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Mr. Republican: A Biography Of Robert A. Taft
"Mr. Republican" was of course Robert Alphonso Taft of Ohio, political conservative, party regular, United States Senator from 1939 until his death in 1953, and unsuccessful aspirant for the GOP presidential nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952. This biography is the only book on Taft based on full access to the Senator's papers. Sympathetic, yet frequently critical, James T. Patterson offers a thoughtful and interpretive study of the personal and political life of a man who not only wielded great influence in his time but whose bold views on the issues have assumed increasing relevance in the 1960s'a and 1970s's.
Taft was born in Cincinnati, on September 8, 1889, the son of William Howard Taft, President and Chief Justice of the United States, and the grandson of Alphonso Taft, a judge, Secretary of War, Attorney General, and Minister to Austria-Hungary and Russia. Always aware of his heritage, he compiled a brilliant record at his uncle's Taft School, at Yale, and at the Harvard Law School. He then practiced law in Cincinnati for four years, worked under Herbert Hoover for the United States Food Administration in Washington and the American Relief Administration in Paris, and served several terms in the Ohio house and senate between 1921 and 1933. In 1938 he won the first of three terms to the United States Senate.
Taft affirmed individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and the rule of law. He fought hard against the spread of federal bureaucracy, high government spending, and Big Labor. But he was also flexible, and he pained Republican conservatives by battling for public housing and federal aid for education. His capacity for work and his quick and retentive mind established him as the congressional leader in many successful struggles against the proposals of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman. In 1953 he rose above disappointment to serve loyally as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Senate leader.
Although Taft was gentle and tender with family and close friends, he was often self-conscious and combative in the glare of public life, and many contemporaries found him cold and colorless. Because he refused to endorse government's wide-ranging foreign policies, he was also labeled - carelessly - as a mindless isolationist. For all these reasons he failed to achieve a presidential nomination. From the perspective of the 1970s', many of his views, especially on foreign policy, seem relevant and attractive.
Taft was born in Cincinnati, on September 8, 1889, the son of William Howard Taft, President and Chief Justice of the United States, and the grandson of Alphonso Taft, a judge, Secretary of War, Attorney General, and Minister to Austria-Hungary and Russia. Always aware of his heritage, he compiled a brilliant record at his uncle's Taft School, at Yale, and at the Harvard Law School. He then practiced law in Cincinnati for four years, worked under Herbert Hoover for the United States Food Administration in Washington and the American Relief Administration in Paris, and served several terms in the Ohio house and senate between 1921 and 1933. In 1938 he won the first of three terms to the United States Senate.
Taft affirmed individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and the rule of law. He fought hard against the spread of federal bureaucracy, high government spending, and Big Labor. But he was also flexible, and he pained Republican conservatives by battling for public housing and federal aid for education. His capacity for work and his quick and retentive mind established him as the congressional leader in many successful struggles against the proposals of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman. In 1953 he rose above disappointment to serve loyally as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Senate leader.
Although Taft was gentle and tender with family and close friends, he was often self-conscious and combative in the glare of public life, and many contemporaries found him cold and colorless. Because he refused to endorse government's wide-ranging foreign policies, he was also labeled - carelessly - as a mindless isolationist. For all these reasons he failed to achieve a presidential nomination. From the perspective of the 1970s', many of his views, especially on foreign policy, seem relevant and attractive.
749 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
155 people want to read
About the author
James T. Patterson
17 books42 followersJames T. Patterson is an American historian, who was the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Brown University for 30 years. He was educated at Harvard University. His research interests include political history, legal history, and social history, as well as the history of medicine, race relations, and education.
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October 28, 2022
The 1940s was a low decade for the Republican Party in America. Still recovering from the damage inflicted on their image by the Great Depression, they struggled to win at the national level. Shut out from the presidency by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman’s victorious campaigns, they succeeded in controlling Congress for just a two-year period immediately after World War II. Such a dismal performance prompted much soul-searching among many of the party faithful about the path back to the national political dominance they had enjoyed just a few years before.
During these years, such figures as Thomas Dewey, Wendell Willkie, Arthur Vandenberg, and Herbert Hoover played prominent roles in leading the GOP. Yet only one of them was known by his contemporaries as “Mr. Republican”. That man was Robert Alphonso Taft. During his decade and a half in the United States Senate, Taft established himself as an unrelenting critic of Democratic policies and a staunch advocate for conservative values. Yet one of the great strengths of James Patterson’s biography of the man is his ability to go beyond the assumptions that came with his role during this period to analyze Taft’s ideas with nuance and insight, demonstrating in the process that his subject was a far more complex figure than his critics at the time gave him credit for being.
