William H. Taft
William H. Taft
This chapter is a comparison of Theodore Roosevelt's aggressive take on presidential power and that of William Howard Taft's more modest view. Taft attacked the stewardship theory as “an unsafe doctrine,” and disagreed with Roosevelt's view that “the Executive is charged with responsibility for the welfare of all the people in a general way, that he is to play the part of a Universal Providence and set all things right, and that anything that in his judgment will help the people he ought to do, unless he is expressly forbidden not to do it.” Taft, according to biographer Paolo E. Coletta, had a juridical conception of the presidency instead of a political one.
Keywords: stewardship theory, unsafe doctrine, Universal Providence, Paolo E. Coletta, juridical conception, presidency
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
