He wanted a Phillipines with Filipino rule, egalitarian education systems and a commitment to democracy under a national identity that could last. The fact that his name still resides on a major avenue in Manila rather than being renamed is testament to the sincerity of his actions with the Phillipine people. He also saw it his job to never distance himself from the local population nor ignore their own desires. On the other hand, he was always deferential to the US and to the Alguinaldo rebel leadership, which was more tilted toward the wealthy than the peasant class. But, in 1902, Taft got the call from the new president, Teddy Roosevelt. Justice George Shiras had just resigned, and TR wanted to make good on McKinley's promise made before his assassination. Taft, honest man he was, refused, stating that his work helping the Phillipines wasn't done. A year later Roosevelt offered him Secretary of War, explaining that he'd still have influence over Phillipine rebuilding. By December 1903, Taft felt comfortable enough to leave the Phillipines and take on his new role in the Roosevelt administration... Time to ride off into the sunset? Nah, Taft was just getting started... 
Blindeye fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jun 3, 2018 |
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Jun 3, 2018 18:43
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Alter Ego posted:That poor animal I like how even Taft hates this photo op. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea?
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Jun 3, 2018 19:17
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I must apologize for neglecting Taft. Part III on his time as Teddy Roosevelt's best bud will happen this week, I promise!
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Jun 11, 2018 01:47
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You thought I was done, weren't you? Well he's baaaaack So Taft made the most of a bad situation in the Phillipines, but he'd also become popular back home, and a threat to T.R., who saw him as a potential candidate in 1904, nevermind the fact that Taft wasn't particularly interested in being President. Unfortunately, SCOTUS spots he coveted had already been filled due to his insistance to see the Phillipine work through, but Teddy kept his rival close by making him Secretary of War in January, 1904. Taft, T.R.'s Fixer Taft was more than just a cabinet secretary though. In short order his keen eye for administrative organization and intelligence made him Roosevelt's confidante and right-hand man, moreso even than Veep Charles W. Fairbanks, who actually was thought to have undermined progressive policies during Roosevelt's second term. Taft on the other hand was an enthusiastic cheerleader for much of Roosevelt's policies, and even turned down an open SCOTUS seat in 1905 and then 1906 to keep serving the president, much to Edith Roosevelt's chagrin, who felt the men too similar and chummy. The Panama Canal had been Teddy's baby around the time Taft came back from the Phillipines. While the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty did give the US rights to build the canal, there was no department tasked with its construction, and Roosevelt trusted Taft to do to Panama what he'd done to the Phillipines. It was Taft who took the disarray at the start of the project and suggested George Goethals lead the project as chief engineer, a move that was instrumental to the US success in Panama. Other examples of Taft doing the more mundane work Roosevelt's imperialism caused were acting as provisional governor of Cuba in 1906 after a request for assistance from the Cuban President at the time due to civil unrest, working to assure Cubans that the US intended to bring stability and leave in short order. Honestly, it always amazed me that we never annexed Cuba, but racism at home played a huge part in it. Part of me believes a US-annexed Cuban state might have changed the 20th century in ways we can't begin to imagine. He also kept his eye on the Phillipines, encouraging duty-free trade to the US, angering domestic sugar and tobacco industries, and heading delegations to the islands in 1905 and 1907. He also made agreements with Japanese diplomats to limit immigration to the US and promises of not interfering in the Phillipines in exchange for the US not objecting to Japanese occupation of Korea. With his impressive resume, Roosevelt all but told Taft to run for the presidency. Reluctant of taking office himself, and especially loyal to Roosevelt considering his deep respect and belief he could win another term, Taft state "I would not run for president if you guaranteed the office. It is awful to be afraid of one's shadow." These words would become all the more prophetic in 1912, but for now T.R. saw Taft as his closest friend and advisor, and the guarantor of his legacy.  Election of 1908, the last gasp of William Jennings Bryan Yeah, 'ole evolution denyin', cross 'o gold cryin', speechifyin' WJB was back after Democrats tried putting up a conservative candidate instead of him. It was a long-shot, but the elder Bryan had the populist wing of the party in the palm of his hand and he took the nomination easily. In his platform were things you're now familiar with today: income and inheritance taxes, and capaign finance reform, specifically all corporate contributions be made public before the election. But he also was in favor of decentralized government and less government spending. Clearly here the conservative-liberal axis is hard to apply to the candidates. Roosevelt had more or less cleared the field for Taft, but the Republican party had adopted a new system of selecting candidates the Democratic party had developed the last election cycle: a primary election. His major challenger was another Ohioan, Governor Joseph Foraker, but Foraker couldn't even carry his home state. Fun side note, though: Fightin' Bob La Follette won Wisconsin during this primary, and any opportunity to remind people of progressive hero Bob La Follette is worth taking. The tally at the convention underscores just how powerful Teddy's endorsement was: William Howard Taft - 702 Philander C. Knox - 68 Charles Evans Hughes - 67 Joseph Gurney Cannon - 58 Charles W. Fairbanks - 40 Robert M. La Follette Sr. - 25 Joseph B. Foraker - 16 Theodore Roosevelt - 3 Not Voting - 1 Yeah, this was not a surprise upset. When it came time to select his runningmate, Taft elected for the low-key New Yorker James S. Sherman, whose Eastern, conservative background made the tut-tutters worried about too much progressivism happy enough to go along with Taft. His background in congress was considered to be as close to being party-neutral as just about anyone, which in this clash of progressive vs. populist may have been considered an advantage.  But there was a sizable third-party presence in this election. William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate and aspiring politician attempted to maneuver his way to the nomination of his Independence Party, a kind of offshoot progressive party of his own making. In what came as quite a surprise to him, everyone running for a nomination on the Independence ticket won except him at their convention. Hearst opted instead to use his newspapers and his political party to accomplish one mission: Destroy William Jennings Bryan The Independence Party was all but tasked with being a presidential spoiler party rather than a real ticket as a result. We also had Eugene V. Debs heading the fractious Socialist Party platform. Debs was deemed the only man fit to keep the radical/moderate coalitions in line despite wanting Bill Haywood, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and freshly acquitted of murder (thanks Clarence Darrow!) in a bombing that he likely condoned but did not directly participate in. Bryan's approach in the election was to accuse the Republicans of "government by privilege," but the problem was Taft, not being a strict partisan, adopted many of his ideas in his own platform and was to the left of Bryan on other issues by being a progressive. Unable to make a strong case and with the free silver issue a thing of the past, Bryan was unable to articulate a truly different choice in the election compared to Taft, who had a record as a capable administrator. Both business and labor supported Taft, finding something for everyone in his platform. To those Bryan holdouts, the Republicans had this to say: "Vote for Taft now, you can vote for Bryan anytime." Poor Eugene V. Debs did a whistle-stop tour in his Red Express, making speeches to the point of exhaustion, but it was screaming into the void. The results were a blowout, with Taft holding 51.6% of the popular vote to Bryan's paltry 43%. Taft had done it, and would now carry on his friend's legacy to the best of his ability. His wife, who wanted to be First Lady more than Taft wanted to be President, couldn't be happier. More about her, later.  I feel bad for poor Taft on his little ox, but the man knew how to dress. People often compare him unfavorably to Roosevelt, but in his time he was known as a gentleman, funny, and he knew how to carry his weight, unlike some presidents. He's evolved into his final form. Behold, President Taft:  Next time we'll cover his presidency, the election of 1912, and his SCOTUS career doing what he had wanted to be doing this whole drat time.
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Jun 16, 2018 23:01
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sean10mm posted:Taft is famous as The Fat One, but funny fact that sort of got forgotten about : he lost a ton of weight when he left office, and kept it off the rest of his life. He was still a seriously big dude, but he went from 340 when he left office to 270, and was closer to 250 late in life. I planned on going into his health pursuits (and love of sports, especially baseball) in my next writeup, but this is a great little piece of correspondance.
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Jun 18, 2018 21:00
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Reagan. I'm halfway through The Invisible Bridge, so I doubt I can ever finish in time for a proper writeup, unless I lean on The Clothes Have No Emperor to make a superficial summary. Taft's next part should be tomorrow. I figure he'll need two more, one for his presidency and one for his career afterward.
