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: : : "The White House"
Historical Christmas Ornament
William Howard Taft - 2012
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"The White House"
Historical Christmas Ornament
William Howard Taft - 2012
Price: $24.00
Code: WH-794
$24
The 2012 White House Christmas Ornament honors
President William Howard Taft who introduced the
automobile to White House transportation in 1909,
breaking a long presidential tradition of reliance
on horse-drawn vehicles.
The 2012 White House ornament
celebrates President Taft's adoption of the automobile,
his love of manufacture and invention, and his ready
acceptance of modernity.
The ornament depicts President
and Mrs. Taft enroute to deliver Christmas
presents.
They are seated behind chauffeur George H. Robinson in
the White Motor Company's Model M, a seven passenger
steam-powered touring car embellished with the Great
Seal of the United States on the doors.
The color, as described at the time, is
"a harmonious blend of subdued greens."
The ornament is made in the United States of
highly-polished brass with a coating of nickel
finished in 24K gold.
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Our 27. President William Howard Taft.
William Howard Taft Distinguished jurist, effective
administrator, but poor politician, William Howard Taft
spent four uncomfortable years in the White House.
Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the
intense battles between Progressives and conservatives,
and got scant credit for the achievements of his
administration.
Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge,
he graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati
to study and practice law.
He rose in politics
through Republican judiciary appointments,
through his own competence and availability,
and because, as he once wrote facetiously,
he always had his "plate the right side up when
offices were falling."
But Taft much preferred law to politics.
He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34.
He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court,
but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other
ambitions for him.
His route to the White House was via administrative
posts.
President McKinley sent him to the Philippines
in 1900 as chief civil administrator.
Sympathetic
toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy,
built roads and schools, and gave the people at
least some participation in government.
President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War,
and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his
successor.
The Republican Convention nominated
him the next year.
Taft disliked the campaign--"one of the most
uncomfortable four months of my life."
But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt
program, popular in the West, while his brother
Charles reassured eastern Republicans.
William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic
ticket for a third time, complained that he was h
aving to oppose two candidates, a western progressive
Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.
Progressives were pleased with Taft's election.
"Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said;
"Taft is the man to put it into the barn."
Conservatives were delighted to be rid of
Roosevelt--the "mad messiah."
Taft recognized that his techniques would differ
from those of his predecessor.
Unlike Roosevelt,
Taft did not believe in the stretching of
Presidential powers.
He once commented that Roosevelt
"ought more
often to have admitted the legal way of reaching
the same ends."
Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later
formed the Progressive Party, by defending the
Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued
high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada,
which Taft pushed through Congress, would have
pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff,
but the Canadians rejected it.
He further
antagonized Progressives by upholding his
Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to
carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.
In the angry Progressive onslaught against him,
little attention was paid to the fact that his
administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and
that Congress submitted to the states amendments
for a Federal income tax and the direct election
of Senators.
A postal savings system was established,
and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed
to set railroad rates.
In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft,
Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives,
thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow
Wilson.
Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor o
f Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief
Justice of the United States, a position he held
until just before his death in 1930. To Taft,
the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote:
"I don't remember that I ever was President."
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