Two presidents

It is customary to think of Roosevelt as the progressive president and Taft as the conservative president in an age of reform. In some respects, the distinction is useful, but more for style than substance, more for the Taft of his postpresidential years, and more for the selective appropriation of the two men's respective views by subsequent political movements, than for the politics with which the two leaders were directly involved in the first decade of the twentieth century. Not for nothing did Roosevelt designate Taft his preferred progressive presidential successor. As political protégé and cabinet member, Taft supported Roosevelt's reform initiatives in general, and he shared, in particular, Roosevelt's views on the need to affirm and regulate large corporate enterprise. The secretary of war and former civil governor of the Philippines was also a leading exponent and practitioner of the internationalism championed by Roosevelt.

If Roosevelt achieved notable reform legislation, so Taft as president established an impressive reform record of his own: parcel post, postal savings, federal tax on net corporate income, the Mann–Elkins Act, establishment of a federal children's bureau, railway and mine safety regulation, employer's liability on government contract work, the eight-hour day for federal employees, the income tax amendment (passed by Congress in 1909 and, with Taft's active support, ratified in 1913).

Although Taft was not successful in substantially reforming the tariff, he did succeed in revising some rates downward; Roosevelt succeeded at neither and, indeed, preferred not to touch the issue. Downward tariff revision may have been progressive, but many progressives, especially from the Midwest and West, opposed it.