February 3, 1930—With age and illness finally catching up with him, ex-President William Howard Taft resigned the job that had made him happiest in life: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The next month, he was dead from complications of heart disease, high blood pressure, and inflammation of the bladder.
Whenever you read about the most important ex-Presidents, John Quincy Adams and Jimmy Carter come most readily to mind. But Taft occupied a more consequential office than Congressman Adams and left a more significant mark on major American institutions than Carter.
You can certainly find Presidents greater than Taft, more active, and, much less frequently, even more intellectually gifted. But it’s doubtful you’ll find one better loved by those who came in contact with him.
That’s undoubtedly one of the reasons why, when President Warren G. Harding nominated Taft—who, for the eight years after leaving the White House, had taught at Yale University Law School—in 1921 to succeed the deceased Edward White as Chief Justice, the Senate not only didn’t refer the nomination to a committee, but confirmed the appointment the very same day.
(Tell me, faithful reader: Are we really better off with all the televised Supreme Court confirmation food-fights of the last 40 years?)
The Supreme Court was Taft’s dream job—and if he’d had his druthers, he’d have taken it years earlier. His good friend (and later, tragically, rival), Theodore Roosevelt, impressed by his work as Solicitor-General (the lawyer who conducts all litigation on behalf of the U.S. before the Supreme Court—often viewed as a stepping stone to that court) in the Harrison administration, wanted to promote him to the high court when a vacancy opened.
Whenever you read about the most important ex-Presidents, John Quincy Adams and Jimmy Carter come most readily to mind. But Taft occupied a more consequential office than Congressman Adams and left a more significant mark on major American institutions than Carter.
You can certainly find Presidents greater than Taft, more active, and, much less frequently, even more intellectually gifted. But it’s doubtful you’ll find one better loved by those who came in contact with him.
That’s undoubtedly one of the reasons why, when President Warren G. Harding nominated Taft—who, for the eight years after leaving the White House, had taught at Yale University Law School—in 1921 to succeed the deceased Edward White as Chief Justice, the Senate not only didn’t refer the nomination to a committee, but confirmed the appointment the very same day.
(Tell me, faithful reader: Are we really better off with all the televised Supreme Court confirmation food-fights of the last 40 years?)
The Supreme Court was Taft’s dream job—and if he’d had his druthers, he’d have taken it years earlier. His good friend (and later, tragically, rival), Theodore Roosevelt, impressed by his work as Solicitor-General (the lawyer who conducts all litigation on behalf of the U.S. before the Supreme Court—often viewed as a stepping stone to that court) in the Harrison administration, wanted to promote him to the high court when a vacancy opened.
Taft—by this time, Governor-General of the Philippines—reluctantly turned him down out of a sense of duty: he wanted to stabilize a land that had suffered shocks from the Spanish-American War and from the insurrection against the U.S. led by Emilio Aguinaldo.
Several years later, Taft—by this time, Secretary of War under T.R.—was sounded out by his friend again, when the two men and their wives were at a White House reception. T.R., jokingly announcing that he could predict Taft’s future, said that his Cabinet member had open to him one of the two highest offices in the land.
“Make it Chief Justice,” Taft said.
“Make it President,” his wife Helen (Nellie) urged.
Genial Willie went along with the latter idea, and ended up regretting it for the rest of his life.
You can guess how unhappy Taft was in the White House by considering his weight.
Ah, weight.
Now, aficionados of quiz shows and trivia games know that Taft was the only U.S. president also to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (sort of analogous, at the federal level, to the New Jersey’s Richard Hughes, who served as governor before being called back to serve as Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court). Somewhat less well-known is that he’s the only President besides JFK to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. And baseball fans like myself cherish that he inaugurated the Presidential tradition of throwing out the first pitch at opening day.
But many, many, many more people know that Taft was our fattest President. It defines him in the public mind, even more so than the fact that Thomas Jefferson is now better known for having bedded one of his slaves than for writing the Declaration of Independence.
But the particulars of how this came to be—and why it changed when he was on the high court—are instructive.
Right after college, Taft stood a shade under six feet tall, weighing 243 pounds—hefty, to be sure, but not morbidly obese. He reached the Refrigerator Perry level (i.e., upwards of 300 pounds) when he became Secretary of War. Even then, under the watchful eye of an English physician, he shed more than 70 pounds over the next year and a half.
But tons of stress as President made him look for all the comfort food he could find. You’d be stressed out, too, if the following happened to you:
* The same day your son had a messy, unexpectedly bloody adenoid operation, your wife suffered a stroke;
Several years later, Taft—by this time, Secretary of War under T.R.—was sounded out by his friend again, when the two men and their wives were at a White House reception. T.R., jokingly announcing that he could predict Taft’s future, said that his Cabinet member had open to him one of the two highest offices in the land.
“Make it Chief Justice,” Taft said.
“Make it President,” his wife Helen (Nellie) urged.
Genial Willie went along with the latter idea, and ended up regretting it for the rest of his life.
You can guess how unhappy Taft was in the White House by considering his weight.
Ah, weight.