In many ways politics was in Taft’s blood. As a member of the Taft family, he grew up in a family that had distinguished themselves in public service. Not only did his father, William Howard Taft, enjoy a long public career that included stints as president and as the chief justice of the United States, but his grandfather Alfonso Taft, served as Secretary of War and Attorney General during the Grant administration. Young Robert was the beneficiary of his family privilege, enrolling at the prestigious Taft School before attending Yale and Harvard Law. At each institution he excelled academically, eschewing the social scene in favor of long hours engaged in solitary study. This reflected his serious, no-nonsense personality, which as Patterson demonstrates often hindered his political career yet helped him win much admiration for his dedication and sincerity.
After law school Taft followed his father’s advice and joined a law firm in Cincinnati, where he spent the next several years as an underpaid associate. When the United States entered World War I Taft moved to Washington, where he worked as an assistant counsel for the U.S. Food Administration. There he caught the attention of its director, Herbert Hoover, who brought Taft with him to Europe after the war to deal with food relief. With his principled, data-driven approach to solving problems, Hoover became a model for the budding public servant. Taft also shared Hoover’s disgust with the postwar settlement negotiations in Paris, which confirmed his conviction that the United States was better off avoiding involvement in European politics. This attitude would shape his response to global events throughout the rest of his career.
Soon after returning to Cincinnati in 1919 Taft plunged himself into politics. Winning a seat in the Ohio state legislature in 1920, he remained active in state politics throughout the decade while building a lucrative law practice. While his success as a legislator and his famous name ensured speculation that he would run for a statewide office, Taft declined to do so until 1938, when he challenged the incumbent Democrat, Robert Bulkley, for one of Ohio’s seats in the United States Senate. Taft’s victory that year was more a consequence of his hard work and the Republican electoral wave rather than any innate skills as a campaigner, as his cold manner and statistics-laden speeches won him respect rather than affection.
Once in the Senate, Taft quickly established himself as a staunch opponent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. This along with his famous name and the dearth of viable challengers made him a leading candidate for the 1940 Republican presidential nomination. Taft’s ambitions to run for his father’s old job were soon undermined by the war in Europe, however, which made Taft’s isolationist advocacy too much of a liability as a nominee. Here Patterson identifies the recurring irony that would plague Taft’s presidential hopes. Though interested primarily in domestic issues, all three of Taft’s attempts to become president would be frustrated by foreign policy. Here he found himself out-of-step not only with the course of events, but with significant elements of his own party, who worried that Taft’s views made him unelectable nationally. So it proved in 1940, when Wendell Willkie succeeded in winning the nomination instead of Taft.
Deprived of the chance to run against Roosevelt, Taft settled into the role of his foremost opponent in the Senate. Here he proved to be an effective adversary, as he established alliances with conservative southern Democrats to dismantle many of the New Deal agencies. Yet Patterson demonstrates that Taft was far from a reflexive critic of federal involvement in public policy, as he was a consistent advocate of both federally-supported housing and federal aid for education. While such positions often alienated Taft from more hidebound members of his caucus, he was widely respected as one of the Senate’s most effective legislators, which he demonstrated most memorably with the passage of the Taft-Hartley labor laws in 1948.
Nevertheless, the greatest prize continued to elude Taft. His ambitions for the Republican presidential nomination in 1948 were thwarted by Dewey, whose campaign outmaneuvered Taft’s forces at the convention. Truman’s unexpected victory that year provided Taft with one final opportunity for the White House, only for his hostility to America’s postwar military commitments in Europe to prompt Dwight Eisenhower to run the presidency as a Republican in 1952. Defeated for a final time, Taft nonetheless supported Eisenhower out of loyalty to the party, and had established a surprisingly effective relationship with him as president before Taft fell victim to cancer, dying just six months after his inauguration as president in 1953.
To recount the story of Taft’s life, Patterson draws upon the full range of his papers, as well as numerous other manuscript collections and dozens of interviews with his contemporaries. These he uses to provide an extraordinarily well-rounded portrait of his subject, one that balances effectively the personal and political aspects of his life. While his portrayal of Taft is a sympathetic one, Patterson doesn’t shirk from offering critical assessments of his subject’s personality and his thinking about public policy as a way of understanding the limits of his achievements. It’s this combination of diligent research and perceptive judgment that makes Patterson’s book one of the best biographies of an American politician that has ever been written, and one unlikely ever to be surpassed as an account of his career.
