Taft, Robert A.

Robert A. Taft (1889–1953), an Ohio Republican, entered the Senate in 1939. A leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Taft generally opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he advocated “America first” isolationism.

Taft was extremely intelligent and hardworking, although he lacked charisma. In power and authority he was the leading Republican in the Senate from the 1940s to his death. Not until 1953, the year he died, however, did Taft officially lead his Senate colleagues as majority leader.

As the son of President William Howard Taft, Robert Taft was no stranger to politics. He practiced law in Cincinnati and in 1919 went to Paris to help Herbert Hoover (then head of the Food Administration) oversee the distribution of postwar aid to Europe. Shortly after his return, he entered the state legislature, where he stayed until he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

As a senator, Taft approved of only some elements of the New Deal, such as Social Security and public housing. He opposed generous farm subsidies and, until he reversed positions in 1946, federal involvement in education. Taft thought the power of organized labor had become excessive; in 1947 he cosponsored the Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted the right of unions to strike.

Taft felt that Europe's problems were its own and spoke out against the lend-lease program, through which the United States helped supply the Allies during World War II. He believed that the only organization capable of promoting world peace would be an international court buttressed by a body of strong international laws. He put little faith in the United Nations and objected to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He thought NATO would only antagonize the Soviet Union, which, he believed, had no interest in hegemony over Western Europe.

[Page p451]Earnest and well-briefed, Taft earned the respect of his colleagues. His power was centered in the Senate Policy Committee, which he headed from its establishment in 1947. He was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952. In 1952 he lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower, to whom he gave his support (after Eisenhower agreed to some general conservative conditions) and his unconditional friendship.