Senator Robert A. Taft Sr.
Official and brief bio from the Senate
| TAFT, Robert Alphonso, (1889 - 1953) |
Senate Years of Service: 1939-1953
Party: Republican
 |
TAFT, Robert Alphonso, (son of President William H. Taft, nephew of Charles Phelps Taft, father of Robert Taft, Jr.), a Senator from Ohio; born in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 8, 1889; attended the public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio, and of Manila, Philippine Islands, and Taft School, Watertown, Conn.; graduated from Yale University in 1910 and from Harvard University Law School in 1913; admitted to the Ohio bar in 1913 and commenced practice in Cincinnati, Ohio; director in a number of business enterprises in Cincinnati; assistant counsel, United States Food Administration 1917-1918; counsel, American Relief Administration 1919; member, Ohio house of representatives 1921-1926, serving as speaker and majority leader 1926; member, Ohio Senate 1931-1932; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1938; reelected in 1944 and again in 1950 and served from January 3, 1939, until his death; majority leader 1953; co-chairman, Joint Committee on the Economic Report (Eightieth Congress), chairman, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare (Eightieth Congress), Republican Policy Committee (Eightieth through Eighty-second Congresses); sponsored the Taft-Hartley Act, designed to create equity in collective bargaining between labor and management; unsuccessful candidate in 1940, 1948, and 1952 for the Republican presidential nomination; died in New York City, July 31, 1953; lay in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, August 2-3, 1953; interment in Indian Hill Episcopal Church Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Taft was known as "Mr. Republican" for his dominance during the years 1939-1953, when he served as a U.S. senator from Ohio. Taft is most famous for his steady opposition to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies, and for sponsoring the Taft-Hartley Labor Relations Act of 1947. Taft was the son of William Howard Taft, U.S. president from 1909-1913. Robert Taft stood for the GOP presidential nomination three different times, but never received the nomination; in 1952 he was considered a frontrunner but was defeated by war hero Dwight Eisenhower. Taft became Senate majority leader just before his death in 1953.
Taft's son Robert Jr. also was a U.S. senator from Ohio, from 1971-77. His grandson Bob Taft was elected governor of Ohio in 1998.
OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES:
Review of a 1997 biography; says Taft was "ill-suited for the television age"
Reviewed for H-List by Daniel Nelson, nelson@uakron.edu, Department of History, University of Akron
The Emergence of Robert A. Taft
Robert A. Taft was arguably the most important Ohio politician of the first half of the twentieth century, perhaps of the entire century. By the early l950's, his hard work and reputation for personal integrity had won him the title "Mr. Republican," though most voters apparently considered him too conservative, too regional, and above all, too dull to be President. The standard biography, by James T. Patterson, devotes relatively little attention to Taft's pre-senatorial career or to Ohio politics. Taft's early letters, speeches, and editorials, capably edited and annotated by Clarence Wunderlin, thus provide a welcome opportunity to reexamine Taft's early life and emerging political career. The papers confirm the judgment of the early l950's: Taft was personally ill-suited for the television age. (He admitted as early as l922 that "while I have no difficulty talking, I don't know how to do any of the eloquence business which makes for enthusiasm or applause." (271)) But they also reveal a man of superior intellect, a conservative who was receptive to new ideas, and a politician whose instinctive identification with the business community became the basis for highly successful attacks on the New Deal.
The first section, devoted to Taft's childhood, education, and early legal career, is a reminder of how good it was to be wealthy and well-born in the years before World War I. The dutiful elder son of President William Howard Taft, Robert attended the best schools (the family operated Taft school in Connecticut, Yale, and Harvard Law), hob-nobbed with the sons and daughters of other aristocratic families, traveled widely, lived comfortably despite virtually no income, married an heiress, Martha Bowers, and generally took his privileged life for granted. Yet Taft had little in common with most recent first children. Despite his good fortune, he was serious, scholarly, dedicated, and unpretentious. While taking advantage of his elite status, he always assumed that he would have to make his own way in the world. In later years, he increasingly devoted his energies to business activities. In the mid-l920's, for example, he abruptly withdrew from politics - although he was speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives and a likely gubernatorial candidate - to build his law practice and personal fortune.
Apart from his father, the individual who had the greatest impact on Taft's early career was Herbert Hoover. Their relationship began during World War I, when Taft served in the Food Administration and then assisted Hoover in providing food relief to eastern Europe. In l920 and l928 Taft enthusiastically supported Hoover's campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination. He also absorbed Hoover's approach to politics and government. As a state legislator and influential Cincinnati Republican, Taft championed a variety of moderate reforms designed to modernize government and enhance economic efficiency. By l930, he had a well-deserved reputation as a pragmatic urban politician who had struggled mightily, and with some success, to update Ohio's public institutions.
The Depression of the l930's turned Taft's world upside-down. It apparently did not hurt his law practice or his quest for a personal fortune - major worries of the previous decade - but it devastated his political circle. His father died in l930, he lost a reelection campaign for the state senate (to which he had been elected in l930 on a platform pledging tax reform) in l932, and his friend Hoover, together with other friends and associates who served in the Hoover Administration and the Federal Reserve, were discredited. For the first time in his life Taft was politically adrift. Yet he soon found a new focus in opposition to the New Deal, which would henceforth serve as a negative reference point for his political career.
Taft's response to the New Deal brought to the surface values and ideas that had been implicit in his earlier career. He had never devoted much thought or attention to the poor or unemployed. By l935 he endorsed federal relief programs (though not the New Dealers' management methods), unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and government regulated collective bargaining. He was sufficient liberal on these issues to win the backing of the AFL. He also supported government regulation of the banking and securities industries. He acknowledged that Roosevelt had addressed issues that previous leaders, notably Hoover, had overlooked. Yet such achievements paled beside Roosevelt's sins. Most outrageous were the President's misguided efforts to plan and direct economic activity, to centralize power and decision-making in Washington, and to extend the government's regulatory arm into virtually every facet of business life. For Taft, the NRA and the AAA epitomized what was wrong with the New Deal. If unchecked, they would inexorably lead to socialism, political tyranny, and perpetual depression.
Taft now had a cause and a goal, but a goal that could not be realized in Cincinnati or Columbus. Typically, he began his crusade by reorganizing the Cincinnati Republican organization. By l937 he was confident of his local base and ran for the U.S. Senate. His comparatively easy victory over the incumbent, Robert Bulkley, set the stage for his return to Washington, a national role, and ultimately, a quest for the presidency.
Volume 1 ends with Taft's Senate victory. Although three additional volumes will follow, this work demonstrates that the dull, owlish figure of early l950's newsreels and television broadcasts was not the Taft that Ohio politicos and voters had come to know. It is also an indispensable resource on Ohio in the l920's and l930's. Best of all, it proves that Ohio politics in the interwar years were not the exclusive province of Vic Donahey, Martin Davey, John W. Bricker, and others of their ilk.
Wunderlin has included a large selection of Taft family photos and an extensive bibliography.
Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon
Photos of monuments to Taft, with a brief biographical sketch http://www.aoc.gov/cc/grounds/art_arch/taft.cfm
Big World Blog Homepage- http://www.bigworldblog.com/
The next inductee to the Conservative Heroes Hall of Fame coming Monday Dec. 26th!
Conservative Heroes Hall of Fame- http://ronlisy.bizland.com/bigworldheroes/
posted by RonL at 11:37 AM
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