During these years, such figures as Thomas Dewey, Wendell Willkie, Arthur Vandenberg, and Herbert Hoover played prominent roles in leading the GOP. Yet only one of them was known by his contemporaries as “Mr. Republican”. That man was Robert Alphonso Taft. During his decade and a half in the United States Senate, Taft established himself as an unrelenting critic of Democratic policies and a staunch advocate for conservative values. Yet one of the great strengths of James Patterson’s biography of the man is his ability to go beyond the assumptions that came with his role during this period to analyze Taft’s ideas with nuance and insight, demonstrating in the process that his subject was a far more complex figure than his critics at the time gave him credit for being.
In many ways politics was in Taft’s blood. As a member of the Taft family, he grew up in a family that had distinguished themselves in public service. Not only did his father, William Howard Taft, enjoy a long public career that included stints as president and as the chief justice of the United States, but his grandfather Alfonso Taft, served as Secretary of War and Attorney General during the Grant administration. Young Robert was the beneficiary of his family privilege, enrolling at the prestigious Taft School before attending Yale and Harvard Law. At each institution he excelled academically, eschewing the social scene in favor of long hours engaged in solitary study. This reflected his serious, no-nonsense personality, which as Patterson demonstrates often hindered his political career yet helped him win much admiration for his dedication and sincerity.
After law school Taft followed his father’s advice and joined a law firm in Cincinnati, where he spent the next several years as an underpaid associate. When the United States entered World War I Taft moved to Washington, where he worked as an assistant counsel for the U.S. Food Administration. There he caught the attention of its director, Herbert Hoover, who brought Taft with him to Europe after the war to deal with food relief. With his principled, data-driven approach to solving problems, Hoover became a model for the budding public servant. Taft also shared Hoover’s disgust with the postwar settlement negotiations in Paris, which confirmed his conviction that the United States was better off avoiding involvement in European politics. This attitude would shape his response to global events throughout the rest of his career.
Soon after returning to Cincinnati in 1919 Taft plunged himself into politics. Winning a seat in the Ohio state legislature in 1920, he remained active in state politics throughout the decade while building a lucrative law practice. While his success as a legislator and his famous name ensured speculation that he would run for a statewide office, Taft declined to do so until 1938, when he challenged the incumbent Democrat, Robert Bulkley, for one of Ohio’s seats in the United States Senate. Taft’s victory that year was more a consequence of his hard work and the Republican electoral wave rather than any innate skills as a campaigner, as his cold manner and statistics-laden speeches won him respect rather than affection.
Once in the Senate, Taft quickly established himself as a staunch opponent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. This along with his famous name and the dearth of viable challengers made him a leading candidate for the 1940 Republican presidential nomination. Taft’s ambitions to run for his father’s old job were soon undermined by the war in Europe, however, which made Taft’s isolationist advocacy too much of a liability as a nominee. Here Patterson identifies the recurring irony that would plague Taft’s presidential hopes. Though interested primarily in domestic issues, all three of Taft’s attempts to become president would be frustrated by foreign policy. Here he found himself out-of-step not only with the course of events, but with significant elements of his own party, who worried that Taft’s views made him unelectable nationally. So it proved in 1940, when Wendell Willkie succeeded in winning the nomination instead of Taft.
Deprived of the chance to run against Roosevelt, Taft settled into the role of his foremost opponent in the Senate. Here he proved to be an effective adversary, as he established alliances with conservative southern Democrats to dismantle many of the New Deal agencies. Yet Patterson demonstrates that Taft was far from a reflexive critic of federal involvement in public policy, as he was a consistent advocate of both federally-supported housing and federal aid for education. While such positions often alienated Taft from more hidebound members of his caucus, he was widely respected as one of the Senate’s most effective legislators, which he demonstrated most memorably with the passage of the Taft-Hartley labor laws in 1948.
Nevertheless, the greatest prize continued to elude Taft. His ambitions for the Republican presidential nomination in 1948 were thwarted by Dewey, whose campaign outmaneuvered Taft’s forces at the convention. Truman’s unexpected victory that year provided Taft with one final opportunity for the White House, only for his hostility to America’s postwar military commitments in Europe to prompt Dwight Eisenhower to run the presidency as a Republican in 1952. Defeated for a final time, Taft nonetheless supported Eisenhower out of loyalty to the party, and had established a surprisingly effective relationship with him as president before Taft fell victim to cancer, dying just six months after his inauguration as president in 1953.
