William Howard Taft And The Ballinger Controversy

William Howard Taft was a fat, sluggish, passive, and slow president. He ate thousands of calories in a day. He allowed his government to make decisions that he did not like just because he did not care to speak up. He died of cardiovascular disease due to a lifetime of unhealthy eating and obesity. This information paints a picture of the president as an ineffective leader with severe health issues and a sign on his back that reads “IMPEACH ME”. However, there is evidence to suggest that he made some good decisions. Taft was an oxymoron and a man that fell at both ends of many spectrums, and his political career is still, over a decade after he served in the White House, a fascinating topic.

William Howard Taft was the 27th president of the

The Ballinger Controversy occurred when Louis Glavis, the chief of field divisions of the General Land Office, accused a member of Taft’s Department of the Interior, Richard Ballinger, of interfering in an investigation of Idaho coal mining. The General Land Office, created in 1812 and dissolved in 1946, was an independent agency of the United States government responsible for public land in the United Sates. The Department of the Interior, which is still active today, is responsible for the management and conservation of the aforementioned public and/or federal lands. Glavis accused Taft of being facilitating this interference, and Taft’s ratings as president plummeted. (The Taft administration was, however, later cleared of any

And in August of that same year, he reduced the tariff from the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act. Towards the end of 1909, 500 revolutionaries and two of their American advisors died at the hands of Nicaraguan dictator Jose Santos Zelaya. In response to this tragedy, Taft sent two U.S. warships to Nicaragua in order to threaten and intimidate the Nicaraguan government. Because of this increased American force, Zelaya retired, thanks to Taft, on December 16. Additionally, despite the rift between Roosevelt and Taft, one that seemed to grow deeper every time they spoke, Taft publicly supported Roosevelt and his decisions throughout much of his own presidential career and admitted to his brother in 1910 that he did not understand why Roosevelt seemed to be developing a bad attitude towards him. In 1911, the government, under Taft, signed a treaty that guaranteed the preservation and protection of fur seals in the Bering Sea. He also appointed a commission to investigate postal rates for newspapers and magazines, since Congress did not approve of a recent rate increase. However, after the investigation, they were convinced that it had been