William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and the tenth chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930. He is the only person to have held both offices.

Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Alphonso Taft, was a U.S. attorney general and secretary of war. Taft attended Yale and joined Skull and Bones, of which his father was a founding member. After becoming a lawyer, Taft was appointed a judge while still in his twenties. He continued a rapid rise, being named solicitor general and a judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1901, President William McKinley appointed Taft civilian governor of the Philippines. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and he became Roosevelt's hand-picked successor. Despite his personal ambition to become chief justice, Taft declined repeated offers of appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, believing his political work to be more important.

With Roosevelt's help, Taft had little opposition for the Republican nomination for president in 1908 and easily defeated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency in that November's election. As president, he focused on East Asia more than European affairs and repeatedly intervened to prop up or remove Latin American governments. While Taft sought reductions to trade tariffs, the resulting bill was heavily influenced by special interests. His administration was filled with conflict between the Republican Party's conservative wing, with which Taft often sympathized, and its progressive wing, towards which Roosevelt increasingly gravitated. Controversies over conservation and antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men. The 1912 presidential election was a three-way race, as Roosevelt challenged Taft for renomination. Taft used his control of the party machinery to gain a bare majority of delegates and Roosevelt bolted the party. The split left Taft with little chance of reelection, and he took only Utah and Vermont in his loss to Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson.

After leaving office, Taft returned to Yale as a professor, continuing his political activity and working against war through the League to Enforce Peace. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft chief justice, an office he had long sought. Chief Justice Taft was a conservative on business issues, and under him there were advances in individual rights. His work towards administrative reform of the court culminated in the Judiciary Act of 1925. In poor health, he resigned in February 1930, and died the following month. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the first president and first Supreme Court justice to be interred there.

Taft is generally listed near the middle in historians' rankings of U.S. presidents; his work as chief justice has been evaluated more positively. In popular memory his political achievements and role in Republican Party history have been overshadowed by his weight and physical appearance.