Taft Blue and White

Blue text on white horizontal stripe between two blue half-circles

This button was for William Howard Taft's campaign for U.S. president in 1908 or 1912. Taft served as President Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war from 1904-1908. Having pledged not to run for a third term, Roosevelt groomed Taft as his successor. Taft and his running mate, James S. Sherman, won with 321 electoral votes to 162 for William Jennings Bryan and John Kern. Taft ran for re-election in 1912, but lost to Woodrow Wilson.

Taft was born in Ohio in 1857 and attended Yale University and Cincinnati Law School. He was Solicitor General of the United States under President Benjamin Harrison, Governor-General of the Philippines under President William McKinley and Provisional Governor of Cuba under President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until 1930. Taft remains the only person to have held the office of both U.S. president and chief justice of the Supreme Court. On April 14, 1910, Taft became the first president to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a major league baseball game, a tradition that continues to this day.