To recount the story of Taft’s life, Patterson draws upon the full range of his papers, as well as numerous other manuscript collections and dozens of interviews with his contemporaries. These he uses to provide an extraordinarily well-rounded portrait of his subject, one that balances effectively the personal and political aspects of his life. While his portrayal of Taft is a sympathetic one, Patterson doesn’t shirk from offering critical assessments of his subject’s personality and his thinking about public policy as a way of understanding the limits of his achievements. It’s this combination of diligent research and perceptive judgment that makes Patterson’s book one of the best biographies of an American politician that has ever been written, and one unlikely ever to be surpassed as an account of his career.
January 16, 2019
Reading this book about the man who in his day was called Mr. Republican a lot of things struck me.
He must have been a man of impressive intellect and drive because within 2 years of being first
elected to the US Senate in 1938 he was in the inner hierarchy of the Senate and would be the unofficial leader of the Republicans there until he died in 1953. In those last months at the beginning
of the Eisenhower administration they made it official.
Taft of course was son of the man who was both our 27th president and the only man to also serve as
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. William Howard Taft never really wanted to be president, Theodore Roosevelt his predecessor made him president. Bob Taft very much wanted to be president
and tried in 1940, 1948, and 1952 for the nomination. He was passed over for the more 'electable'
Wilkie, Dewey, and Ike.
He was held in the highest esteem by his Senate colleagues, but he was not a gladhander or a natural campaigner. Look at newsreels of him and you'll agree. His three campaigns for the
Senate were against some really mediocre Democrats. The author makes a point of saying he was
lucky he never faced a truly charismatic vote getter in Ohio.
He was an isolationist and had a close brush for re-election in 1944 only winning by about 17,000
votes. Isolationists were having a bad time after Pearl Harbor many of them were defeated in 1942,
1944, and 1946. But his isolationism made him question the Korean War and he certainly would
have frowned on Vietnam and post military ventures the USA has had if were alive.
Bob Taft was raised as a Unitarian as his father was and both believed that religion and politics
should not mix. The wedding of his beloved Republican party to holy roller evangelicals is something he would have opposed mightily. He wouldn't get a nomination for precinct committeeman today in the GOP.
He also was not as conservative as his colleagues and had to restrain them on occasion. He was an
author of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner Act which provided for low cost housing built for returning
veterans of World War II. He was a believer in facts and figures and if you gave him the right ones
you got his support.
Organized labor disliked him intensely because of the Taft-Hartley Act which curbed some of their
power post World War II. A lot of strikes were happening then and public opinion quite frankly was
on the side of curbing them. It was passed by the 80th Congress which was GOP controlled and
passed over President Truman's veto. It was an issue for 20 years that divided the parties. But
in time organized labor learned to live with it and it has been amended and is no longer a point of
controversy as it used to be.
He suffered fools not so gladly, the biggest fool he suffered was Joe McCarthy. This was not Taft's
finest hour. He did not approve of Senator McCarthy reckless charges about Communists all over
the government he tried to say as a for instance that our policies were wrong vis a vis Kuomintang
China as opposed to the Communists of Mao Tse-Tung. But he never called Secretary of State
George Marshall a traitor. Had he lived how he would have dealt with the McCarthy eventual
censure, who knows. Personally he acted like McCarthy was something stuck to his shoe.
Cancer struck him swiftly and suddenly in the spring of 1953. Within weeks he was gone. He had
formed a good working partnership with President Eisenhower who had defeated him for the
Republican nomination. What might have come of it had he lived we can only speculate.
Robert A. Taft was one interesting figure and should be studied by people of all political persuasions today. You might not like all of what you see. But there's enough to like for all kinds of folks.
He must have been a man of impressive intellect and drive because within 2 years of being first
elected to the US Senate in 1938 he was in the inner hierarchy of the Senate and would be the unofficial leader of the Republicans there until he died in 1953. In those last months at the beginning
of the Eisenhower administration they made it official.
Taft of course was son of the man who was both our 27th president and the only man to also serve as
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. William Howard Taft never really wanted to be president, Theodore Roosevelt his predecessor made him president. Bob Taft very much wanted to be president
and tried in 1940, 1948, and 1952 for the nomination. He was passed over for the more 'electable'
Wilkie, Dewey, and Ike.