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Jun 24, 2018 02:44
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Bicyclops posted:I can't believe you guys don't want to read extensively about "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Well we are doing Taft and Wilson right now, so I can imagine people want to do a different era.
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Jun 24, 2018 03:02
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Mr. Taft Stays in Washington So, where we last left off, 'ole Bill Taft had finally achieved something he'd never imagined (mostly because he didn't care for it). Having assumed the presidency at the behest of his friend Teddy Roosevelt, we had this pimp in the oval office: Roosevelt, for his part, arranged for a year-long African expedition in order to leave Taft be. It's worth noting here that Roosevelt was a very insecure man, and definitely not the type to sit on the sidelines. Despite his endorsement, he was not happy to give up the presidency. So how did he fare? Well, better than most give him credit for. He and his wife also started traditions that many of us take for granted. This started almost immediately upon his inauguration. Breaking precedent, Nellie Taft insisted on riding in the carriage carrying her husband to the Capitol Building, saying "some of the inaugural committee expressed their disapproval, but I had my way and in spite of protests took my place at my husband's side." No doubt there was no one more proud and excited to be there than she was. More on her in a bit. His kids weren't quite as excited, especially Robert Taft, who sadly lacked the less dogmatic convictions of his father in later years but was desperate to be his own man while at Harvard Law, trying not to let anyone know he was the president's son. Apparently the youngest son, Charlie, enjoyed shooting spitballs at Andrew Jackson's portrait in the White House. Good instincts, kiddo. Taft's inaugural, while not memorable for flowery prose, was a fair assessment of his approach to governance, thanking Roosevelt for his mentorship and promising to uphold and solidify the progressive reforms made so far, declaring President Taft posted:in the reforms he has initiated. I should be untrue to myself, to my promises, and to the declarations of the party platform on which I was elected if I did not make the maintenance and enforcement of those reforms a most important feature of my administration. I know it's been said that Wilson was God's True Progressive, but Taft's small c conservatism was in faithful execution of progressive policies and sheparding business through these changes smoothly, rather than railing against them head-on. His approach to progressivism from what I've gathered is that, while he had a sincere belief in the ability of free enterprise to lift all boats, he was inherently suspicious of any kind of monopolization of industry; in his mind, the most important aspect of a free market was a large amount of competition to weed out unethical business practices, and that there was no such thing as a good trust. Taft also was a rule of law kind of guy, who felt a strong hand on the tiller of state made for strong economies. Out of his offices were Roosevelt's eclectic books of history and poetry, his sporting gear, and his hunting trophies. Instead, Taft lined his office with law books, hundreds of them. This kind of sums up his devotion to his office: quote:The law to President Taft, is the same support as some zealots get from religious faith. This even extended to himself. He gave or assumed no powers of the presidency he did not believe had been explicitly declared in the Constitution itself, again shower that unlike modern conservatives, his was a completely self-consistent, unhypocritical position, and never attempted the kind of Imperial Presidency Roosevelt had pursued, much to his mentor's chagrin. Unlike those that come after him, Taft was obsessed with creating and restructuring departments to create an efficient bureaucracy, a theme that started with his creation of the Phillipine government six years prior that will continue through the rest of his life. One of his greatest weaknesses was his relative disinterest in selling himself to the public. He was not militaristic like Roosevelt, loved baseball and had played sports throughout high school and college (a practice his father actually looked upon as a distraction), yet despite being likable in private, he was just plain terrible at being a politician. He was known for long, but uninspiring speeches, and gave opinions more reminiscent of a judge than a politician, generally avoiding giving soundbites to the press, which only further left the field open for his opponents to get their word in. Another interesting aspect of his presidency was his love of automobiles. Having been exposed to them early in his term, he advocated for the transition from horse-drawn carriages to cars for the president's functions, and loved driving himself. He was the first to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, though it's likely he only popularized (not started) the seventh-inning stretch tradition.  Taft's Mark Abroad: Dollar Diplomacy Taft, diligent man that he and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox reorganized the State Department into the modern form known today, with geographically-distributed bureau. In-service training was developed for new staffers helped make sure there was a professional corps of diplomats to support offices across the globe, and Taft hated the patronage jobs given to high-level European diplomatic posts, hoping to find more genuine patriots rather than those looking for favors. Sadly, Knox was a poo poo diplomat, getting along with Taft, but not with congress, the press, or foreign nations he dealt with. Oops. In Europe, Taft argued for non-interference. It would be likely that a Taft government would be more dovish than its Wilsonian counterpart, but that's neither here nor there. What Taft did support was a continuation of the Monroe Doctrine, in the form of Dollar Diplomacy. The basic idea was to promote US business in Latin America to both weaken European influence and (in theory) encourage peace through trade. Unfortunately, Knox again was a poo poo diplomat, and while Taft promoted the idea of arbitration to settle international disputes, instability in Latin American often left the US using its military to help stabilize weak governments in order to continue trade such as in Nicaragua, or to prop up economies such as Haiti and Honduras using US banks to prevent European nations from establishing economic control. The biggest instability nearby was Mexico, however. It's dictator, Porfirio Díaz had found himself threatened by Francisco Madero but had initially had Taft's support to maintain the status quo and protect US interests. As unrest began to wrack the country and spill over into the Arizona territory, Taft put troops on the border to protect US citizens, "putting a lid" on the situation and not directly interfering. Ultimately, Díaz would arrest Madero and start a revolution in the process, one which would lead to civil war and unrest for years to come. Domestic Policy In his four years in office, Taft would bring 70 antitrust cases to court compared to Roosevelt's 40 in 8 years, including going right after US Steel, which had expanded with Roosevelt's blessing. In general Taft was his protege's equal if not better on fighting conglomerates, and it was Taft that made the Labor Department a cabinet-level post on his last day of office. While Roosevelt had been an avid conservationist, Taft found himself disagreeing with the executive action used to encourage it. Taft was a strict believer that this power rested with the congress, not the president, and so would not continue to use this illegitimate power while in office, and got rid of Interior Secretary Garfield, who Roosevelt had expected to stay on. His replacement, Richard Ballinger, had worked at the General Land Office previously, including on claims made by Clarence Cunnigham for mineral rights in Alaska. As Secretary of the Interior, Ballinger then approved the mining claims, a conflict of interest that upset Chief Forester under Roosevelt and Taft, Gifford Pinchot. Louis Glavis, the special agent for the General Land Office that went outside protocol to announce this to the press, and Pinchot himself, ended up losing their positions. On the scale of scandals, this was a relatively minor one, but it further opened a rift between Taft and his friend. Taft was a mixed-bag on race. He leaned toward Booker T. Washington's support of training black Americans for industrial work rather than W.E.B. Du Bois' more progressive call for true equality. He also stated that he'd not appoint blacks to federal jobs where there might be cause for "racial friction." Again, not wanting to rock the boat, he was in effect allowing the South to veto any black federal employees in order to avoid conflict. On immigration, Taft encouraged free immigration, vetoing a bill that would have imposed a literacy test on immigrants. This bill was supported by both unions and the congress at the time, so it no doubt didn't win him any support. Taft's single term allowed him six Supreme Court appointments, the most of anyone save for George Washington and FDR. I imagine he was kicking himself knowing that his dream was to be a justice, but he enjoyed picking his justices based on their legal bonafides, even picking a relatively old, Democratic judge to a seat on the court. Tariffs and the Greatest Progressive Achievement of Taft's Career Taft also found himself in a tiff over tariffs, initially supporting a lowering of the Dingley Tariff that had been used to protect native industries, but the Senate Finance Committee amended it into a net increase in the tariff, which angered progressives. Taft did not interfere in the legislative process, further angering progressives who wanted him to use executive power to pressure congress. Progressives, in turn, tried to add an income tax to it, but Taft again refused, this time using his knowledge of Constitutional Law to point out that it would be overturned. Taft instead advised congress to instead amend the Constitution to allow for an income tax, which passed in congress in 1909 to be sent to the states. While President Wilson gets the credit for its ratification in 1913, the 16th Amendment was Taft's design, and another progressive