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…