And indeed he did succeed Roosevelt, although reluctantly, by easily defeating William Jennings Bryan for the presidency.
He would later describe his 1908 run for the presidency as “one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life”. It wouldn’t get much better in office, his relationship with Roosevelt would soon sour as the two men found themselves on opposite sides of the Republican political spectrum.
When running for re-election against Woodrow Wilson in 1912, the schism created within the Republican Party and the fact that Roosevelt was now running as a third-party candidate, would spell defeat for Taft.
He would be appointed the tenth Chief Justice of the United States in 1921 by president Warren G. Harding and would hold that position until a month before his death on March 30, 1930. He still remains the only man to have held both the office of the president and the Chief Justice.
His son, Robert A. Taft, did not share his father’s reluctance to attain the highest office and actively pursued the Republican nomination for president on three separate occasions but would be unsuccessful each time.
He did serve in both the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate and had a brief stint as the Senate Majority Leader in 1953 as he would sadly die of pancreatic cancer later that year.
Despite never reaching the Oval Office, he was named as one of America’s five greatest senators by a 1957 Senate committee. His son would be the next Taft to take up the political mantle.
Robert Taft Jr. would also serve as a Republican Congressman for Ohio between 1963 and 1965, and then again between 1967 and 1971 before becoming a senator after he finished his second congressional term in 1971.
Despite the integrity shown by the last three generations of the Taft’s, the great-grandson of William Howard and son of Robert Taft Jr., Ohio Governor Bob Taft, would somewhat tarnish the family name and legacy.
In 2005, criminal charges were brought against him for failing to report gifts and paid outings he received, making him the first Ohio governor to be charged with a crime while in office.
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