I don’t expect much interest in this since who cares about a past president, especially an obscure one. But I wrote about him anyway. It’s hard to find integrity in anyone these days, so that’s what struck me the most about William Howard Taft.
I make the comparison to Pagliacci from an Italian opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo, because he was a very sad clown. ![]()
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After reading about our 27th President in Life After Power by Jared Cohen, a book I highly recommend, I see that Mr. Taft was as well.
He wasn’t just our fattest president who threw out the first baseball. He was a man who thought of others way before himself, too much come to find out, leaving him quietly melancholy for most of his 72 years.
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His wife Nellie, whom he dearly loved, was very ambitious. Not that Will, known to those closest to him wasn’t, but his dream his whole life was to be on the Supreme Court, serving his fellow countrymen.
He was offered a seat numerous times all refused due to prior commitments, before in 1921, President Warren Harding made his dream come true.
Before that, he couldn’t say no to his wife’s as well as the whole Taft family’s political aspirations never considering his feelings. He was what we now call a people-pleaser, but always no matter what, doing what was right.
One could say Mr. Taft wore his integrity on his ample sleeve.
He even stood up to his best friend Theodore Roosevelt engineering his presidency thinking as his successor he’d be his puppet in the Oval. When Taft replaced many men in TR’s cabinet for those he preferred, Teddy wasn’t pleased, ending their longtime friendship. ![]()
Years later for the benefit of their party reunited, but never like before.
That’s what happens when you stop people-pleasing…people aren’t pleased, as the saying goes. Despite it all, Will still loved Teddy openly weeping at his funeral.
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Just like John Quincy Adams before him, also profiled in Cohen’s book, the only President to go back into the House of Representatives who said they were the happiest seventeen years of his life.
William Howard Taft, the only President to ever become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, also said…they were the happiest nine years of his. ![]()
Seems goodness truly had the last say, for both these noble men.
A great book. ![]()