Now, aficionados of quiz shows and trivia games know that Taft was the only U.S. president also to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (sort of analogous, at the federal level, to the New Jersey’s Richard Hughes, who served as governor before being called back to serve as Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court). Somewhat less well-known is that he’s the only President besides JFK to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. And baseball fans like myself cherish that he inaugurated the Presidential tradition of throwing out the first pitch at opening day.
But many, many, many more people know that Taft was our fattest President. It defines him in the public mind, even more so than the fact that Thomas Jefferson is now better known for having bedded one of his slaves than for writing the Declaration of Independence.
But the particulars of how this came to be—and why it changed when he was on the high court—are instructive.
Right after college, Taft stood a shade under six feet tall, weighing 243 pounds—hefty, to be sure, but not morbidly obese. He reached the Refrigerator Perry level (i.e., upwards of 300 pounds) when he became Secretary of War. Even then, under the watchful eye of an English physician, he shed more than 70 pounds over the next year and a half.
But tons of stress as President made him look for all the comfort food he could find. You’d be stressed out, too, if the following happened to you:
* The same day your son had a messy, unexpectedly bloody adenoid operation, your wife suffered a stroke;
* To protect her, you hid the worst effects of her condition from the press;
* You equaled—and maybe even bettered—the record of your predecessor in one of his best-known achievements, trust busting, but virtually nobody noticed;
* You sacked one of TR’s favorite appointees, Forest Service head Gifford Pinchot, when he got in a dispute with one of your Cabinet members—and suddenly everybody noticed;
* You ignored rumors that TR was unhappy about this firing and about not trying for a third term;
* You discovered that those rumors were true;
* You won renomination, but only with the help of party bosses, and the high-handed manner of it made TR bolt the GOP and run as the Progressive candidate;
* You came in third, behind Woodrow Wilson and TR, in your bid for re-election;
* You sharde the blame with TR for dividing the party, for much of the rest of the century, between moderates and conservatives;
* You cred in the White House—not so much because you lost the election but because (at least for the next six years) you lost the friendship of TR.
Anyway, with all of that, Taft’s weight went up—way up—to 340 pounds by the time he left the White House.
Then, something magical happened: Taft lost weight again. One of his saving graces all along was self-deprecating good humor (he once judged a fat baby contest, awarding the trophy to an actor who, in his adult years, became famous for his lean frame and virility: Lloyd Bridges). But now the stress was gone.
The progress on the weight front continued when Taft took his chair on the high court. By the time he stepped down, he was back close to his college weight—a remarkable achievement.
In assessing Supreme Court justices, historians—and, even more so, reporters—look to two factors: the outcome of their vote and the quality of their prose. What they find harder to judge—an absolute necessity in weighing a Chief Justice—are administrative records and interactions with fellow justices.
On the voting/prose scale, Taft barely registers. On the administrative scale—well, the thought is irresistible: his legacy is positively weighty.
When Taft took over in 1921, the Supreme Court was obligated to review any case involving a federal point of view. Delays were horrendous. To his credit, Taft—whose general voting record is rightly regarded as conservative—wanted to fix this, because while wealthy individuals and corporations could wait cases out, the less affluent had no such recourse. The legislation that Congress enacted at his urging, the Judiciary Act of 1925, has enabled the court to try cases of highest priority ever since.
The Supreme Court building that we have today is just as much his legacy. The court had been deliberating in a chamber in the Capitol for years. Taft wanted a separate building for the court for reasons both practical (individual justices would get their own chambers for a change) and symbolic (the third, equal branch of the federal government deserved to have a building similar to the others in grandeur). He didn’t live to see the completion of the imposing neoclassical structure by famed architect Cass Gilbert, but it’s very much his handiwork, too.
As the 1920s came to an end, Taft could feel his mental as well as physical powers waning. Some Presidential historians who specialize in medicine have speculated that Taft was experiencing the beginning of Alzheimer’s by 1929. He had to improvise while administering the oath of office to President Hoover, and in the days before he stepped down he was hallucinating.
Taft himself confessed exhaustion in an uncharacteristically peevish letter to his brother in November 1929: “I am older and slower and less acute and more confused. However, as long as things continue as they are, and I am able to answer in my place, I must stay on the court in order to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control."
I’m not sure about the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, but paranoia certainly seems definite when you read that “Bolsheviki” line. Taft had a solid conservative majority at his back at all times. The only dissenting votes usually turned out to be Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (who was a full decade older than Taft), joined occasionally by Harlan Fiske Stone. In fact, the year of Taft’s resignation and death, then-Harvard professor Felix Frankfurter noted: “Since 1920 the Court has invalidated more legislation than in fifty years preceding."
It doesn’t sound like there was a Bolshevik in sight, does there?
No matter what his economic views, Taft was undoubtedly better suited, by temperament, for the Supreme Court than the Presidency. It was probably for the best that the period between his retirement and death lasted only a month, because he would have deeply missed the job that meant so much to him. He himself left the best summary of his service as President and Chief Justice: "The truth is that in my life I don't ever remember that I was President."
No comments:
Post a Comment