victory he took no credit for. Still, this and the failed attempt at a free trade agreement in Canada would dog Taft all the way through the next election, putting doubt in voters' minds about his progressive bona-fides. Roosevelt's Disappointment Through all this, Roosevelt had begun to regret not seeking a third term. He rebuffed Taft's offers to have him at the White House, and railed openly against the entire Judicial Branch, going so far as to challenge Marbury v. Madison by calling for courts to be deprived of the power to rule laws unconstitutional, using 1905's Lochner v. New York as his evidence. Taft agreed the Lochner decision was wrong, but still was a believer in the courts, and an incrementalist in his policies. Roosevelt by 1910 was courting Republicans for the presidency once more, promoting his New Nationalism and claiming Taft was just more guilded-age leadership embedded with the RNC. Taft, once again wanting stable governance, felt his work not finished, and while he hated to oppose Roosevelt, hoped to seek out another term now that he was in office. To complicate matters, Archibald Butt, the unfortunately-named military aide of both Roosevelt and Taft who acted as something of a lifeline, died on the Titanic just as the election approached, a loss that hit Taft personally. In this somber mood, he'd enter the 1912 election, seemingly with no allies to turn to for support. Next time we'll get into the election of 1912 and Taft's happy post-presidency, but first, it's time for some bonus Taft presidency information. Nellie Taft, modern First Lady Nellie Taft was every bit the model First Lady in the modern sense, presaging the modern Office of the First Lady. She oversaw redecorations of the White House with exotic plants and tapestries from Asia that she'd seen while in the Phillipines, hosting grand parties, introducing the tradition of music at state dinners, as well as the tradition of the USMC band performances in DC. This active life, though, was interrupted quite early, when she suffered a stroke in May 1909. Taft and Nellie's sisters nursed her back to health, and with Taft's help she regained her ability to speak and function as first lady, though she'd live with a speech impediment the rest of her life. Somehow, though, this didn't slow her down. She attended cabinet meetings and congressional meetings, actively encouraged more visitors to the White House than had been seen in years, and her friendship with the Vice President's wife helped her cement a bond between Taft and his more conservative colleague, whom he had trouble with at first. Her greatest achievement was the Taft's silver wedding anniversary in 1911, a party with 2,000 guests, though her most lasting was her arrangement to plant 3,000 Japanese cherry trees around the tidal basin, planting two with the wife of the Japanese ambassador in 1912 in a ceremony celebrating US-Japanese relations. She even is credited with one of the first instances of influencing a presidential act of policy, lobbying for safer working conditions in federal facilities:  Read this and tell me you don't think Nellie Taft is up there with Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy: Wikipedia posted:Nellie Taft was the first First Lady to publish her memoirs, the first First Lady to own and drive a car, the first First Lady to support women's suffrage, the first First Lady to smoke cigarettes, and the first First Lady to successfully lobby for safety standards in federal workplaces. Also the first First Lady to follow her husband in the inauguration parade. What the hell is up with Aunt Delia's Pies? So we've all seen this comic, right? I don't get it other than "lol fat" but who the hell is Aunt Delia?  Turns out, it was his real Aunt, who he visited quite often and who would send him a mince pie every Thanksgiving. I did some research into this like any good historian and found that yes, in fact even the Gray Lady herself, the New York Times followed the delivery of his aunt's pies to the White House:  
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Jun 25, 2018 03:42
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Tony Gunk posted:This is magnificent work. Sorry for stealing your thunder a bit back there, though. Pfft, your posts are fantastic, don't apologize for that. I'm the one going slow. Of course, I gotta stop posting at the bottom of every page  .
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Jun 25, 2018 12:27
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tigersklaw posted:Not enough talk about how Taft kept a cow on the White House lawn. Great President or Greatest President(ial pet)? Scholars differ Nah, Wilson's herd of sheep wins, plus TR had a menagerie.
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Jun 25, 2018 21:20
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I am about halfway through The Invisible Bridge by Rick Perlstein of Nixonland fame. I might go through it but there is a lot of exaggeration and <citation needed> about his childhood because much of the stories he told were contradictory to others' recollection.
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Jul 1, 2018 03:21
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axeil posted:finally got around to reading this and this is a superb write-up. Makes me appreciate Taft as a president a lot more. I think he would've been a lot more successful if he had come either earlier or later in history. My take is that a lot of his accomplishments were structural, rather flashy or impressive. His small c conservatism and his true belief in a restrained executive that did not heavily interject in legislation (to the point of being deferential when the midterms swung the congress from Republican to Democrat) were absolutely going to always prevent him from becoming a Great president in the historical sense. He's my pick for "least evil" president because he genuinely served in office out of noblesse oblige because he was a lawyer first. But being terrible at the politician sliminess also was a huge vulnerability. A small addendum on Reagan's Childhood and younger adulthood A lot of the stories of his younger days are from Reagan himself, and his notoriously unreliable stories. Of his lifeguarding days, he'd mention a log he'd cut notches into for each life saved, though he credits his boss or his father for suggesting it. A fair number of his rescues claimed they didn't need saving, a fact joked about in his High School yearbook in a small comic: quote:Drowning youth -- Don't rescue me. I want to die. A lot of suspicion among his neighbors about how he was always the lifeguard on duty or happened to be in the water when people were drowning, but no one else was (and no other rescues were reported in the local papers). Some historians believe he may have been trying to play himself up because Reagan was a very insecure young man. The Eureka College protest, however, feels more damning about his taking credit for things he was only incidental to. The origins of the 1928 Eureka college strike aren't known, but it's theorized that opposition to then college President Bert Wilson was either over a ban on dancing or that he was too permissive of student behavior, to give you an idea of how much is really known. The more likely two is that he had learned new administrative practices that bugged the faculty or that he was the target of a campaign by the professor he beat to become college president. It's only in Reagan's 1965 memoir that we hear a tale of budget cuts threatening students, ironic in that within a few years he'd be doing far worse to the UC system as Governor of California. In his telling, what made that protest in Eureka legitimate was that it had 100% support of the faculty. Unless everyone is aggrieved, any protest is illegitimate, I guess? There's a lot of flourish to his telling of the story; students unanimously staying over Thanksgiving break, reading the student newspapers during the football game, and then making an appeal at a special meeting held by the college's board that would vote on administrative changes. That he rallied the school by giving a stirring speech at the school's chapel (selected because the student body wanted a freshman to present their appeal). But his details are all wrong. The meeting was on Tuesday, not football Saturday. No newspaper account mentions Reagan's involvement at all and others in the protest don't remember his account at all, one saying "I wondered whether he and I went to the same school. This thing [the memoir's account] is pretty dreamy." What is of record is Reagan grew in popularity and reputation after the event. Whether by claiming involvement, being active in the student body, or giving a unified voice to an otherwise discordant movement afterward, Reagan's cheerleading and acting keeping him in the spotlight. One fun thing at Eureka he didn't write about? He organized a school dance with a hefty price, and then skimmed half the proceeds for himself. What a guy. Another note, he readily admits his time sportscasting he spent (mostly) making poo poo up to fill in the air between plays. He'd read "ground ball to short stop, runner out" and then flourish it with some amazing play, or make up the activity between plays using his imagination. The man could bullshit is what I'm saying. It also makes me suspect that his politics were largely a function of who is in-group was. To fit in with actors, he was a New Deal democrat, and later, convinced by those around him he wanted to impress, became conservative.
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Jul 1, 2018 16:53
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Android Apocalypse posted:This Reagan recap reminds me that I chose to read Nancy Reagan by Kitty Kelley back in high school when we had to choose a biography in English class. I remember almost nothing of it. There is a lot about his first wife and divorce covered in The Invisible Bridge that was kind of telling. Before GE Theater he was playing second fiddle to his wife and it irked him. There was no abuse but after he divorced the idea of "saving" someone like Nancy appealed to his worldview.
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Jul 4, 2018 15:18
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DC Murderverse posted:I kinda can't wait for FDR but i have to vote for Our Pussyhoundingest President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy JFK but only if you list every affair he had.
