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NARRATOR: President Theodore Roosevelt handpicked his successor, his good friend, William Howard Taft. But it was a decision that would ultimately destroy a friendship and split the Republican Party.

Taft won the presidency in the 1908 election with Roosevelt's backing. And at first, Taft carried on the policies of the Roosevelt administration. He continued to fight business trusts in the tobacco, sugar, oil, and steel industries.

- Theodore Roosevelt has the reputation in history as a trust buster. But in fact, in terms of the number of trusts busted, William Howard Taft actually busted far more.

NARRATOR: Roosevelt had left the Republican Party divided between conservatives and progressives wanting reform. Taft didn't have Roosevelt's political savvy to find a middle ground between these two factions.

- In some ways, a breakup of the Republican Party was on the horizon for a few years before. In Theodore Roosevelt's second term, he had already started pushing for more reform and had angered some of the more conservative elements in the Republican Party. Then, when William Howard Taft becomes president, he has to basically ride a wave, like he's on a surfboard, between these two forces that are pulling him apart.

NARRATOR: In 1909, Taft sided with the conservatives on a high tariff bill, and the progressives accused him of siding with big business. Then, Taft and Gifford Pinchot, head of the US Forest Service and a friend of Theodore Roosevelt's, disagreed on conservation policies. When Taft dismissed Pinchot, progressives again felt that Taft didn't stand for the reform leadership they expected.

Finally, in 1911, Taft took the US Steel Corporation to court over its acquisition of another company, an acquisition that had been approved by Teddy Roosevelt while he was still president. This strained relations to the limit.

- US Steel was the largest of all the trusts at that time. And he brought the case forward under the Sherman Antitrust Act. And one of the things that was called into question was the permission that US Steel had to acquire the Tennessee Iron and Coal Company in 1907.

And Theodore Roosevelt, Taft's predecessor, had basically assented to that and said that would be OK. And now Taft was coming forward and saying that was a violation of Sherman Antitrust laws and he was going to bust the trust. And this was really the tipping point that breaks the relationship between Taft and Roosevelt.

NARRATOR: Roosevelt began attacking Taft and his administration. And when the progressive Republicans wanted a presidential candidate to represent them, Roosevelt was ready and willing.

- Theodore Roosevelt, who's a young man, still wants a career ahead of himself, politically can't stay out of the spotlight. And he keeps publicly attacking Taft's policies and, slowly but surely, moves back into the public arena.

NARRATOR: At the Republican Presidential Convention in 1912, Taft won the party nomination. Roosevelt and his supporters walked out and formed the Progressive Party. They held their own convention and nominated Theodore Roosevelt as their presidential candidate. Also known as The Bull Moose Party, the platform called for a strong, active federal government and social justice for all Americans.

- The party didn't outlast Theodore Roosevelt himself. But, in 1912, it did bring together those Americans who thought that a strong federal government, active in the public welfare and also active on the international scene, was what a great nation needed, against a Democratic Party which still stood for relatively small government, and against the Republican Party, which they claimed stood for the interests of business.

NARRATOR: The Republican Party vote was split between Taft and Roosevelt, and opened the door for Woodrow Wilson, the first Democratic Party president since Grover Cleveland won in 1892.