How will a Taft Administration react to WWI?

How do you get one?

No way could Taft be re-elected, and if TR runs again in 1908, then Taft will become Chief Justice and someone else (Root? Knox?) will be the 1912 nominee.
 
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How do you get one?

No way could Taft be re-elected, and if TR runs again in 1908, then Taft will become Chief Justice and someone else (Root? Knox?) will be the 1912 nominee.

If TR decides not to run in 1912 then Taft can easily win it, he wasn't that unpopular. TR may not fun out of a sense of friensship with Taft as the two were close until TR tried to take the nomination.
 
If TR decides not to run in 1912 then Taft can easily win it, he wasn't that unpopular. TR may not fun out of a sense of friensship with Taft as the two were close until TR tried to take the nomination.

Except that Taft will almost certainly be Chief Justice by then, appointed in 1910 instead of White. He won't give up that position even for a shot at the White House.
 
If TR decides not to run in 1912 then Taft can easily win it, he wasn't that unpopular. TR may not fun out of a sense of friensship with Taft as the two were close until TR tried to take the nomination.

Precisely. Now, events in Europe going the same as OTL, we will still see a WWI.
 
Except that Taft will almost certainly be Chief Justice by then, appointed in 1910 instead of White. He won't give up that position even for a shot at the White House.

Taft was president in 1910, he can't be appointed to the Supreme Court at that point.

Now with Taft as president in 1914 I can see him doing things similiarly to Wilson in the beginning. He isn't going to be able to get a declaration of war early on, though he might try for it earlier, and will probably be pushed by T.R. to get the U.S. with whom he would have remained friends in TTL. He will be a supporter of the Allies throughout. Not sure about what else though.
 
My point was that had TR accepted another nomination in 1908, the position of CJ would have become available in 1910 - and according to everything I've read, it would almost certainly have gone to Taft, thus removing him as a Presidential possibility. TR would have had to find some other heir to follow him in 1912. If Taft doesn't get the White House in 1908, he never gets it.

So unless you think Taft could be somehow re-elected in 1912 (wildely unlikely), I don't see how you could get a Taft Administration during WW1 - unless of course WW1 itself is moved forward, and the butterflies from that would be such that Taft instead of Wilson is the least of it.
 
If TR decides not to run in 1912 then Taft can easily win it, he wasn't that unpopular. TR may not fun out of a sense of friensship with Taft as the two were close until TR tried to take the nomination.


How does it make the slightest difference what TR does?

The Republicans had already been comprehensively smashed in the 1910 midterms, long before TR's bolt. And in 1912, though most Congressional races were straight fights, they lost even more ground, giving the Dems a majority of more than two to one.

Had TR stayed out of the race, most of his OTL support would have either voted for Wilson or abstained, allowing the Dems an easy win. Taftites would not vote for a Progressive, nor vice versa - as Mr Hughes was to learn in 1916.
 
what it says on the tin.


If WW1 breaks out during the Taft Administraton (either in 1909 or 1911) his attitude is probably similar to Wilson's - maintain neutrality while ujpholding American maritime rights. If the earlier start means that u-boats play a lesser part, relations with Britain are likely to be a lot worse than OTL.

Disagreeement over the Eurpean war will make the quarrel between Taft and TR even worse, if that be possible. On the Democratic side, ther nmeed to keep America out of war could bring Bryan into the race as a declared candidate.
 

Max Rakus

Banned
I've Read somewhere that Taft was the one who came up with the idea of a Leauge of Nations, Wilson just stole the idea
 
I've Read somewhere that Taft was the one who came up with the idea of a Leauge of Nations, Wilson just stole the idea


I've also heard that JM Keynes claimed to have coined the term. Both name and concept seem to have been "in the air" at that time.
 
I've also heard that JM Keynes claimed to have coined the term. Both name and concept seem to have been "in the air" at that time.

At least within the Wilson Administration, it was Colonel House that came up with it, though Taft proposing such a thing rings a bell in my memory. Milestone's got it that the idea was kind of floating around.
 
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