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Jul 9, 2018 04:46
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DC Murderverse posted:So i think I mentioned this before, but if you want a fairly in-depth look at what day to day living was like during Reagan's Reign, or if you just really love experiencing deja vu, The Clothes Have No Emperor is the book for you! It's basically a diary of events (mostly political, but with some cultural events added), headlines, scandals, and other day-to-day horrors that people experienced in the 80s. I've cherry-picked some from Reagan's first year to share with you here: I made a running list of comparisons when I read it last year: Black HUD secretary only minority Phillipine President support despite it being dictator Ferdinand Marcos Cut legal aid for the poor Disinterested in details, defers to subordinants The first National Security Advisor accepted gifts from foreigners illicitly Richard DeVos (Betsy DeVos father) Neil Gorsuch's mother Making up poll numbers (in his case regarding Nancy) Tax exempt status for racially discriminating religious universities Disputing jobs reports Inept or inexperienced diplomats Claims protests were organized by outside malevolent forces He regrets his freedom of movement early on Repeats himself Complains about leaks Complains of media negativity Doesn't take notes or read reports Ed meese defends scrooge 10/28/84 chicago tribune endorsement of reagan saying he is a threat Hated reading, bad at history Jeff Sessions because ofc
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Jul 9, 2018 11:28
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Tony Gunk posted:I am currently at page 9 of Part 4 and I am picking my way through Iran-Contra. Oh the rabbit hole of hosed up is very deep. Hell there is some juicy Granada poo poo you skipped (we forgot where the "hostages" were on a nearby island and, in turn, essentially voided the reason we invaded because we didn't secure them until after the invasion was over).
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Jul 9, 2018 19:14
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I might have to pause my work on Taft to do a mini-writeup on SDI and Edward Teller, because it is so much crazier than you think. Let this just sink in: Nuclear bomb-powered x-ray lasers. This would have violated so many more laws and Edward Teller was a lich who was one of the inspirations for Dr. Strangelove.
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Jul 9, 2018 21:37
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So I was wondering if you'd mention it, Tony, but have you come across the Newport sex scandal in the Navy? Basically, a Navy doctor decided to recruit men to have gay sex with sailors to entrap them and rid the Navy of homosexuality. The scandal went as high up as FDR himself and the Dollop did an amazing podcast on it.
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Jul 13, 2018 13:54
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Apologies for double posting, but it's Taft time, motherfuckers. Taft: Electorate Boogaloo So as we left off last time, Taft's fortunes were flagging early. He was almost militantly unwilling to exercise powers of the Presidency he saw no Constitutional foundation for, so much of his success was in executing existing laws to the fullest of his abilities. He was wary of the press, had the worst diplomat for Secretary of State, and increasingly cautious in his governance. By 1910, Democrats had control of Congress, stymying his efforts and earning him no allies among the Progressive wing of his party that blamed his lack of charisma or boldness for their losses. His relationship with Teddy Roosevelt, similarly, had cooled, with the young ex-president chomping at the bit for a third term. Archibald Butt, the friend that bridged the gap between them, died on the Titanic of all things, leaving Taft in a somber mood going into the election year. Still, Taft felt it imperative to remain President against what he felt were two sides of the same radical coin, and there was, no doubt, the issue of defending his pride by not stepping aside. His own mentor, Teddy Roosevelt, had even claimed now that judicial review of the Supreme Court should be eliminated or ignored in order to allow for leaps in progress. Taft had control of much of the party's machinery going into the 1912 election, giving him an edge in the primaries. But Roosevelt was rallying his own base of progressives with his New Nationalism, largely through Republican progressive voters. This was not like Bernie and Hillary; Roosevelt had all the energy and popular support, Taft was only going to get the nomination through the machine politics of the era. Roosevelt crushed Taft in the primary elections, getting 278 of 362 delegates going into the Republican National Convention. Taft, meanwhile, was able to gather most of the delegates selected in district and state conventions, which were not decided by popular votes. Roosevelt tried to challenge the election of these delegates, going so far as to go to the convention in person (Taft did not, per custom at the time) to make his case in person, claiming "we battle for the Lord." Man was he hyperbolic; I'm very convinced Roosevelt was high on his own supply at this point. Now the machine politics of the time are a bit confusing to me, but here's the long and short of what happened: Wikipedia posted:Roosevelt's sole remaining chance was with a friendly convention chairman, who might make rulings on the seating of delegates that favored his side...Taft had won over Root, who agreed to run for temporary chairman of the convention, and the delegates elected Root over Roosevelt's candidate. The Roosevelt forces moved to substitute the delegates they supported for the ones they argued should not be seated. Root made a crucial ruling, that although the contested delegates could not vote on their own seating, they could vote on the other contested delegates, a ruling that assured Taft's nomination, as the motion offered by the Roosevelt forces failed, 567—507. Without a chance to win the nomination, the Roosevelt delegates largely abstained from the final delegate vote, and the progressives vowed to form a new party to nominate Roosevelt themselves. Taft knew this meant his own defeat in the general election, but he believed it also meant stopping Roosevelt, who he believed a greater threat to both the Republican Party and the country by ignoring conservative principles of restraint and respect for law, going so far to say Roosevelt advocated "Benevolent Despotism" with his cult of personality. In its stead he argued for "progressive conservatism," a phrase which has no meaning today but at the time would have meant centrist restraint and consensus-building in its time. Woodrow Wilson, meanwhile, ignored Taft to focus on what he believed would be his true opponent in the race, especially since Taft, still sticking to custom, did not capaign while in office, giving only one speech before the election (imagine if that was still a thing?). Taft also lost all backing financially; no one was going to fund a losing campaign, and Wilson sucked up the lion's share of the cash. Hell, Taft's veep even died six days before the election, needing to be replaced with the president of Columbia University, and progressives kicked Taft off of the ballot in California and South Dakota to ensure they could beat Wilson there. It was a rout, coming in 3rd and securing only 8 electoral votes. Taft's political career was dead. This was before presidential pensions, and Taft was not an especially wealthy man. He needed a job, considering taking up a law practice, but he appointed so many federal judges that taking cases might be an ethical minefield. Instead, now that we had a professor president, he decided to be a president professor, specifically Kent Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School. During this time, Taft also headed the Lincoln Memorial commission, though Democrats considered removing him and replacing him with a Democrat, a move he quipped would actually hurt as opposed to losing the election. In 1913 he served a term heading the American Bar Association, where he removed progressives like Louis Brandeis (who had been involved also in the Ballinger-Pinchot affair) from committee work, consistent with his immense fear of "radical" reform. Taft kept in touch with President Wilson, offering him advice in private but only publically speaking on the subject of the Phillipines, to which he felt most qualified on the subject. He did publically endorse Wilsonian foreign policy and his idea of a League of Nations, stumping for the League to Enforce Peace prior to US involvement in World War I and the 1916 presidential election. He supported US entrance into the war and served as chairman of the Red Cross's executive committee as well as co-chairing the National War Labor Board, chuckling that "being a dead politician, I have become a statesman." His relationship with Teddy Roosevelt never recovered, and they only spoke once during the Wilson years. Even after an effort to get justice Evan Hughes to run against Wilson, Taft and Roosevelt couldn't come to terms with each other and unite to support the new Republican candidate. Only in February 1918, a year before his death, did Roosevelt and Taft engage on friendly terms, and Taft wrote "had he died in a hostile state of mind toward me, I would have mourned the fact all my life. I loved him always and cherish his memory." Taft had helped president Harding in his 1920 campaign and during the transition stated that he would only join the Supreme Court now as Chief Justice, in order to have some power over Brandeis and because he felt odd having appointed two of the sitting justices. With the death of Justice White in 1921, he had his chance to finally fulfill his dream. Chief Justice William Howard Taft would be the first and only President to serve in the judiciary after leaving political office. Taft lives the dream Take a look at how happy this motherfucker was when he took his portrait for Chief Justice, this was what he always wanted:  The Taft court was, in many ways, a traditionally conservative one. Taft was an odd character in many respects: pro labor, but hating unions, pro-privacy yet creating troubling precedents for police probable cause. The liberal lions of the court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Louis Brandeis, often clashed with him in cases, but Taft learned to like Brandeis, finding him a hardworking lawyer, and would walk to work three miles each day with Justice Holmes over what is now renamed the Taft Bridge in Washington, DC, until his failing health caused him to use an automobile to get to work. Compared to his presidential years peaking at 330-340 pounds, Taft lost nearly 100lbs by the time he became a justice, and stuck to strick dieting and exercise regimens from doctors he had started ten years prior during his