#27 — William Howard Taft (Feb. 1, 2025)

William Howard Taft National Historic Site - 02/01/2025

What did I already know?

He was our heaviest president, at like 300 pounds or something, according to the kids’ book on presidents I had as a wee bit. He had a bathtub big enough to fit six men, and once got stuck in it. (I found out recently that this was a lie by the opposing party, and have yet to completely recover.) I’ve also seen pictures of him in robes, so I’m guessing he was a judge, or one of those cult leaders in a cheap 60s horror movie. (Maybe both??)

I also heard a story that someone threw a cabbage at him during a speech, and that he picked it up and joked that someone had lost his head. (Cooler than the stuck-in-the-tub thing.)

What did I plan to see?

Cincinnati, OH: around 5.5 hours from St. Louis.

William Howard Taft National Historic Site — on The List. His family home or something?

The Trip There

Having paid our dues to Zachary Taylor (#12), we drove an hour and a half northeast. Coming from the south, you turn a corner and drop down a hill and you see Cincinnati looming up at you from the Ohio River. It’s really the coolest. Driving through downtown before shooting off into a surprisingly hilly suburb, the Taft House is a big yellow square of a house on a hilltop.

William Taft: The Shimmy

He was born in the actual house to an attorney general in 1857. Graduated from Yale, and the passed the bar exam at 29, cementing my suspicions that I should be more accomplished by this age. He worked his way up the judicial system in a bunch of positions I can’t even really wrap my own head around, until in 1901, President William McKinley made him governor-general of the Philippines. (I assume he did a good job? There were a lot of photos of him in linen shirts, which I was thrilled to find will really never go out of style.)

In 1904, President Teddy Roosevelt made him U.S. Secretary of War, and Taft essentially came Roosevelt’s - a man who’s still known today for, like, zeal or something - handpicked successor for the Republican Party. But Taft was a law guy with comparatively not much zeal, so they butted heads a lot. Also, he helped build the Panama Canal. (Not physically.) (I assume.)

In 1908, Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States, where he served from 1909 to 1913. Because he followed in Teddy’s very progressive footsteps, a lot of Republicans expected Taft to, you know - make some progressive footsteps. But he didn’t seem to. While he did support conservation measures and favor a lot of antitrust cases to prevent monopolies…his rubbing shoulders with conservative Republicans looked a lot like moving backward.

And I haven’t even mentioned the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. (Yeah, the ground did just shake. It does that whenever I say ‘Payne-Aldrich Tariff.’ I don’t know why.)

You know what a tariff is (or at least what it should be). It’s a tax on imports, designed to boost domestic consumerism and improve the economy. The Payne-Aldrich Tariff (yeah, it shook again, ignore it) was designed to lower tariffs and improve relationships with foreign allies, introduce people to new goods, etc. Sounds great, right? It was! …till the House of Representatives got their greasy little hands on it. See, which a big business in a certain state does really well, that boosts the state’s economy - even at the risk of anyone else. So when the House got its hands on the bill, a bunch of reps edited it to raise rates on products that their own states/districts could make cheaper. So ironically, a bill designed to lower tariffs actually made them higher. Taft, who campaigned on lower tariffs, supported it, and it passed without much support on either side.

(God, I’m glad I waited till April 2025 to write about how screwy tariffs are.)

By the next election, Roosevelt ran against Taft. #nomorebffs. #frenemies. The Republican split let Democrat Woodrow Wilson win the 1912 election, and Taft went back to his own thing. His own thing being professoring at Yale, and eventually being appointed by 29th president Warren Harding Chief Justice of the Supreme Court - his lifetime dream job. (My dream job, on the other hand, is to make movies. There’s a GoFundMe floating around somewhere, if your wallet’s feeling frisky.) On being a justice, he hilariously said “I hardly remember that I ever was president.” He served for nine years, retired in 1930, and died a month later.

Notes from the Trip

Cincinnati is cool. The layout, the architecture, the Bengals, the street art…very working-class, very artsy. Great first impression, guys. Excellent work.

Themes of Taft’s Life

Moderation. Taft didn’t seem too radical about anything, preferring - I guess - to sit back and contemplate. And while progressivism certainly would’ve helped him and the nation, it’s tough to blame for trying to do a decent job in a career that he never seemed to really want. It’s important to note that this mindset, while not leading him down progressivism, also didn’t align him with conservatism. Guy just wants to sit back and read legal cases? Let ‘im sit back and read legal cases. When was the last time you sat back and read?

Where was he at my age?

29. Passed the bar. Newly married. Probably more exhausted than me.

Favorite Food?

So…I hate to go here. I really do, so I want to be as respectful as possible to the man when I say that evidently, his favorite foods were steak, potatoes, turkey, turtle soup, roasted opossum, etc. Later in life, he went on a low-carb diet and lost 70 lbs.

(I still don’t know for sure if this dude got stuck in the bathtub, either.)

Where else to go:

Cincinnati Union Station. This building was the inspiration for the Hall of Justice League in the Justice League cartoons from the ‘70s on, and as a DC Comics guy, I was rendered speechless by this friggin’ place. It’s absolutely the coolest. A hundred-foot-tall Art Deco dome adorned with murals on the inside gives way to like, three museums and an IMAX theater and, let’s not forget, a working train station. Just go. You gotta. I know what you’re thinking, too: “It’s not really my thing…”

Yeah it is. Go. (And, I suppose, go see the Taft House, too. As long as you’re in the area.)