William Howard Taft (27th president)
Term: 1909-13
Party: Republican
ABOVE: Taft doing what he did best as president, enjoying himself on the gold course
Poor Taft. Remembered mostly as the answer to the trivia question: Who was our fattest president?, Taft was not a successful president. He didn’t even want the job and was miserable for most of his term, retreating to the golf course whenever he could. Taft was the hand-picked successor of Teddy Roosevelt, chosen mainly for what Roosevelt mistakenly believed was Taft’s unquestioning loyalty to TR’s program. Taft coveted a justice position on the Supreme Court, and he finally served on the court after his term as president. He was much more successful on the Supreme Court than he was in the Oval Office.
ABOVE: After getting stuck in the White House bathtub, Taft had a special tub installed
Taft’s term in office is most notable for Teddy Roosevelt’s reaction to it. TR essentially installed Taft in the White House and then took off on safari in Africa, secure in the belief that Taft would be a good boy and do as TR had told him. Unfortunately for TR (and Taft, it turns out), Taft started to do his own thing. Taft supported a bad tariff that TR had fought against, and most importantly Taft fired TR buddy Gifford Pinchot for insubordination (Pinchot had accused Interior Secretary Ballinger of improperly selling off Alaskan coal fields). Roosevelt returned from slaying lions and tigers in Africa furious with Taft and ready for a fight. Taft then had his justice department file an anti-trust suit against behemoth U.S. Steel, a trust TR had signed off on in 1907. This made Roosevelt look like he had been in the pocket of big business, which clashed with Roosevelt’s public image as a Progressive crusader against the trusts.
All of this set up one of the most contested and fascinating elections in our history, the election of 1912. Taft managed to win the Republican nomination, while a still fuming Roosevelt bolted the GOP and formed his own Progressive Party (or the Bull Moose Party). Socialist Eugene V. Debs also made a strong run, while Democrat Woodrow Wilson rounded out the four man race. Had Roosevelt been chosen as the Republican candidate, he would have certainly won a third term, but the Taft/Roosevelt rift ensured Wilson’s victory in 1912 (Wilson later had Debs jailed).
ABOVE: Who looks happier on Wilson's inauguration day? Incoming president Woodrow Wilson or outgoing president William Taft?
Pros:
• As much as Teddy Roosevelt thought of himself as a crusader against the power of the monopolies and trusts, Taft actually filed more suits against the trusts in his one term than TR did in two terms
Cons:
• Taft had little interest in being president, and did not have a strong idea of what he wanted to do when in the office
• Taft signs off on a bad protective tariff being pushed by Republicans in Congress
• Taft’s “Dollar Diplomacy” is only a marginally successful foreign policy
#26:
John Tyler (10th president)
Term: 1841-45
Party: Whig
ABOVE: John Tyler (left) and Grand Moff Tarkin from Star Wars (right). Hmm
John Tyler is not usually ranked very high in these polls (and he is not ranked too high here either), but I think he deserves credit for something that is often overlooked. Tyler is the first president to come into office because of the death of another president. William Henry Harrison died after a mere month in office, and his vice-president John Tyler quickly took over. The wording in the Constitution is surprisingly vague on the issue as to whether the VP simply becomes president or whether he remains VP but takes over some of the duties of the presidency for a short while. Tyler fought both congressional leaders and Harrison’s own cabinet to establish the fact that he was now president, not merely “Vice-President, Acting as President,” as many tried to call him. We would have had an interesting history had Tyler not been as stubborn and a different precedent were set for how a VP takes over.
Tyler was a fascinating guy in an interesting time. The Whigs had finally won the White House with the election of Harrison and were eager to undo the (Andrew) Jacksonian legacy. Harrison was their man for the job, but once Tyler took over he went his own way. Tyler vetoed legislation that would have resurrected the slain dragon of the Bank of the United States and would have stabilized the shaky economy that had existed ever since Jackson had vetoed the renewal of the Bank. Whigs were so furious that they kicked Tyler out of the party, and so the president of the United States was a true Independent through to the end of his term. Of course, the result of this fight was that Jackson’s wobbly banking system that leaned on unstable wildcat state banks remained in place and continued to wreck havoc on our economy.
Pros:
• Tyler set the precedent, against opposition, that a Vice-President who succeeds a deceased president midterm becomes the new president in every sense, thereby clarifying the crucial issue of presidential succession
• Tyler oversaw the completion of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty establishing the U.S.-Canadian border
• Tyler supports the Texas application to join the U.S., paving the way for their entry under Polk
Cons:
• Tyler fights the Whigs (his own party) in their attempt to replace the unstable banking system established by Andrew Jackson. He defeats their attempts, fails to get his own plan passed, and therefore leaves Jackson’s dangerous system in place
• Tyler became a man without a party once the Whigs disowned him, making him a president without a power base to get anything done
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