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...