Taft, Robert
Taft, Robert (1889–1953), U.S. senator, isolationist.Born in Cincinnati, the son of William Howard Taft, later secretary of war and president, young Taft graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Ohio and served in the state legislature before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1938.
A conservative, isolationist midwestern Republican, Taft opposed most of the domestic and international policies of Democratic presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Favoring hemispheric rather than forward defense, he voted against the prewar draft in 1940 and Lend‐Lease and the Destroyers‐for‐Bases Agreement with Britain in 1941.
In the postwar era, he was not converted to internationalism like former Republican isolationist Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan. Instead, although Taft voted for the establishment of the
