THE AMERICAN PRESI DENCY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13433, 26 March 1907, Page 7

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY.

The American party leaders are already laying plans for the next Presidential campaign, and of course the newspapers are "always speculating concerning the probable candidates^ Mr Roosevelt has , declared .definitely, that he is out of the running, because^ he adheres to the unwritten law against a third term. If he would accept nomination, the Republican difficulties would be almost at an end, but be is. himself showing a lively interest in the discovery of his successor. Ha is said), to favour the candidature of Mr W. H., Taft, the present Secretary for War;, who is definitely "before' the country asf a qandidate\ Mr 'Taft recently expressed his own views in a modest j statement, provoked' bf persistent | Newspaper correspondents. "I wish tp say," he wrote, "that my ambitionjs j not political ; thai I am not seeking fyd Presidential nomination; that I do riot expect to be the Republican candidate,. if for no other reason, because of wh&t seem to me to be objections to my avajl r ability, which do not appear to lessen with the continued discharge of my official duties ; but lam not foolish enough to say that in the improbable event bf the great 'office coining, to me, I should decline it, for this would not be true;*" In saying that his ambition is not pojitical, Mr Taft refers to his well-knoyn personal desire to become a member the Federal Supreme Court. He wasa Judge' before he was appointed Administrator in the Philippines, where he was brilliantly successful, and since His return td Washington 'ha has administered the War Department very' cap--ably. The paragraph' concerning fiis "availability" is a reference to the fact that the party machine in Ohio, his own State, i& controlled by men hostile to him. Other politicians mentioned 'as possible Republican candidates are Mr Fairbanks; the present Vice-President, and Speaker Cannon, of the House- of Representatives. Mr W. J. Bryan 'ss, of course, in the running for the Democratic nomination, but so far he has failed to reconcile the various sections of the once great party. Mr Hearst is regarded as impossible after his defeat for the Governorship of New York. Possibly the Convention will be persuaded to accept a compromise candidate like Judge Parker, and the name of Dr. Woodrow Wilson, President of Princeton University, is being mentioned.