The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume VIIIWilliam Howard Tafts presidency (1909 1913), succeeding Theodore Roosevelts, was mired in bitter partisan fighting, and Taft sometimes blundered politically. However, this son of Cincinnati assumed his true calling when President Warren G. Harding appointed him to the U. S. Supreme Court in 1921. Taft remains the only person to have served both as president of the United States and as chief justice of the Supreme Court. The Collected Works of William