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'''Robert A. Taft''' (1889-1953), son of President [[William Howard Taft]], was a leading Republican Senator, 1938-531938–53, and was known as "Mr. Republican". He was a leader of the [[Conservative Coalition]], working with southern Democrats to control Congress. Little major legislation passed the Senate against his objections. His crowning achievement was writing and passing, over President [[Harry Truman|Truman]]'s veto, the [[Taft-Hartley Act]] of 1947. It balanced the interests of unions, management and the public. [[Image:Taft40.jpg|thumb|260px|''Time'' Jan. 29, 1940]]
==Private life==
Taft was the scion of a powerful Republican family based in Cincinnati Ohio. His father was elected president in 1908, and in 1921 became Chief Justice of the United States. Taft's sister Helen Taft Manning was a professor, and his brother Charles Taft was a leading reformer in Cincinnati. As a boy he spent three years in the Philippines, where his father was governor.
Taft confessed in 1922 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".<ref>Taft ''Papers'' 1:271</ref> Taft himself appeared taciturn and coldly intellectual, characteristics that were offset by his gregarious wife, who served the same role his mother had for his father, as a confident and powerful asset to her husband's political career. They had four sons. Robert Alphonso Taft, Jr., served as a senator from Ohio. Horace Dwight Taft, became a professor of physics and dean at Yale. William Howard III served as ambassador to Ireland.
==Public offices==
Rejected by the army for poor eyesight, in 1917 he joined the legal staff of the [[Food and Drug Administration]] where he met [[Herbert Hoover]] who became his idol. In 1918-19 he was in Paris as legal adviser for the [[American Relief Administration]], Hoover's agency which distributed food to war-torn Europe. He learned to distrust governmental bureaucracy as inefficient and detrimental to the rights of the individual, principles he promoted throughout his career. He distrusted the League of Nations, and European politicians generally. He strongly endorsed the idea of a powerful World Court that would enforce international law, but no such idealized court ever existed. He returned to Ohio in late 1919, promoted Hoover for president, and opened a law firm with his brother [[Charles Phelps Taft II]].
Taft was re-elected again in 1944 and in 1950, after high-profile contests battling the labor unions in an industrial state. He was Senate Majority Leader after the GOP swept the elections of 1946, though he left foreign policy to his colleague Sen. [[Arthur Vandenberg]].
Moving a bit to the left in the late 1940s, he supported federal aid to education (which did not pass). He cosponsored the Taft-Wagner-Ellender Housing Act to subsidize public housing in inner cities. Government, he argued in 1946, should "give to all a minimum standard of living," including sufficient education to give "to all children a fair opportunity to get a start in life."<ref> Taft, ''Papers'' 3:111</ref>
==Labor issues==
The [[Taft-Hartley Act]] single-handedly ended a growing problem of strikes after [[World War II]], and preserved [[capitalism]] in the United States. Ever since, [[Democrats]] have sought unsuccessfully for its repeal. It bans "unfair" union practices, outlaws [[closed shops]], and authorizes the President to seek federal court injunctions to impose an eighty-day cooling-off period if a strike threatened the national interest.
==Foreign policy== During 1939 to 1941 Taft was strongly opposed American entry into World War II, while supporting military mobilization and limited aid to Britain. He fully endorsed the [[America First]] Committee, arguing in January 1941 that "Hitler's defeat is not vital to us."<ref> Taft, ''Papers'' 2:218</ref>
After Pearl Harbor (Dec. 1941), however, he completely supported an all-out war against Germany and Japan. The war itself, Taft always argued, was being fought to "make clear that national aggression cannot succeed in this world",<ref> Taft, ''Papers'' 2:443</ref>, and not as liberals said to advance the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter, or publisher Henry Luce's "American Century."
In 1945 Taft found the new United Nations Charter sacrificed "law and justice" to "force and expediency." he lost some popularity when he stated that the Nuremberg trials were based on faulty ex post facto statutes; that position earned him a chapter in Senator John F. Kennedy's famous book, ''Profiles in Courage'' (1958).
