Taft, Robert, Jr.

(b. 26 February 1917 in Cincinnati, Ohio; d. 7 December 1993 in Cincinnati, Ohio), U.S. representative and senator from Ohio, known for his staunch advocacy of conservative policies during the John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald Ford administrations.

The second of four sons born to Robert Alphonso Taft, a U.S. senator from Ohio and two-time presidential contender, and Martha Wheaton Bowers, a homemaker, the younger Taft’s career in public service was virtually predetermined. Taft was the great-grandson of Alphonso Taft, President Grant’s secretary of war and attorney general, and grandson of William Howard Taft, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and twenty-seventh president. Taft completed his primary schooling in the Cincinnati public schools, proceeding then to Cincinnati Country Day School and the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, a preparatory school founded by his great-uncle. Taft matriculated at Yale, where he competed in freshman crew and junior varsity football, majored in English, and joined both the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the campus literary club. In his junior year Taft got his formal initiation to politics by working on his father’s senatorial campaign. He graduated with a B.A. degree in 1939 and on 27 June of that year he married Blanca Duncan Noel, with whom he had four children. He enrolled in Harvard Law School, where in 1942 he earned an LL.B. degree. Taft, an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve, then went on wartime active duty, attended the Naval War College, and participated in Allied operations at Guadalcanal, Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, and Okinawa. His active duty ended in January 1946, when he was discharged as a lieutenant.

In the decade after the war Taft’s career followed a path into politics common in his family. As an associate and eventual partner in the firm Taft, Stettinius, and Hollister, he specialized in corporate and adoption law. He gained some political experience as an adviser to his father’s presidential bids of 1948 and 1952 and, upon his father’s death in 1953, became the presumptive candidate for the vacant Senate seat. He brushed aside overtures from Republican party officials, favoring instead additional political experience within Ohio. In 1954 he easily won the Hamilton County seat in the state House of Representatives, where he emphasized the issues of child welfare, aging, and mental health, while serving on the Finance, Industry and Labor, Welfare and Insurance, and Judiciary committees. Voters returned Taft to Columbus three more times, and his colleagues in the House elected him a majority floor leader for 1961-1962.

Taft entered the national legislative scene in 1962. After briefly considering a run against the incumbent Democratic senator Frank Lausche, Taft chose instead to run for an at-large congressional seat. During the campaign he attacked the Kennedy administration for its advocacy of large government programs as well as for deficit spending and weak foreign policy, especially in its handling of Cuba. In November Taft easily defeated Democratic candidate Richard D. Kennedy. Upon being sworn in he was assigned to the House Banking and Currency and Education and Labor committees; was given positions on the Domestic Finance, Bank Supervision, Insurance, and Labor subcommittees; and was chosen leader of the House Republican freshman class. During his initial term Taft made known his views on important issues, including his support for the Civil Rights Act, vocational training, and extension of the Selective Service Act. He also was opposed to additional offices to administer antipoverty programs and to federal court interference in state reapportionment.

Taft’s political fortunes took a downward turn in 1964, when he chose to forgo reelection to the House and run instead for a Senate seat occupied by Democrat Stephen M. Young. In the campaign, Taft’s close association with the controversial Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater became an issue and the November election saw Taft swept away with the anti-Goldwater tide. Afterward Taft stayed active in national politics, serving as the chair of a Republican committee on government relations that recommended returning federal tax money to states with few conditions.

Taft returned to elective politics in January 1966 when he announced his candidacy for U.S. Representative from Ohio’s First District. His opponent, the incumbent Democrat John J. Gilligan, largely supported the positions of the Johnson administration, while Taft ran on business-investment tax credits, cutting non-defense spending, investigating waste in federal poverty programs, and greater openness in foreign policy. His victory in November sent him to Washington once again, where he was assigned to the House Foreign Affairs committee and European Relations and Foreign Economic Policy subcommittees. In the House he continued to campaign against excessive spending and extension of executive military powers, while supporting humanitarian aid to India. Taft faced no serious challenge in 1968 and was easily reelected.

In 1970 Taft once again made a bid for a Senate seat. After defeating the popular governor James A. Rhodes in the Republican primary by a mere 6,000 votes, Taft went on to win a hotly contested general election against businessman Howard Metzenbaum. Assigned to the Senate Armed Services, Labor and Public Welfare, and Banking, Currency, and Housing committees, Taft deviated little from the legislative program he had followed in the House. He continued to pursue his interests in the areas of health, justice, and economic antidiscrimination, authoring legislation to extend the National Labor Relations Act to healthcare workers and advocating amnesty for those who had avoided the draft in opposition to the Vietnam War. He generally supported the Nixon administration’s foreign policy positions, favored work programs for those receiving food stamps; advocated tax credits for private education, and pushed for some pro-labor legislation.

Taft’s political career came to an end in 1976 when, as a result of the Watergate backlash, he lost his reelection bid to Metzenbaum. Fatigued and frustrated with public life, Taft resigned his seat a month after the general election and returned to the practice of law as a partner in his family’s firm. He divided his time between Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati prior to retirement from his legal practice in 1988. In late November 1993 Taft suffered a stroke, fell into a coma, and died little more than a week later at the age of seventy-six. He is buried at the Indian Hill Episcopal Church Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Taft was a low-key champion of conservative issues. Although he was a standard-bearer for a famous American political family, he shunned the spotlight and approached public service as an obligation and, often, as a burden. Toward the end of his career, Taft moderated his conservative views and more frequently championed legislation benefiting labor and minority groups, which both brought him into conflict with Republican colleagues and gained for him enduring recognition from citizens across the political spectrum.

Biographical material on Taft appears in Ishbel Ross, An American Family: The Tafts (1964); Max Charles Graeber, “An Analysis of the Speaking of Robert Taft Jr. Before Selected Audiences” (M.A. Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1965); Current Biography Yearbook 1967; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1971 (1971); Congressional Directory, Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session (1974); Nelson Lichtenstein, ed., Political Profiles: “The Nixon/Ford Years” (1979) ; and L. Sandy Maisei, ed., Political Parties and Elections in the United States: An Encyclopedia (1991). Obituaries are in the New York Times and Washington Post (both 8 Dec. 1993).

Raymond D. Irwin