time in office. His greatest legacy, perhaps, was the leadership he showed to greatly improve and expand the judiciary into a functioning bureaucracy. As before in the Phillipines, Cuba, and the State Department, he was eager to restructure and streamline the new organization handed to him. The court was backlogged with cases, worked out of the Capitol building, and had almost no administrative staff. His greatest legacy to the court was working with the Attorney General to change all that. He testified to congress, gave speeches, and wrote in law journals of the need to expand the judiciary. Congress acted, hiring 24 new judges, creating the Judicial Conference of the United States, although Taft's hope that there would be at-large judges that could be reassigned to congested circuit courts as needed wasn't approved. His lobbying also created the Judiciary Act of 1925, which made some cases discretionary based on whether the court grants a writ of certiorari. This allowed kicking cases down to the lower courts to help reduce backlogs of multiple, similar cases, as was the case with both WWI claims and prohibition claims. Taft fought for his entire term for a new building for the court, hoping to see it to completion. His dream would be completed in 1935, but he would not live to see it. Taft Court Jurisprudence Here's the part where I do a runthrough of Taft's cases, albeit not all-inclusive and focusing most on his own hand in the decisions. It should be noted that he heavily encouraged uninanimous or near-unanimous votes to uphold the office's integrity as apolitical, but there were still some troubling decisions. First, Let's start with labor: Here we see the sort of idosyncratic ideals of Taft's philosophy. Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. rendered a tax on child labor unconstitutional, where Taft argued that because it was a tax and a regulation functioning as a criminal penalty. Ultimately, his logic was the states needed to directly ban child labor rather than use a tax, which is supposed to be to raise funds rather than penalize. Adkins v. Children's Hospital was another massive loss for labor rights, declaring minimum wage laws for women unconstitutional. However, Taft dissented voting alongside Holmes and Brandeis, showing the progressive conscience he had for labor's plight: quote:Legislatures in limiting freedom of contract between employee and employer by a minimum wage proceed on the assumption that employees, in the class receiving least pay, are not upon a full level of equality of choice with their employer and in their necessitous circumstances are prone to accept pretty much anything that is offered. They are peculiarly subject to the overreaching of the harsh and greedy employer. The evils of the sweating system and of the long hours and low wages which are characteristic of it are well known. Now, I agree that it is a disputable question in the field of political economy how far a statutory requirement of maximum hours or minimum wages may be a useful remedy for these evils, and whether it may not make the case of the oppressed employee worse than it was before. But it is not the function of this court to hold congressional acts invalid simply because they are passed to carry out economic views which the court believes to be unwise or unsound. Among other notable cases, the Taft court ruled that congress could conduct investigations (in this case regarding the Teapot Dome Scandal) in McGrain v. Daugherty, and that the president did not require congress to fire political appointees in Myers v. United States. In Balzac v. Porto Rico, Taft wrote in this insular case that territories not "intended" to become US states were only selectively allowed constitutional rights based on what Taft construed as the wishes of the local territorial government. This kind of falls in line with the commonwealth government he developed for the Phillipines, with the intent that it would become a separate nation. Police powers and immigration restrictions were greatly enhanced in terrible ways by the Taft court, partly due to anti-war activities years prior, Taft the teetotaler hearing Prohibition cases, and his own creeping fear of bolshevik uprising being possible in the US. Carroll v. United States allowed warrentless searches of cars with due cause, arguing cars could be moved and that warrants were impractical. Olmstead v. United States made warrantless wiretapping permissibible as evidence until it was overturned in the 1960s, arguing that there was no sign of coersion or entrapment. United States v. Schwimmer prevented an immigrant from naturalizing due to being unwilling to take the oath to serve their country in war, if needed. Gitlow v. New York built on the rules allowing the banning of speech calling for the unlawful overthrow of the government (in this case, a Socialist Party of America writer charged with "criminal anarchy"). The only good to come from that case was that it set the precedent that the Supreme Court could rule on state laws. The most monstrous cases were ones, that, I'm afraid, would have been decided with or without Taft. Lum v. Rice uphead segregation laws applied to all non-white races, and in Buck v. Bell, liberal justice Holmes enthusiastically supported compulsory sterilization "for the protection and health of the state" of unfit persons including the intellectually disabled. Of the two cases, only Buck had a single vote against based on Catholic doctrine, though Justice Butler did not issue a dissenting opinion. But there were also good cases in there. Moore v. Dempsey ruled that mob-dominated trials broke due process. Chung Fook v. White spoke to the fact that laws needed to be read not literally but to how they made the most sense. Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. would make modern zoning laws possible, Nixon v. Herndon ruled banning blacks from Democratic Party votes was unconstitutional (the idea Texas had was only Democrats win the general, so make the primaries whites-only). Harmon v. Tyler ruled that geographic segregation based on race was unconstitutional, though this did not affect things like red-lining. Where we see the longest-lasting legacy of his court in terms of cases was the 14th Amendment. Pierce v. Society of Sisters ruled that not all children could be compelled to attend public school, but the ruled that the 14th amendment's due process law protected individual liberties from state laws. Decided a week after Gitlow, it seemingly made the case that while the 1st amendment was not one of these liberties states could not restrict, privacy was. This precedent is the basis of all future rulings expanding and protecting marriage rights going all the way to Obergefell and to other rights such as abortion. This case was the precedent by which Roe v. Wade rested upon. United States v. Lanza might come us soon, because it is the law that might allow Trump to be charged on state charges. In this case, Taft argued for the dual sovereignty approach to laws, stating that it was not double jeopardy to be tried on federal and state charges for the same crime. As a bonus, I thought I'd share two oddball cases Taft heard in his time, just for shits and giggles: Rindge Co. v. County of Los Angeles argued that eminent domain could be used to scenic highways similar to how it can be used to make parks. Taft loved cars and the legal opinion said parkways running through scenic beauty are comparable. United States v. Ninety-Five Barrels Alleged Apple Cider Vinegar was a case of misbranding as defined by the Pure Food and Drug Act. These bottles were labeled as being made with "selected" apples, but in fact the cider was made with dried apples which then were reconstituted with water and a few additional (safe) chemicals. The argument made was that there was no safety issue, and that the labeling never said the apples were fresh. A trial judge had to taste test fresh vs. dehydrated apple cider vinegar to see how little difference it made, and chemical tests were performed. The official unanimous opinion: while there was no difference in quality or taste, by labeling the apples as "selected," it implied this was fresh apple cider vinegar when it was not, and hence it violated the Pure Food and Drug Act. Later Years By 1929 Taft was slowing down. Unable to walk to work, he noted his difficulty writing and thinking, and flubbed the oath of office for Herbert Hoover. He held on though, worried about the change of tides, writing "I am older and slower and less acute and more confused. However, as long as things continue as they are, and I am able to answer to my place, I must stay on the court in order to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control." Dude was loving terrified that there'd be a revolution, I swear. By December, his ill-health made him miss several cases. By January 1930, he was suffering hallucinations and could barely speak. He only resigned once he was promised by Hoover that his replacement at chief justice would not be Justice Stone (again, he considered too radical to lead). He only just managed to resign and write his praises of his fellow justices before finally passing on March 8, 1930 at the age of 72. His son Robert would become a powerful Republican senator, his son Charles would become mayor of Cincinnati, and his daughter Helen a Professor of History and dean at Bryn Mawr. Taft had always figured he'd be considered middle-of the road, and history bears it out, putting him almost exactly in the middle of every presidential ranking. There is no monument to President Taft. The Cherry Blossoms planted by his wife around the tidal basin bloom every spring, but the one edifice truly tied to his legacy is the Supreme Court itself. With his planning, he ushered in the modern court system, and with over 80% of his cases being unanimous decisions by seeking a unified legal voice across the political spectrum. One of the great exchanges between liberal justices puts it best. Louis Brandeis said to his colleague, the future Justice Frankfurter, "it's very difficult for me to understand why a man who is so good as Chief Justice, in his function of presiding officer, could have been so bad as president. How do you explain that. Then-professor Frankfurter's reply? quote:The explanation is very simple. He loathed being President and being Chief Justice was all happiness for him. Taft's legacy is heavily influenced by his peers. Among jurists, he's a legend, compared to Justice Marshall. Among politicians, his legacy was written by Roosevelt and his biographers more than by his own colleagues. Maybe, one day, he'll get the last laugh. 
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Jul 15, 2018 23:52
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Tony Gunk posted:Guys, I apologize, but it will be a few days before you get another FDR update...I'm not feeling well, so I've been sleeping a lot. You are still lightning fast compared to me. I only just finished Taft. Feel better!
