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Part 1 - The Point of Departure

“If you accept that nomination, it will be the great mistake of your life!”, Nellie Taft told her husband stridently, her voice raised but her manner calm. “You are Roosevelt’s natural successor. Why on earth would you give up that golden opportunity to instead become a judge again?!”

Their argument had lasted weeks, on and off, but the time for a decision was approaching and that had intensified their division. William Howard Taft, the Secretary of State for War, had been asked by Roosevelt if he would accept a nomination to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Henry Billings Brown, due to retire in May that year, 1906. It was a position to which he was admirably suited by training and temperament and one he was sorely tempted to take. A seat on the Supreme Court bench was his life’s primary ambition and one he’d twice turned down while Governor General of the Philippines due to feeling honour-bound not to abandon that commission at what he believed were critical moments for the islands.

Nellie saw things differently but then Nellie had always been the politician of the two, had harboured the ambition since the age of sixteen of being First Lady and had successfully guided her husband’s career choices with that end in mind – so far.

“I don’t know. I think I’ll go to New York to talk it over with Charley, Harry and Horace”, he said, referring to his brothers.

“I don’t see what good that can do. What can they say that hasn’t already been said?” Nellie countered.

But Taft went anyway and laid out his options, his concerns and his preferences to his brothers, who were just as divided in their opinion as William and Nellie. The arguments went back and forth, Horace advocating the presidential option while Harry and Charles backed a move to the Court, putting Taft in line for the Chief Justiceship, to which they felt he was better suited, and to which Roosevelt had indicated Taft would be appointed once the seat became vacant.

As the meeting drew to a close, Charles asked William a question which had been playing at the back of the Secretary’s own mind: “what would father have advised you to do?” It was an astute piece of advocacy, both because he knew precisely what the answer was and because he knew of the effect that raising it would have with his brother.

“He’d have said that to be Chief Justice is more than to be President,” Taft replied, thoughtfully and a little wistfully. His father, like his wife Nellie, and his political mentor Roosevelt, was one of the principal guiding forces in his life and Charley reminding him of his revered father’s opinion firmed Taft’s inclination into resolve: he would take the nomination.

In reality, while Taft did consult his brothers in New York, he continued to put off a decision – though at the time, he admitted to his brother Horace that were he forced to decide then, he’d opt for the Court. Over the next few months, speculation about his presidential chances grew, as, consequently, did pressure on him to decline a move to the Court. The failure of Congress to reduce the tariff on the Philippines – a cause close to his heart – gave him his excuse to stay in the cabinet and fight for both that revision and the presidential ambitions his wife held for him.
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