He was held in the highest esteem by his Senate colleagues, but he was not a gladhander or a natural campaigner. Look at newsreels of him and you'll agree. His three campaigns for the
Senate were against some really mediocre Democrats. The author makes a point of saying he was
lucky he never faced a truly charismatic vote getter in Ohio.
He was an isolationist and had a close brush for re-election in 1944 only winning by about 17,000
votes. Isolationists were having a bad time after Pearl Harbor many of them were defeated in 1942,
1944, and 1946. But his isolationism made him question the Korean War and he certainly would
have frowned on Vietnam and post military ventures the USA has had if were alive.
Bob Taft was raised as a Unitarian as his father was and both believed that religion and politics
should not mix. The wedding of his beloved Republican party to holy roller evangelicals is something he would have opposed mightily. He wouldn't get a nomination for precinct committeeman today in the GOP.
He also was not as conservative as his colleagues and had to restrain them on occasion. He was an
author of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner Act which provided for low cost housing built for returning
veterans of World War II. He was a believer in facts and figures and if you gave him the right ones
you got his support.
Organized labor disliked him intensely because of the Taft-Hartley Act which curbed some of their
power post World War II. A lot of strikes were happening then and public opinion quite frankly was
on the side of curbing them. It was passed by the 80th Congress which was GOP controlled and
passed over President Truman's veto. It was an issue for 20 years that divided the parties. But
in time organized labor learned to live with it and it has been amended and is no longer a point of
controversy as it used to be.
He suffered fools not so gladly, the biggest fool he suffered was Joe McCarthy. This was not Taft's
finest hour. He did not approve of Senator McCarthy reckless charges about Communists all over
the government he tried to say as a for instance that our policies were wrong vis a vis Kuomintang
China as opposed to the Communists of Mao Tse-Tung. But he never called Secretary of State
George Marshall a traitor. Had he lived how he would have dealt with the McCarthy eventual
censure, who knows. Personally he acted like McCarthy was something stuck to his shoe.
Cancer struck him swiftly and suddenly in the spring of 1953. Within weeks he was gone. He had
formed a good working partnership with President Eisenhower who had defeated him for the
Republican nomination. What might have come of it had he lived we can only speculate.
Robert A. Taft was one interesting figure and should be studied by people of all political persuasions today. You might not like all of what you see. But there's enough to like for all kinds of folks.
September 22, 2024
There's an old episode of "The Twilight Zone" entitled "Last Stop at Willoughby" in which a harried '50s ad executive is transported by train to the idyllic small town life of his 19th century boyhood. I couldn't help but think of it when reading this book. Mr. Republican is a biography of Robert A. Taft: son of the president, three-term US senator (R-OH), and three time contender for the GOP presidential nomination. A stalwart partisan of the Old Right, he was one of the last politicians of the old school who wrote his own speeches and drove his own car. During the Republican Party's long wilderness period, Taft was unafraid to stand against public opinion and voice his opposition to direct democracy, deficit spending, the New Deal welfare state, intervention in WWII, the Nuremberg show trials, and the establishment of NATO. Of course all our modern "leaders" take these things as a sacred cow. Indeed, he felt deeply what few Western politicians have felt since, that his duty was to his own people and not to foreigners.
Despite contemporary portrayal of him as a doctrinaire conservative elitist, Taft was no rigid ideologue and could be quite flexible on policy - facts dictated his course, not feelings. Not merely a contrarian, he always had an alternative solution in mind. And though far from a common working man himself, he had his finger on their pulse far better than the east coast establishment he distrusted. Ultimately, Robert Taft represented the conservative values of middle America. He was the voice of those people, the real Americans, during the rise of the new world order of the postwar era. Taft resisted the ascendant globalist deep state military-industrial complex that dictated policy under FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower, and that would've controlled Willkie or Dewey too, had they won. In the end of "Last Stop at Willoughby," we learn that the protagonist is not in a train but a hearse, that his visions of 19th century Americana just a dying flash. Robert A. Taft was likewise cut down by cancer at the height of his power, and the Old Right faded away, replaced by new figures who accepted the institutions he fought against as a fait accompli that had always been and always will be. His detractors mocked him as the senator from the 19th century; what they couldn't answer is why that was a bad thing.