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Jul 17, 2018 19:16
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One of the things you hadn't mentioned that I was hoping you would get into is that, in a way that was kind of disappointing, FDR's lofty rhetoric and talent for inspiration did not translate to good management of his cabinet. He often would agree with the last person to talk to him, and you had clashes between cabinet members where FDR promised them both the same thing or contradicting things, and they pretty much had to solve it without him because FDR could be incredibly indecisive. I think it is very important to remember his Brain Trust of young, idealistic professionals brought in to run the government were the people who steered FDR and turned his vision into policy.
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Jul 24, 2018 12:23
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Tony Gunk posted:God, please tell me I didn't lose my audience...I'd miss writing these No, you did great. Then again, I think my Taft writeup fizzled at the end. I am considering an addenda on Roosevelt's hard-money obsession and the recession of '37 and turf battles over jobs programs.
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Aug 2, 2018 17:57
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Tony is the GOAT in this thread. I am amazed at how much he's turned out.
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Aug 2, 2018 18:59
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Tony Gunk posted:Japan’s a tough one to talk about, fellas. The battles took place in the South Pacific on little spits of land no one had ever heard of, so I’m going to try and limit myself to going into detail on only a couple events. I know, I know--there were dozens more battles, but I can’t make this into a military history because I’m not a military guy. Anyone who wants to add anything about the other battles in the Pacific theater, however, is welcome to do so. I think I can take a stab at this one. The Pacific theater of the war was in many ways an inevitable loss for Japan. They knew it from Yamamoto on down. His attack on Pearl Harbor was a huge gamble, but it would only be successful if they disabled everything: drydocks, carriers, oil tanks, and submarine pens. The strike force on its third wave had trouble targeting things through the smoke of battleship row, and feared the US carriers, out at sea due to luck, might launch a counterattack because they were unaccounted for. Ultimately, the fact that our fuel depots, drydocks, and submarine pens were intact meant immediate repair and resupply of US surface ships and submarines. The odd thing about the Japanese were that many of their military were US and British educated in naval engineering and tactics. Men like Yamamoto had friends in the US, as the two countries had good relations ever since Commodore Perry's arrival in Tokyo bay. Japanese adoption of US fashion and culture was more common than you might think. So they all knew a slugfest with the US needed to be a debilitating strike. The thought was a hit that hard might dissuade US response considering their isolationism, but their overall naval strategy was all about assuming they'd be outnumbered. Their fighters were faster, lighter, and more maneuverable. Their ships, especially their carriers and the two Yamato class battleships, were designed to be the Biggest and Best because they couldn't win with sheer numbers. But they were skittish about their assets, as the Pearl Harbor raid showed. The US Navy took full advantage. Run Silent, Run Deep Our submarines began a campaign of unlimited submarine warfare against ALL Japanese ships, including civilian supply ships. We were doing to them what Germany was doing to Great Britain. The Japanese, on the other hand, only used subs on military targets, limiting their effectiveness. But we had a problem. Our subs were fitted with the latest and greatest torpedo tech, a magnetic detonating warhead. Ships like the Yamato have torpedo bulges, large undewater armor layers offset from the hull to limit damage. Traditional torpedoes ran shallow and hit the sides of ships. The Japanese solution was torpedoes that were stealthy, long-ranged, and had a massive warhead. The USN Mark 14 Torpedo was diminutive in size, but it could detonate by feeling the magnetic signature of a hull. Run it under a ship and detonate it, and it breaks the back of the ship. They tested live torpedoes ones. The target was a rusted out submarine hulk rather than the big ship they wanted. One sailed right under the sub and kept going. The other worked as intended and sunk the hulk. It became the main US torpedo for the entire war starting then. Sailors on US subs reported problems almost immediately. Duds were happening at rates of 50% or higher, forcing captains to try and dump multiple torpedoes and hope one hit. A sub had a limited supply on these long ocean missions, which meant poor effectiveness. Enterprising engineers on the subs got cans of the tamper-identification paint and disabled the fancy warhead, changed the depth, and turned on the contact fuse. The cause of the duds was twofold: the torps ran too deep because test models had dummy warheads that made the torpedo more bouyant, as well as other design flaws for running at the correct depth. When they ran deep, they picked up less magnetic disturbance. When that was fixed, they found the torpedoes now exploded prematurely. Now the failure rate was only about 10%. Turns out knowledge of the premature exploding was known since other tests in 1939. This was likely caused by fluxuations in the magnetic field when the torpedo hadn't stabilized its depth, detecting the side rather than the bottom of a ship. Eventually permission was given to deactivate the magnetic exploders. But those were defective too, because they were only tested on torpedoes 2/3 as fast as the Mark 14. In one case a Japanese oil tanker had fifteen torpedoes fired at it, almost half the sub's loadout. The sonarman could hear each one ding against the hull. Only one detonated. Tests conducted ad-hoc against a cliffside found 70% of contact exploders failed a 90-degree impact. The Bureau of ordinance didn't want to admit there was a problem, with solutions sitting on their desks from as varied a source as Albert Einstein himself, who had a navy consulting contract. Eventually the contact exploder was fixed with the intruduction of a minor change to the contact exploder. It only took two years since the start of the war. After that, our subs went gangbusters against Japan. They'd face perpetual shortages of supplies and be incredibly wary of attacks from submarines for the rest of the war. Battle of the Coral Sea This was the first major engagement after Pearl Harbor. A month before the Battle of Midway, this was the first test for US carrier forces, as well as our conventional surface fleet. Ultimately this was the first example of a new kind of naval warfare. No direct shelling between ships took place. Carriers and submarines did the heavy lifting. US forces had the news of Japanese carrier forces heading for New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and headed them off. Outnumbered in ship tonnage, and even in carrier power, we lost one of our two operating fleet carriers, Lexington, however we heavily damaged its counterpart, Shōkaku and depleted the air arm of its sister carrier, Zuikaku. While Japan had seasoned pilots and superior planes, they simply could not accept these kind of losses. Their invasion plans in New Guinea were called off, and those carriers did not participate at Midway. The US was able to capitalize by retaking the Solomon Islands in the Guadalcanal Campaign of brutal amphibious assaults. The Marianas Turkey Shoot Midway was the revenge for Pearl Harbor, but the Battle of the Philippine Sea was the curbstomping that ensured Japan would now be on the defensive the rest of the war. US forces in June of 1944 were now fully roided out by the Arsenal of Democracy. At its peak, Imperial Japan had 15 fleet carriers and 5 light carriers. The US Navy built 21 fleet carriers and 70 light carriers between 1941 and 1945. In addition, we were pumping out destroyers and other support ships like sausages, and our supply chain was advanced, including at-sea refueling while underway. The US 5th fleet had 7 fleet carriers and 8 light carriers committed to this attack supporting the invasion of the Mariana islands, facing off against 5 fleet carriers and 4 light carriers for the Japanese. For us this was just one fleet, but for Japan, this was the lion's share of their carrier forces and most of their skilled pilots. Even backed by planes from the islands, Japan had 750 available aircraft compared to the US fleet's 900, plus its advanced anti-air defenses such as proximity fuses for large caliber flak. In the end between 550 and 650 Japanese planes were destroyed, three fleet carriers sunk (two by US submarines), all in exchanged for 123 US planes lost, one battleship damaged, and 109 dead. The US only called off the attack for lack of more supplies to keep striking the fleet. Effectively emasculated, the Japanese carrier forces were a paper tiger. They had a few carriers left, but few skilled pilots, influencing their decision to switch to the desperation tactics of Kamikaze pilots. But the main Japanese forces still had some strength, and they made one last attempt to slow the island hopping campaign of amphibious assaults to retake Japanese-held islands in a chain until they could get into strike range of the mainland itself. Battle of Leyte Gulf By now Douglas "I'm a huge prick" MacArthur was making good on his promise of retaking the Phillipines, landing in Leyte gulf with marines. The idea was for the US 3rd and 7th fleets to cover them from Japanese navy harassment. The last thing they needed was artillery shelling them from in front and from the sea. Japan committed the bulk of its fleet to the fight, with Yamato as its flagship and its