Roosevelt, Taft, and the politics of an American treaty initiative

Roosevelt had championed the Navy and sent the Great White Fleet around the world, making voluntary restraint an unlikely final presidential project. If he had sought another term, the incumbent advantage might have extended the negotiating window. Taft was less eager to spend but also less suited to launching a difficult international initiative. Naval secretaries Truman Newberry and George von Lengerke Meyer, Senator Benjamin Tillman, and Rear Admiral Richard Wainwright each had institutional or political reasons to sustain shipbuilding. Wainwright's appointment as the first Aide for Naval Operations in December 1909, a forerunner of the Chief of Naval Operations, also shows that the Navy's central administration was still taking shape. Tillman in particular linked naval appropriations to continued work at Charleston Navy Yard. Under the historical succession, an initiative beginning in 1909 therefore had to start before Taft's inauguration on 4 March.