Despite contemporary portrayal of him as a doctrinaire conservative elitist, Taft was no rigid ideologue and could be quite flexible on policy - facts dictated his course, not feelings. Not merely a contrarian, he always had an alternative solution in mind. And though far from a common working man himself, he had his finger on their pulse far better than the east coast establishment he distrusted. Ultimately, Robert Taft represented the conservative values of middle America. He was the voice of those people, the real Americans, during the rise of the new world order of the postwar era. Taft resisted the ascendant globalist deep state military-industrial complex that dictated policy under FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower, and that would've controlled Willkie or Dewey too, had they won. In the end of "Last Stop at Willoughby," we learn that the protagonist is not in a train but a hearse, that his visions of 19th century Americana just a dying flash. Robert A. Taft was likewise cut down by cancer at the height of his power, and the Old Right faded away, replaced by new figures who accepted the institutions he fought against as a fait accompli that had always been and always will be. His detractors mocked him as the senator from the 19th century; what they couldn't answer is why that was a bad thing.
June 4, 2023
An exceptional book! A very long book about a very remarkable man and his experiences within his own lifetime. While this book primarily focuses on the political aspects of his life, it also touches upon the personal details of his life (such as his relationship with his uncle & aunt and his relationship with his wife after her stroke in 1950) and his work in his legal career before his entry into the United States in 1938; which also involved local politics.
However, the main feature of this book is heavily predicated on his political career in the United States Senate from 1939 to 1953. Taft's excellence in politics began during his early career in the Ohio State Legislature in the 1920s & early 1930s and would lead to his eventually rise to the top of the National Republican Party during the 1940s. An admirable and genuine Conservative, who fits what the principles of Conservatism truly are: prudence, a believer in Liberty & the Constitution, and perhaps most importantly, an open mind to change when it is clear that it is needed.
Perhaps the best part of this biography is that it does not paint Taft in the stereotype that Laborites & Liberal-leaning individuals like to portray him as.Instead, the author paints Taft as a man of genuine principle, a pragmatic individual who is often willing to change or adapt new beliefs on economic questions of the day, unlike the staunch economic liberalism of the modern right. His willingness to change is perhaps best illustrated by his adaptation of his foreign policy views, especially by his last Presidential Campaign: from a isolationist to non-interventionist and finally a pragmatist. It is perhaps the part of the book that I am most appreciative of, as it shows fairness to both Taft and his legacy.
Yet, reading the biography done on Robert A. Taft also shows that his life was a tragedy. It is a story that is essentially, although unknowingly at the time of in which he lived, a dictation of the end of true American Conservatism. Mr. Republican and his legacy have been forgotten about today by the modern right and the Modern Republican Party, seemingly intentionally. His loss in 1952 is marked in the book as a graceful defeat, and it surely was. Taft's loss in 1952 is also depicted in a solemn tone, as it essentially demonstrates what is perhaps the most painful defeat in Taft's personal life. The Modern American "Conservative" movement since the death of Taft in 1953 has essentially become a disguised Libertarianism in tandem with the staunch Jeffersonian Liberalism of the old Southern Democrats. This is perhaps best shown with the last few pages of the book, which dictates the legacy that Taft left behind -- and at the same time show how the Republican Party had already forsaken Mr. Republican's legacy and principles.
An excellent depiction of Robert A. Taft and his legacy - - something most modern Republicans MUST read and admire today: 5 STARS!
However, the main feature of this book is heavily predicated on his political career in the United States Senate from 1939 to 1953. Taft's excellence in politics began during his early career in the Ohio State Legislature in the 1920s & early 1930s and would lead to his eventually rise to the top of the National Republican Party during the 1940s. An admirable and genuine Conservative, who fits what the principles of Conservatism truly are: prudence, a believer in Liberty & the Constitution, and perhaps most importantly, an open mind to change when it is clear that it is needed.
Perhaps the best part of this biography is that it does not paint Taft in the stereotype that Laborites & Liberal-leaning individuals like to portray him as.Instead, the author paints Taft as a man of genuine principle, a pragmatic individual who is often willing to change or adapt new beliefs on economic questions of the day, unlike the staunch economic liberalism of the modern right. His willingness to change is perhaps best illustrated by his adaptation of his foreign policy views, especially by his last Presidential Campaign: from a isolationist to non-interventionist and finally a pragmatist. It is perhaps the part of the book that I am most appreciative of, as it shows fairness to both Taft and his legacy.
