What If Taft Served Another Term? | Alternate History

William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States. He was actually Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked successor because Roosevelt wasn’t sure he should run for what would essentially be a third term; even though he was only elected once before, he served the majority of what would have been President McKinley’s Second Term before that, and figured he might as well play it safe, and find someone he was confident would continue his work instead. Again, that someone was Taft, and ol’ Bill did a pretty good job of that: He was a trust-buster, actually busting twice as many trusts as Roosevelt did. He used government power to help the common American. And he did a little bit of trolling in Latin America (occupation of Nicaragua).

But the biggest problem between Bill and Ted was that Bill thought Ted went a little too far. In foreign policy. In use of government power. But especially in conservation. Roosevelt created massive nature reserves using literal hundreds of executive orders, and Bill just thought this wasn’t something the President could do without Congress’s approval, so, he sold a bunch of it off to private owners, like 3 million acres of it. Roosevelt. Went. MAD.

He made Taft out to be a traitor to the Progressive movement, and decided “to heck with it, I only served one term, I’m gonna run again”, and he tried to unseat Taft as the Republican nominee in the upcoming election, but by then the Republicans decided they liked Taft’s moderate Progressivism better than what Roosevelt was offering. He did get a bit more radical in his views in the years he was out of office, while Taft showed the Republicans that Progressivism could be done with extreme expansions of executive power.

Not being one to be defeated so easily, Roosevelt decided “fine, I don’t need the Republican party. I’ll make my own party, with bulls and mooses!” And…he was defeated easily, and so was Taft. Roosevelt’s third party split the Republican vote, and allowed for the rise of Wilson (who wasn’t that bad).

Still…Wilson denied us another Roosevelt administration, and even worse, denied us four more years of Bill. But what if that changed? What if in an alternate timeline…it was…no, not Roosevelt…Bill’s time to shine…

It was during this election that Theodore Roosevelt, on his way to deliver a speech, was shot in the chest by a crazed would-be assassin, however, thanks to the thickness of the speech he’d been…