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.