sister ship, Musashi. Their carrier force depleted, this would be the introduction of the Kamikaze, named for the great storm that swept the Mongol fleet invading mainland Japan and smashing them to bits before they could get to shore. This was more than one battle, the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, the Battle of Surigao Strait, the Battle of Cape Engaño were each interesting in their own rights, but the Battle off Samar was the craziest Big drat Hero action in modern naval history, so I'm giving it its due. The Japanese plan was simple, and it should have been caught. The Japanese knew what the US was intending, and so they felt the best thing was to take advantage of Admiral "Bull" Halsey's frothing at the mouth aggression, and bait him with their Northern Force, made up of aircraft carriers with few planes or train pilots. Not useless strategically, the carriers were still a juicy target, if you assumed Japan still had planes and pilots. Their hope was for Halsey to take the bait and get so far out of position he can't protect the landings. The Southern Force would push up through the Surigao straight and the Center Force would pass right through the San Bernardino straights and the two would pincer the landing forces. Halsey hosed up. He had sent two carrier groups away to rearm, and when submarine reports of the massive center force of battleships and cruisers got to his desk, he was slow to recall Admiral McCain's group (yes, that one). The weakened US forces were attacked by land-based Japanese planes, causing the loss of 1 US carrier, the Princeton. But the weakest of the 3 US carrier groups in range culled the herd, damaging one heavy cruiser and destroying outright the Musashi with 17 bomb and 19 torpedo hits. Still, the Center force was otherwise fully operational pressed on. Halsey, knowing about the Center and Southern forces, made plans to intercept them with everything he had, a scenario that would have gotten naval historians dicks hard to see the Yamato and the Iowa-class New Jersey potentially engaging in a fight, albeit with USN carrier backup. But Halsey hosed up royally, this time. He sent his plans to all forces with the exception of Admiral Kinkaid's 7th fleet, made up of support carriers meant to help US invasion forces armed for attacking land targets and submarines and lacking capital ships. However, it was practice to forward all radio chatter among fleets to coordinate. The message was ambiguous, and Kinkaid read it to mean his forces also had to move in to help defend the troops from the Center Force, since he read "TF [task force] 34 will be formed" not as future tense as a contingency, but as an immediate order by Halsey because there was no mention of when or how it would be formed. Admiral Nimitz in Pearl Harbor made the same observation as Kinkaid, and Halsey issued a correction that it would be formed when directed, but only by voice radio. The 7th fleet nor Nimitz never got the message, and the 7th fleet positioned itself close to landing forces and right in the path of the Center Force. But it was just the beginning of Halsey's fuckups. The Northern Force was the last to be detected due to the Center force and land-based planes occupying the US 3rd fleet's time, and Halsey lived up to his nickname and went apeshit. Luck was on Halsey's side, Admiral Ozawa falsely interpreted a message claiming the center force hand been turned back. Thinking the plan had failed, he turned tail with his carriers and ran early rather than baiting Halsey. But it didn't matter. Halsey wanted to sink carriers. Halsey needed to sink the Northern Force. Halsey didn't care if he left tens of thousands of US troops with their rear end hanging out in the breeze. Halsey sends a report to Nimitz telling him the Center force was heavily damaged and he was committing to a full attack of the Northern Force. He sends everything North, while implying he is only sending his 3 carrier groups North. Halsey ignored reports of the Center Force pushing for the San Bernardino Straights, and Vice Admiral Lee recognized the Northern Force to be a decoy. Commodore Arleigh Burke and Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's staff also warned it appeared to be a decoy. Both the reports and advice were rebuffed. Meanwhile Kinkaid's 7th fleet assumes TF-34 is made up of his forces and the 3rd fleet's non-carrier group, which could hold off the Center Force. Nothing had been left to guard the San Bernardino Straights, not even picket ships for advanced warning. US landing forces had no cover from air or by sea, save for Kinkaid's group. This was composed of tiny escort carriers, mostly cargo ships fitted with small flight decks and second-rate planes fitted for strafing ground targets and using high explosive bombs or depth charges. No armor-piercing bombs used on warships were available. The group also had a handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts armed to deal with planes or submarines. A single gun turret of the Battleship Yamato weighed more than the largest ship in the US 7th fleet. In the South, the Southern Force made up of older Japanese battleships and cruisers had sailed right into a trap. In what would be only one of two open water battleship-on-battleship fights in the Pacific, the US battleships Virginia, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee, California, and Pennsylvania, all except Mississippi being repaired ships sunk at Pearl Harbor, opened up on the force supported by destroyer torpedo attacks. The initial torpedo attacks destroyed the battleship Fusō, but it was radar-directed fire in the night action that made it a bloodbath. Unable to return fire, the fight was one-sided. But the Center Force steamed onward, and by 3am had reached the island of Samar, poised to strike the US invasion forces, with four battleships headed by Yamato, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eleven destroyers. Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague's Task Unit 77.4.3, called Taffy 3, was caught by surprise. The three Taffys made up the 7th fleet, but Taffy 1 was ferrying planes and no available, and Taffy 2 was further from the Center Force. Only its planes would come into play. Taffy 3 had six escort carriers and 400 planes, but none were armed to engage warships. Their escort were the destroyers Hoel, Heermann and Johnston, and the destroyer escorts Dennis, John C. Butler, Raymond, and Samuel B. Roberts, equipped with 5 inch guns more suited for harassing small ships, shore bombardment, and anti-air duty. The cargo ship hulls of the carriers made them slow, easily outrun by Admiral Kurita's Center Force. Taffy 3 planes sighted the fleet, but confirmation came soon enough as plumes of colorful water began straddling their ships; the optical rangefinders of Japanese ships required shots to have dye to identify their own shells for fire control corrections. But the biggest splashes were from Yamato's radar-directed shots, which needed no dye. There was no escape, so they had to fight or else they and the invasion forces would be toast. All available planes were launched, while the destroyers laid smoke to allow the carriers to seek shelter in a rain squall. Kurita was fooled, this time, thinking Taffy 3's planes were in fact Halsey's carrier forces. They pressed their attack, however, but not in a coordinated strike but rather as a "general" attack, and he prevented his destroyers from cutting off the carriers thinking these were fast carriers that the destroyers would burn up all their fuel trying to chase. In the ensuing confusion, some destroyers cut in front of the battleship Kongo, forcing it to break formation where it would not be able to re-enter the battle line for the remainder of the fight. Meanwhile Taffy 3's planes threw everything they had at the Japanese if for no other purpose than to harass them. Rockets, machine guns, and high explosive bombs did little to the main armaments of the big battleships, but they turned the abovedecks of the Japanse ships into bloodbaths, lowering the effectiveness of their AA. Out of ammo, US planes made "dry runs" over the ships just to harass them further and try to break up their formation. USS Johnston was closest to the Japanese forces, and the first to show balls of steel. Lieutenant Commander Ernest E. Evans went full Yolo, ordering flank speed straight for the Japanese. Shell splashes straddled Johnston as she zig-zagged straight in, guns blazing. Her 5 inch diameter guns were pea shooters compared to the 8 inch heavy cruiser guns and 14 to 18 inch diameter battleship guns, Evans was going to take as many of them with him as he could. Shells fired at maximum range began damaging the cruiser Kumano, and intending to make a torpedo run on her. Sprague saw this and ordered the rest of his screening ships into a "small boys attack" to cover Johnston and help slow the Japanese forces. Hoel, Heerman, and the Samuel B. Roberts went HAM at the Japanese just like Johnston. In the span of less than 30 minutes, Johnston had fired over 200 shells, chasing the splashes of shells fired at it so that every correction made by Japanese fire control was less likely to hit them. Dumping all her 10 loaded torpedoes, Kumano hit two or three, blowing the bow off the ship. The cruiser Suzuya also broke formation to help aid the striken Kumano. The ferocity of Evan's charge made the Japanese think they were engaging a superior American force of cruisers who were aggressive out of confidence. Seeing the confusion, Johnston laid smoke and turned away to gain distance. It was then that three battleship shells hit her, passing clean through the ship without arming their fuses since they were calibrated for large ships, but they cut Johnston's speed in half. It is likely these shells came from Yamato, followed by fire from her secondary 6.1 inch guns, which crippled Johnston and severed the fingers on Evan's left hand. Yamato reported this as the sinking of a cruiser, overestimating her size based on her aggression and