Yet, reading the biography done on Robert A. Taft also shows that his life was a tragedy. It is a story that is essentially, although unknowingly at the time of in which he lived, a dictation of the end of true American Conservatism. Mr. Republican and his legacy have been forgotten about today by the modern right and the Modern Republican Party, seemingly intentionally. His loss in 1952 is marked in the book as a graceful defeat, and it surely was. Taft's loss in 1952 is also depicted in a solemn tone, as it essentially demonstrates what is perhaps the most painful defeat in Taft's personal life. The Modern American "Conservative" movement since the death of Taft in 1953 has essentially become a disguised Libertarianism in tandem with the staunch Jeffersonian Liberalism of the old Southern Democrats. This is perhaps best shown with the last few pages of the book, which dictates the legacy that Taft left behind -- and at the same time show how the Republican Party had already forsaken Mr. Republican's legacy and principles.
An excellent depiction of Robert A. Taft and his legacy - - something most modern Republicans MUST read and admire today: 5 STARS!
January 11, 2022
Principled, unlike most politicians now.
May 20, 2022
A very thorough biography of a dedicated public servant. Very long read , exhausting.
May 31, 2013
Adam C. Zern shares his thoughts . . .
"In 1973 Eza Taft Benson, one my of favorite statesmen, religious leaders, political philosophers, gave a speech at Brigham Young University. In that speech he listed three men who were his most admired statesmen: J. Reuben Clark, Winston Churchill, and Senator Robert Taft. I didn't recognize the name of Robert Taft and after some further investigation I learned that Mr. Taft had run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 against Dwight D. Eisenhower. He lost that nomination (his third attempt it turns out). When President Eisenhower asked Ezra Taft Benson to be his Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Benson very honestly admitted that he supported Mr. Taft for President and perhaps Eisenhower wouldn't want him (this is re-counted in another speech by Ezra T. Benson at BYU). In my efforts to understand more fully Ezra Taft Benson, I thought it would be useful to read some more about this statesmen that I was mostly ignorant of.
As son of former president William Howard Taft, Robert Taft was no stranger to American politics. In fact, this biography focuses almost exclusively on Mr. Taft's time in politics. There is very little said about Mr. Taft's family life compared to how much is said about his political life. Weighing in at a hefty 617 pages (not counting the bibliographic notes), this book could probably only be enjoyed by someone who is interested in American politics or in American history during the middle part of the twentieth century. I enjoyed the book immensely and found the descriptions of the political process, presidential nominations, senate races, and parliamentary practices to be enlightening.
By the end of the book I understood why Ezra Taft Benson would admire Robert A. Taft so much. Furthermore, he is not the only one who admired him. John F. Kennedy honored Robert A. Taft with a section in his book Profiles in Courage for taking a principled stand against the Nuremberg trials. The honored Senator was also selected to be in the Senate Hall of Fame along with other notables like Daniel Webster. Robert A. Taft was above all a principled politician. In many areas of interest, he leaned toward a libertarian viewpoint (which is why Ezra would like him so much) but usually withheld decisions and judgments until fully exploring the issue at hand (he broke with the normal Republican philosophy on issues like education, housing, and foreign policy). Above all, I learned that political debates of today are for the most part the political debates of yesterday. There really are two ideological viewpoints that have clashed in American politics for decades.
There are many great personalities in American politics and history. Sadly, some of them get forgotten because they never achieve the highest cultural throne: the presidency. Robert A. Taft might be one of those personalities. This book was well worth the effort, but only for someone who had the same motivations to read the book as I did."
Statement enshrined on a bronze medallion of Robert A. Taft near his gravesite: "The consideration which ought to determine every decision is the necessity of preserving, maintaining, and increasing the liberty of the people of our country."
http://thethousanderclub.blogspot.com/
"In 1973 Eza Taft Benson, one my of favorite statesmen, religious leaders, political philosophers, gave a speech at Brigham Young University. In that speech he listed three men who were his most admired statesmen: J. Reuben Clark, Winston Churchill, and Senator Robert Taft. I didn't recognize the name of Robert Taft and after some further investigation I learned that Mr. Taft had run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 against Dwight D. Eisenhower. He lost that nomination (his third attempt it turns out). When President Eisenhower asked Ezra Taft Benson to be his Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Benson very honestly admitted that he supported Mr. Taft for President and perhaps Eisenhower wouldn't want him (this is re-counted in another speech by Ezra T. Benson at BYU). In my efforts to understand more fully Ezra Taft Benson, I thought it would be useful to read some more about this statesmen that I was mostly ignorant of.
