The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 18 February 2016
by William S. White
In the divisive political environment in which we find ourselves, with the extremes shouting ever more loudly, and the moderate middle struggling to make the country a better place through cooperation and bipartisanship, we can pause to reflect upon the political discourse of the past. It is easy to imagine that we were all more polite to each other, that the extremes were quiet and small, and that the political rhetoric was largely civil. It helps to look back on contemporary accounts of earlier eras to discover that, indeed, we may have been more civil to one another in public discourse, but that we have always been riven by deep divisions and disagreements.
President William Howard Taft lost his re-election bid when Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican party down the middle, took the progressive Bull Moose Republicans with him, and came in second in a four-way race in 1912 (a race in which the Socialist candidate received six percent of the national vote), won by Democrat Woodrow Wilson. While President Taft went on to become chief justice of the Supreme Court, and served with distinction for a decade, he and his son Robert Taft, long lamented the split in the Republican party. Bob Taft would go on to become an Ohio state senator, and a long-serving Senator in Washington. He cleaved to a traditional view of the Republican party. He fought against FDR's New Deal programs and, during the Truman administration, succeeded in his most notable Senate accomplishment, the Taft-Hartley Act, rolling back some of the protections for Labor put in place by the New Deal.
Taft was a staunch conservative, but he fought to supress the most extreme right-wing elements of his party. At the same time, though, he fought against the Dewey Republicans, a more progressively-oriented faction from the East. Though he ran for the Republican Presidential nomination three times, he fell short each time due to his vehement partisanship. And, yet, he was a devoted Republican, and found it within himself to support any Republican over any Democrat. His final attempt at the nomination was lost to Dwight Eisenhower (imagine considering Ike as too liberal!). Taft died less than a year into the Eisenhower administration, but managed to make his mark there, as well, asserting the collective power of old-guard Republicans against what he saw as creeping socialism, even amongst conservatives.
This book was published in 1954, only a year after Taft's death. It assumes a certain amount of knowledge of the politics of its day, of course, allowing the writer to treat certain key political topics obliquely, or at least with a certain amount of glossing-over. Many notable figures appear, and it is interesting to note those who went on to become historical figures today, and those lost to obscurity. Indeed, one can see that Robert Taft, today, is little known as what the author describes as a major figure in American mid-century politics. Also of interest is spotting other figures in their early careers, like Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy. As a contemporary account, the author doesn't write of these men with the kind of wink and a nod a modern writer would impart, knowing the significant impact they'd have on later American history. So, the book is a bit of a curiosity. We learn of Taft the staunch Republican, but not a lot of his specific legislative or cultural accomplishments. The Taft-Hartley act is the only legislation mentioned by name within an account of Taft's other dramatic Senate influence, particularly on international affairs, primarily because of his isolationism and fiscal restraint. In the end, we get a picture of 20th century politics that does have significant echoes in today's political environment. Many of the same arguments against President Obama were made by Taft against FDR and even Governor Thomas Dewey. Reading the book might explain why there is a prominent memorial to Taft near the nation's capital. It illustrates its time, but reflects a largely forgotten figure in American politics. Taft in his day might be likened to the Bob Dole of our day.
(For this book, William White was awarded the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.)