In the late 1940s Taft did not view Stalin's [[Soviet Union]] as a major threat. Nor did he pay much attention to internal Communism. The true danger he said was big government and runaway spending. He supported the [[Truman Doctrine]], reluctantly approved the [[Marshall Plan]] but tried to cut its budget, and opposed [[NATO]] as unnecessary and provocative. In 1950-52 he took the lead condemning President [[Harry S. Truman]]'s handling of the [[Korean War]]. Taft tolerated Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]]'s attacks on Democrats, claimed President Truman was fostering a "police state," and blamed General [[George C. Marshall]] for the loss of China and the subsequent Korean War.
Berger (1967) rejected the [[liberal]] criticism of Taft as an "isolationist", which is a pejorative term used by the [[Left]] to smear opponents of [[globalism]]. Berger says Taft was rather a "conservative nationalist at odds with the struggling attempts of liberal American policy-makers to fashion a program in the postwar years." Taft profoundly believed in the exceptionalism of America and its people, and argued the "principal purpose of the foreign policy of the United States is to maintain the liberty of our people." Taft identified three fundamental requirements for the maintenance of American liberty-an economic system based on free enterprise, a political system based on democracy, and national independence and sovereignty. All three, he feared, might be destroyed in a war, or even by extensive preparations for war, so he did not see Stalin's [[Soviet Union]] as a major threat to American values. Nor did he pay much attention to internal Communism. The true danger he said was big government and runaway spending. He supported the [[Truman Doctrine]], reluctantly approved the [[Marshall Plan]], and opposed [[NATO]] as unnecessary and provocative. He consistently opposed the draft and took the lead condemning President [[Harry S. Truman]]'s handling of the [[Korean War]].<ref> See John Moser, "Principles Without Program: Senator Robert A. Taft and American Foreign Policy," ''Ohio History,'' (1999) 108#2 pp. 177-192. </ref>
==Presidency==
==Bibliography==
* Armstrong John P. "The Enigma of Senator Taft and American Foreign Policy." ''Review of Politics'' 17:2 (1955): 206-231. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6705(195504)17%3A2%3C206%3ATEOSTA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 in JSTOR]
* Berger Henry. "A Conservative Critique of Containment: Senator Taft on the Early Cold War Program." In David Horowitz, ed., ''Containment and Revolution.'' (1967), pp 132-39132–39
* Berger, Henry. "Senator Robert A. Taft Dissents from Military Escalation." In Thomas G. Paterson, ed., ''Cold War Critics: Alternatives to American Foreign Policy in the Truman Years.'' (1971)
* Doenecke, Justus D. ''Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era'' (1979), by a conservative historian
* Matthews, Geoffrey. "Robert A. Taft, the Constitution, and American Foreign Policy, 1939-53," ''Journal of Contemporary History'', 17 (July, 1982),
* Moore, John Robert. "The Conservative Coalition in the United States Senate, 1942-45." ''Journal of Southern History'' 1967 33(3): 369-376. uses roll calls [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2204865 in JSTOR]
* Moser, John E. "Principles Without Program: Senator Robert A. Taft and American Foreign Policy," ''Ohio History'' (1999) 108#2 pp 177-92 177–92 [http://publications.ohiohistory.org/ohstemplate.cfm?action=detail&Page=0108177.html&StartPage=177&EndPage=192&volume=108¬es=&newtitle=Volume%20108%20Page%20177 online edition], by a conservative historian* Patterson, James T. "A Conservative Coalition Forms in Congress, 1933-1939," ''The Journal of American History,'' Vol. 52, No. 4. (Mar., 1966), pp. 757-772 757–772. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8723%28196603%2952%3A4%3C757%3AACCFIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C in JSTOR]
* Patterson, James T. ''Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933-39'' (1967)
* Patterson, James T. ''Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft'' (1972), standard scholarly biography
