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Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft Hardcover – January 1, 1972

by James T. Patterson (Author)

4.5 14 ratings

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"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.

Print length

749 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Company
Publication date

January 1, 1972
ISBN-10

0395139384
ISBN-13

978-0395139387
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Houghton Mifflin Company; First Edition (January 1, 1972)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 749 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0395139384
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0395139387
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.5 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #1,691,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.5 14 ratings

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Lehigh History Student

Wonderful overview of the political era in and around world war II

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2007

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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.

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Republican, si; President, no.

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2001

Robert A. Taft of Ohio was a bastion of the Republican Party. Son of President William Howard Taft and elected to the U.S. Senate in 1938, he was "Mr. Republican" in that venerable chamber for fifteen years till his untimely death in 1953. Widely respected as a legislative tactician, he developed a fiercely loyal public following. He was a major contender for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States in not one but four presidential campaigns: 1940, 1944, 1948, and 1952. In all four contests, however, he was ultimately passed over in favor of the likes of Wendell Willkie, John Bricker, Thomas Dewey, and Dwight Eisenhower. One would like to say that these successive defeats are merely disappointments in an otherwise brilliant career, but in fairness they do raise the question of whether Taft was "Mr. Electible Republican."
James T. Patterson approached the Taft family in 1968 and became the first biographer to receive full access to the late Senator's archives. This 1972 biography thus enjoys preeminence among the several works about the Ohio Senator. Patterson's intent was a readable biography; he admits in his preface that the sheer amount of documentation [1400 boxes] and the closeness in time to the subject's life [then less than twenty years] made a definitive treatment impossible. All the same, Patterson does not shy away from a treatment of Taft's character and motivations, his place in the American political spectrum, or the painful details of his various presidential campaigns.
The fact that no major treatment of Taft's life has appeared in the three decades since this work is an indicator of several things. First, Patterson did in fact achieve a reasonably thorough presentation of the Taft persona. And secondly, Taft's predictability and innate conservatism as portrayed by Patterson have led historians to suspect that there would be few surprises in those 1400 cartons. Patterson is kind to his subject and admires him to a point, but he is compelled to present him as essentially colorless, efficient, predictable, self-assured, opinionated, and inflexible. These are wonderful qualities for a tax lawyer or a Midwestern state legislator, and indeed Taft was both of these over his career. It is fair to say that as Taft's ambition grew, his personality became more of a liability. Patterson does not run from this hard truth.
Taft inherited much of his personal philosophy from his father, but the mentor who seems to have energized him toward public service was Herbert Hoover. Young Bob Taft served under Hoover during the latter's extraordinary tenure as emergency relief coordinator in Europe at the close of World War I. His tutelage under Hoover impressed Taft in several ways: he returned home convinced of the importance of American agriculture, the potency of effective business management, and the necessity of disengaging from European politics. He was thus a poster boy for Ohio political life, and Republican bosses such as Cincinnati's Rudolph Hynicka did not object to this suburban Brahmin making his way to Columbus and the state legislature. Ohio-already in the throes of depression in the 1920's--featured bitter political battles between big city and agricultural interests over matters of modernization, public relief, taxation and debt reduction. Taft survived not on charisma but on competence. He literally wore down opponents with floods of statistics until they cried uncle.
As a politician seeking higher office, Taft had few "laughers" along the way, particularly in his U.S. Senate campaigns. Only his 1950 election was won comfortably. Part of the difficulty was the deep electoral split between city and country in Ohio. Another problem was Franklin Roosevelt who, as Patterson observed, caused nearly all Republicans to run on a platform of "the TVA is a wonderful thing and we'll see that it never happens again." Taft himself was an energetic albeit wooden campaigner who, like Dewey, probably lost votes on the stump with an awkwardness that was more offensive than loveable. Patterson himself was mystified at the mediocrity of the men who managed Taft's campaigns. While Eisenhower enjoyed the counsels of Herbert Brownell and Sherman Adams, Taft entrusted campaign responsibility to political hacks with whom he felt comfortable. In the final analysis, Taft depended primarily upon his own judgment in the planning of election strategy, and as often as not he was wrong. Nor did he appear to learn much from successive primary failures.
As a U.S. Senator Taft established himself as the opposition leader against New Deal philosophy. While his Senate record is impressive-he was co-sponsor of the controversial Taft-Hartley labor legislation, for example-he never quite understood that the anti-Roosevelt vote, as passionate as it was, would not translate into enough party delegate strength to carry a nomination. His opposition within the party was pragmatic as much as doctrinal. Willkie, Dewey, and Eisenhower were nominated, in the final analysis, because they were more attractive candidates. For the consummate party loyalist Taft, this pragmatism was hard to swallow. He blamed East Coast Republicans [read Dewey], internationalists, and the newspapers for promulgating the idea that he was unelectable. The nomination of Eisenhower in particular enraged him and his followers, though even Patterson admits that Taft would probably have failed as a national candidate.
Patterson does not shortchange Taft's personal life, though even here one senses a bit of impoverishment. Taft was neither religious nor philanthropic. He was happily married to Martha Bowers until a stroke dramatically altered her personality, leaving her cantankerous and enfeebled. Interestingly, Taft invited the divorcee Darrah Wunder, a veteran party worker, into his home, ostensibly to care for his wife. Mrs. Wunder soon replaced Martha as Taft's only real political confidante and she created for him an oasis of comfort and support during his last crushing defeat at the 1952 Republican Presidential Convention. Always an isolationist at heart, Taft distrusted President Eisenhower's foreign policy as Senate Majority Leader. Perhaps mercifully, Taft's 1953 death to cancer saved him from eventual exile to the fringes of his beloved party.

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Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft Hardcover – January 1, 1972

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