U.S. # 687 pictures U.S. President William Howard Taft. Before being elected as our twenty-seventh President, William Howard Taft also served as Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt had chosen Taft as his successor, he later disapproved of Taft’s policies and ran against him on the Bull Moose ticket in the 1912 election. The Republican vote was split, and Wilson was elected our twenty-eighth President. After leaving the White House, Taft went on to become a professor of law at Yale University and a U.S. Supreme Court Justice – the only U.S. President to do so.