As son of former president William Howard Taft, Robert Taft was no stranger to American politics. In fact, this biography focuses almost exclusively on Mr. Taft's time in politics. There is very little said about Mr. Taft's family life compared to how much is said about his political life. Weighing in at a hefty 617 pages (not counting the bibliographic notes), this book could probably only be enjoyed by someone who is interested in American politics or in American history during the middle part of the twentieth century. I enjoyed the book immensely and found the descriptions of the political process, presidential nominations, senate races, and parliamentary practices to be enlightening.
By the end of the book I understood why Ezra Taft Benson would admire Robert A. Taft so much. Furthermore, he is not the only one who admired him. John F. Kennedy honored Robert A. Taft with a section in his book Profiles in Courage for taking a principled stand against the Nuremberg trials. The honored Senator was also selected to be in the Senate Hall of Fame along with other notables like Daniel Webster. Robert A. Taft was above all a principled politician. In many areas of interest, he leaned toward a libertarian viewpoint (which is why Ezra would like him so much) but usually withheld decisions and judgments until fully exploring the issue at hand (he broke with the normal Republican philosophy on issues like education, housing, and foreign policy). Above all, I learned that political debates of today are for the most part the political debates of yesterday. There really are two ideological viewpoints that have clashed in American politics for decades.
There are many great personalities in American politics and history. Sadly, some of them get forgotten because they never achieve the highest cultural throne: the presidency. Robert A. Taft might be one of those personalities. This book was well worth the effort, but only for someone who had the same motivations to read the book as I did."
Statement enshrined on a bronze medallion of Robert A. Taft near his gravesite: "The consideration which ought to determine every decision is the necessity of preserving, maintaining, and increasing the liberty of the people of our country."
http://thethousanderclub.blogspot.com/
November 1, 2011
James Patterson delivers an excellent biography of Robert Taft which categorizes the Republican Party during his involvement. Taft was aptly named Mr. Republican by those around him because of his consistent desire to work within the republican machine. Making three attempts for President he proved unable to do what his father had. Taft's run in 1940 was foiled by Wilkie who captured a war hawk vote. Taft himself was very isolationist and did not want to become involved in a war with Germany and thought both the UN and NATO were wrong. A staunch anti-New Dealer, Taft proved to be an irrevocable foe of the FDR administration opposing the socialist tendency's of the program. Taft's start as a state representative and senator in Ohio showed he was not completely against social programs but they were only to be taken in moderation and the idea of higher taxes was against his core beliefs.
Taft found himself again defeated in 1948 when Dewey took the presidential race and ultimately lost to Truman. At the end of the race Dewey's power in the party was sapped and Taft became the clear candidate for the next leg of the race. Taft himself became boiled down in trying to restrain but not divide the party over McCarthy's trials. When 1952 rolled around Taft polled well against Eisenhower but at the end was unable to overtake the general's popularity. While a VP slot was considered Eisenhower wanted someone younger and Taft came in as majority leader in the Senate. Using his influence there he was able to deliver several bills for Eisenhower and try to uphold his unpopular Taft-Hartley act.
This biography does an excellent job of explaining these events and putting them into the context of political history at the time. Robert Taft was one of the more powerful republicans of his day and did an excellent job of upholding party unity in the face of splintering opinions. For those looking for a different perspective on the World War II and early cold War era this cannot be beat. Patterson is in the top of his field and this book delivers as his always do. I highly recommend it for those interested in modern American history.
Taft found himself again defeated in 1948 when Dewey took the presidential race and ultimately lost to Truman. At the end of the race Dewey's power in the party was sapped and Taft became the clear candidate for the next leg of the race. Taft himself became boiled down in trying to restrain but not divide the party over McCarthy's trials. When 1952 rolled around Taft polled well against Eisenhower but at the end was unable to overtake the general's popularity. While a VP slot was considered Eisenhower wanted someone younger and Taft came in as majority leader in the Senate. Using his influence there he was able to deliver several bills for Eisenhower and try to uphold his unpopular Taft-Hartley act.
This biography does an excellent job of explaining these events and putting them into the context of political history at the time. Robert Taft was one of the more powerful republicans of his day and did an excellent job of upholding party unity in the face of splintering opinions. For those looking for a different perspective on the World War II and early cold War era this cannot be beat. Patterson is in the top of his field and this book delivers as his always do. I highly recommend it for those interested in modern American history.
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