Taft

As a result, Taft is remembered as an ineffective president. The reason for this is that Taft did not know how to be a politician in the best sense of the word. He implemented little leadership over Congress. He did not know how manipulate the press to mold public opinion as his predecessor Roosevelt had in the "bully pulpit." He was torn by indecision at critical times, and he allowed interdepartmental conflicts between his administrations to blossom to enormous magnitude. Taft intensely disliked conflict and did not intervene in these squabbles. He was never able to balance the advocates of reform against those of reaction during his administration.
             Weaknesses in Domestic Affairs.
             He ardently mishandled the Ballinger-Pichot Affair. The Ballinger-Pinchot affair of 1910 fractured the Republican Party and had far-reaching consequences. The Ballinger-Pinchot controversy was a dispute during the Taft administration in 1909 between Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger and the head of the Forestry Service in the Department of Agriculture, Gifford Pinchot. An appointee and personal friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Pinchot was a passionate conservationist who assisted in carrying out Roosevelt's policy of withdrawing millions of acres from the public domain. These policies had antagonized many western senators who wanted the land kept available for mining, lumber, and grazing leases. Ballinger returned the land to the public domain although Pinchot had made them unavailable for leases by designating them as ranger stations. He launched a crusade against Ballinger by providing information in articles attacking Ballinger. These actions caused Taft to dismiss him.
             Strengths of Domestic Affairs.
             Ironically, a greater number of progressive reforms were accomplished in Taft's four years in office than in Roosevelt's seven years in office. Taft assumed the first tariff revision since 1897. He improved upon Roosevelt's conservation work, made advances in railroad regulation, and embarked on an antitrust crusade resulting in prosecution of twice as many trusts as Roosevelt in all of his terms.