Who is the first modern president? The answer may surprise you. Hint: it’s William Howard Taft!
William Howard Taft, 27th president of the United States (1909-13) and later chief justice of the Supreme Court, was the nation’s first modern president and most modern president, according to Swain Pfister, professor of American history at Northwestern South Dakota State A,M & I University in Moot Point, SD.
“You hear a lot of talk about who was the first president we can consider modern,” Pfister said. “There was FDR and his use of radio, Ike being the first television president, Kennedy being the first who really knew how to exploit the new medium. Wilson began the practice of bringing in a lot of addle-pated malarkey from academe. But for me, William Howard Taft is far and away not only the first modern president, he’s the most modern president, and I’ll tell you why: It’s because he was so frickin’ huge.”
Pfister noted that nearly 80 percent of American adults today are overweight, and nearly half are obese.
Taft was “a visionary of adiposity,” Pfister said.
“Listen, this Taft dude was a man who looked like America — and I mean the America of more than a century after his term. Term, singular. The nation simply was not yet ready for a multi-term president who was under six feet tall but weighed as much as an adult reindeer or a small piano,” Pfister said, explaining that Taft maxed out at around 350 pounds.
“You think Bill Clinton was a porker? Grover Cleveland? Donald Trump? Mother of God, what are you smoking?” Pfister said. “Watching Taft get out of a chair was like watching Napoleon get out of Russia.”
Pfister said he believed Taft would have thrived in a more militaristic system.
“At that time, Americans preferred a small military establishment, despite our recent colonialism,” Pfister said. “but the period of Taft’s presidency does correspond to the time of greatest military interest in blimps and dirigibles. There are plenty of countries where the army and navy would have made a man like Taft dictator for life.”
Pfister said he believed the “mondo gobby-fat” Ohioan would be an unbeatable candidate if he were alive today.
“We go through phases of the American people wanting to see a president who seems similar to them in some way.” Pfister said. “Truman was ordinary in a way people liked. Ike was an uncle who happened to be a five-star general. Carter and Clinton demonstrated the electoral clout of the vast number of people who talk through their noses. Taft, well, Taft had a body mass index of 45. He wasn’t just modern. He was America made flesh.”
Pfister noted that term limits for presidents have been imposed since Taft’s time.
“I say thank God for that,” Pfister said. “If somebody like him came along again, we’d never be finished paying for the renovations necessary to keep the White House from collapsing.”
