What Would Taft Have Thought?

He would not, in sum, recognize his own party in power, says a journalist who was the friend and collaborator of the late Senator

The journalistic device which calls for the resurrection of a public figure for the purpose of weighing his known attitudes and bents against the current posture of events is tempting. It affords a certain perspective to the scene. What would the Washington who warned against entangling alliances think of collective security? What would that gifted, iconoclastic son of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Jefferson, make of the welfare state? And Lincoln, brooding over the Gettysburg made fortuitously famous by a later President, how would he measure the current disclosures of man’s incorrigible inhumanity to man?

FD

About the Author

Forrest Davis

Featured Tags

He would not, in sum, recognize his own party in power, says a journalist who was the friend and collaborator of the late Senator

The journalistic device which calls for the resurrection of a public figure for the purpose of weighing his known attitudes and bents against the current posture of events is tempting. It affords a certain perspective to the scene. What would the Washington who warned against entangling alliances think of collective security? What would that gifted, iconoclastic son of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Jefferson, make of the welfare state? And Lincoln, brooding over the Gettysburg made fortuitously famous by a later President, how would he measure the current disclosures of man’s incorrigible inhumanity to man?