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TAFT, ROBERT ALPHONSO 1889-1953

U.S. SENATOR

Emerging as Leader of Republican Conservatives

The son of twenty-seventh U.S. president William Howard Taft, Robert A. Taft entered the political arena as assistant general counsel to food administrator Herbert Hoover during World War I. In 1938 he was elected to the Senate from Ohio, running on an anti-New Deal platform. After the end of World War II Taft emerged as a leader of a Republican conservative wing that opposed prounion legislation and spearheaded efforts to lower top tax rates. Yet despite his immense power on Capitol Hill, he failed in his 1952 bid against Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Republican presidential nomination.

Championing Isolationism

"Mr. Republican," as he was called, was often at loggerheads with the Truman administration over the proper response to the Soviet threat. He opposed, for example, overseas military commitments, arguing that the United States was better off relying on nuclear power to deter the Soviets and that U.S. defense policy should first concern itself with the defense of home soil. During the Korean War Taft continued to criticize interventionist foreign policy. He later lead the opposition against strategies of containment that Eisenhower largely inherited from Truman; Taft consistently questioned the wisdom and cost of deploying American troops in Europe.

Seeking the Republican Nomination

In 1940 and in 1944 Taft's name emerged as a potential Republican nominee. In 1948 Taft fell short of gaining his party's support when liberal eastern Republican Thomas Dewey of New York won the nomination on the third ballot. In 1950 Taft began gearing up for the 1952 nomination and joined Sen. Joseph McCarthy in claiming that Truman "lost" China and in charging that Communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. Yet again Taft's bid for the Republican nomination was foiled as Dewey and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., threw their support behind Gen. Dwight D. (" Ike") Eisenhower, the internationalist-minded war hero with broad voter appeal.

Taft's Failings as a Candidate

Taft the candidate was the victim of his own drab personality. He lacked the polished oratorical skills of many of the younger Republican party lions such as Richard Nixon, and he failed to generate much real passion among the voters; nor was it possible for him to capture the nomination from inside the Republican political machine without the support of the eastern establishment. At the convention, when it was clear he would lose to General Eisenhower, Taft retreated in silence.

Taft Becomes a White House Ally

Weeks later Eisenhower's forces found that they desperately needed Taft's political clout and resources in the election, and Ike met with him at Morningside Heights in New York City. The two men struck a deal: in return for the Ohio senator's support both in the election and in training the White House staff afterward, Eisenhower would cut spending and stand firm against government expansion, issues that Ike was inclined to support anyway. Despite continued foreign-policy debate, Taft and the new president got along well, and the senator even attempted to temper the outbreaks of McCarthy. In July 1953 Robert Taft died of a brain hemorrhage resulting from cancer. Eisenhower lost a valuable ally on Capitol Hill, and the American conservative movement lost one of its primary voices.