effectiveness. But Johnston wasn't sunk. Her fuel was depleted, so she never exploded. Hidden in the rain squall, the crew made emergency repairs, partially restoring her guns and began firing using her radar. When the order came to fire torpedoes, Johnston assisted Heermann. In the confusion, the crippled destroyer fell in and out of gunfights at point blank range, picking fights with battleships and heavy cruisers before disappearing into the squall. Finally he attempted to halt an entire line of Japanese destroyers making a new run for the carriers. Crippled, alone, he cross their T and the gunnery officer opened up at 7,000 yards. It was again so ferocious that the Japanese destroyers broke formation as each fell in front of Johnston. They fired their torpedoes from maximum range to little effect on the US carriers, the few that might have hit were strafed by planes or AA guns to detonate them prior to impact. Eventually, in the melee, US and Japanese ships were piled on top of each other in a mess. Hoel and Samuel B. Roberts were out of action, and facing 4 cruisers plus other ships alone, Johnston was focused down rather than the US carriers. Evans could be seen barking orders to two men manually moving the rudder since the bridge was destroyed, only the aft section able to fight. Its other engine knocked out and sinking fast, Evans finally ordered an evacuation. He was never seen again, but the few survivors of the Johnston recall being saluted by the captain of the Japanese cruiser closest to them, as if to honor their suicidal bravery. But wait, there's more! Samuel B. Roberts was classed as a destroyer escort. Two guns compared to the destroyers' five, with no fancy range-finders to help with aim, and lacking the speed to maneuver as well. It was meant to provide cover from planes and subs, but little else. Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland, as they headed into the fray, shared his appraisal with his crew: quote:This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can. Seeing the enemy line, he surmised he was in a good position to launch what few torpedoes his ship had, and ignored orders to fall back with Heermann to make an attack run. He ordered his ship to not fire guns to draw attention, and got well within range to attack. Chōkai was hit and immediately fell out of formation, heavily damaged. Roberts slipped away largely undetected to catch up to the carriers. Then a wild cruiser, the Chikuma appeared out of the smoke and opened up on her. As a heavy cruiser, its shells took longer to load, and at truly point-blank range, it couldn't track the Roberts easily. Part of the reason was that chief engineer Lt. "Lucky" Trowbridge (god, like some movie-level poo poo right here) had bypassed every safety limiter on the Robert's engines to give it nearly 50% more speed at the risk of blowing them up. The Roberts had 600 5 inch shells on board. It would fire nearly the entire stock against Chikuma. In addition, Heermann was now firing on Chikuma, catching her in crossfire. Roberts aimed her guns at the superstructure. Even anti-aircraft and star shells (basically giant flares) were fired at Chikuma, starting metal fires and crippling the bridge of her adversary. Samuel B. Roberts had suddenly gotten the Japanese's attention. Battleships Yamato, Nagato, and Haruna all focused their fire on the poor destroyer escort, now nearly out of ammo. Kongo finally crippled her, leaving her adrift and out of action. Her rear gunner begged for more ammo to fire despite being mortally wounded by the breach of his gun exploding under the strain of 325 rounds fired in 35 minutes. The "destroyer escort that fought like a battleship" and her captain would both have ships named after them. Destroyers Hoel and Heermann continually harassed the Japanese lines with guns and torpedoes. Hoel was crippled after making a high-risk torpedo run on the main Japanese force. Though they scored no hits, Admiral Kurita had to turn Yamato away from the fight to avoid them and run until the torpedoes ran out of fuel. By doing this, the great battleship was no longer able to press the attack. Still, Hoel was now surrounded, and pounded into scrap, losing the most crew proportionally of US forces and being the first US ship lost. Heerman had been crippled by her engagement with Chikuma after the sinking of the Roberts, but would manage to limp away as the only destroyer left alive. Meanwhile, the escort carriers started being shelled. Their lack of armor was a help -- Japanese heavy shells passed through the ships without arming and detonating -- but they were rapidly losing ground. Kurita still thought he was dealing with the main US carriers that were faster and more powerful, and his caution continually hurt him. Armed with only 1 aft-mounted 5 inch gun, the CVEs had no real armament themselves, but as they got into range they used them. White Plains got lucky, a single 5 inch shell setting off torpedoes on the cruiser Chōkai. Gambier Bay was less fortunate, sinking due to shelling in the engagement. Now under Kamikaze attack, things were getting desperate; the carrier St. Lo sank after a direct kamikaze hit. In the end, 3 Japanese cruisers were sunk, with 3 more damaged. Kurita's Center Force was scattered and while he finally figured out he wasn't attacking the 3rd fleet, the Southern Force was destroyed and the 3rd fleet could turn back at any minute. He had to retreat, having failed to attack the US invasion forces. From then on out, the Japanese Navy was done. Halsey had ignored Kinkaid's pleas for help, and Nimitz had to prod McCain to send his part of Halsey's forces back. This was one of the greatest fuckups in modern naval history on the part of Halsey. But he got his loving Japanese carriers. Empty carriers. In the confusion, the survivors of Hoel, Samuel B. Roberts, and Johnston floated in shark-infested waters, dying of exposure and shark attacks for two days before finally being rescued. The Japanese navy was done. The only major naval action left was the desperate Operation Ten-Go to purposely beach Yamato and her escorts at Okinawa as a giant fixed batteries to fight off landing forces. None made it, being slaughtered by US carrier supremecy. Island Hopping for Dummies The island hopping campaign on the ground was brutal, grinding work. Not to diminish the grounds campaigns, but the idea was simple: bypass as many Japanese islands as possible and get in striking range of the mainland. Plans were made to retake US territories like the Phillipines, and US forces were stationed in Brisbane, much to Australia's chagrin. We'd attack key Japanese islands, make a base on them, then use that to strike the next island, and so on. The closer to Japan we got, the more brutal the fighting. In places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Japanese soldiers tunneled through the island, setting up small artillery batteries, mortars, and sniper's nests. They fought to the last, sometimes charging with ceremonial swords, some committing suicide rather than being captured. We used artillery, naval bombardment, flamethrowers, grenades tossed in hidey holes. It was hell. There were no towns liberated, few welcoming locals. Men slept in uncomfortable quarters on transports and warships only to be dumped onto beachheads in lightly armored amphibious ships, and once landed were largely moving on foot through jungle. We eventually got close enough to fly our newest strategic bombers over Japan. Operating higher than even the B-17s in Europe, B-29s used conventional and fire bombing campaigns. The mostly wood-and-paper architecture in Japan was perfect for firebombing. Curtis "I'm a psychopath" LeMay killed hundreds of thousands in firebombings. It is thought over 100,000 died in one bombing of Tokyo, the fire so hot women's hair burst into flame from the radiant heat igniting the products they used to put their hair into buns. Kamikaze losses on the US fleets were from carrier or ground-launched planes filled with fuel and explosives on one-way missions by barely-trained pilots. Rumors of plans to store arms in every home in Japan were taken seriously. On small rocks like Tarawa, the Japanese fought nearly to a man, taking thousands of US soldiers with them over 72 hours. On Okinawa, even civilians committed suicide rather than be captured. Propaganda held the mainland Japanese largely in the dark about the war, and any mistake, such as the accidental explosion in harbor of one of their newest battleships, was hidden from the public. Invading Japan itself would stretch the limits of our supply lines and risk the same kind of fighting that killed so many in the island-hopping campaign. It doesn't surprise me at all in that context and the time pressure of Stalin perhaps invading Japan and getting influence that the Bomb was merciful. Well there goes my evening, but hey, I felt a bit restless.
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Aug 7, 2018 04:51
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ninjahedgehog posted:Excellent write-up as always. One minor quibble with Nanking -- Imperial China wasn't a thing since the 1910s, those would have been citizens of the Republic of China. I didn't cover circular runs like that because a lot of US torpedoes had the problem, including the Mark 15 on destroyers. Other navies had that issue too, and most settled on a safety feature that disarmed the torpedo after the gyro measured 180 degrees of turn.
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Aug 7, 2018 18:23
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Gimme that prick Harrison, Nixon is too fresh of a wound.
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Aug 14, 2018 17:13
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:28 |
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Ike must be liked, Tony! Nixon should wait until articles of impeachment are drafted in the House.
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Aug 20, 2018 23:40
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