William Howard Taft

Nevertheless, the presidential campaign of 1908 was waged mainly on the "Roosevelt policies." Though Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan handily, his plurality dropped about 1, 500, 000 votes below Roosevelt's in 1904. Moreover, the election of numerous Progressive Republicans and Democrats shifted the balance in Congress.

The Presidency

Whatever Taft thought about Roosevelt's objectives, he never had approved of his freewheeling, often extralegal, procedures. This was especially true of conservation, a field in which Roosevelt and his subordinates had consistently interpreted the law loosely in order to protect the public interest. Taft decided, accordingly, that his mission was to consolidate rather than push forward—to give the Roosevelt reforms, as he privately said, "the sanction of law." To this end he surrounded himself with lawyers. At the same time, he underestimated both the temper of the times and the zeal of the Progressive Republicans in Congress. Worse still, he proved incapable of giving the nation the kind of moral, intellectual, and political leadership it had grown accustomed to under Roosevelt.

Taft's troubles started early. True at first to his campaign promises, he called a special session of Congress to revise the tariff. The resultant bill was not a bad measure by Republican standards, but it failed abysmally to meet expectations. Disguising his disappointment, Taft called it "the best bill that the party has ever passed" and signed it into law. This alienated many insurgent Republicans, most of whom were already seething over his refusal to support their effort to reduce the powers of Joseph "Uncle Joe" Cannon, the czarlike Speaker of the House.

Taft's replacement of Roosevelt's secretary of the interior contributed to the polarization of the party. The new secretary, Richard A. Ballinger, was a moderate conservationist and a strict legal constructionist in the manner of Taft himself." I do not hesitate to say, " the President wrote, that the presidential power to withdraw public lands from private use "was exercised far beyond legal limitation under Secretary Garfield." With Taft's endorsement, Ballinger insisted on opening much valuable land to private entry while the Geological Survey completed surveys. Angered by this and other inhibiting policies, Roosevelt's intimate friend, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, finally charged Ballinger with a "giveaway" of Alaskan mineral lands to the Guggenheim-Morgan financial interests. Taft thereupon removed Pinchot from office. Although Ballinger was eventually exonerated, Taft was fatally, and somewhat unfairly, stamped as anticonservationist.

Ironically, Taft's relentless prosecution of trusts further exacerbated his relations with Roosevelt. Unlike the former president, he believed that dissolution rather than regulation was the preferred solution. He gave Attorney General George W. Wickersham free rein to institute proceedings, and by the end of 4 years almost twice as many actions had been initiated as in 7½ years under Roosevelt. Among these were proceedings against the U.S. Steel Corporation, which had absorbed the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company during the Panic of 1907 with Roosevelt's tacit approval.