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Robert Alphonso Taft (September 8, 1889 – July 31, 1953) was a conservative American politician, statesman, and presidential hopeful who served as a United States Senator from Ohio from 1939 until his death in 1953. A member of the Republican Taft political family, he was the elder son of William Howard Taft (the 27th President of the United States and 10th Chief Justice of the United States). Taft was the Senate's main opponent of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal domestic policies. After the president's death Taft successfully led the conservative coalition's efforts to curb the power of labor unions. Taft was a leading advocate of non-interventionism in foreign policy. He failed in his quests to win the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952. Throughout that period he battled New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey (leader of the moderate "Eastern Establishment") for control of the party. Taft's biographer James T. Patterson portrayed Taft as honest, conscientious, courageous, dignified, and highly intelligent, while also faulting Taft's competitiveness and extreme partisanship.〔Robert Muccigrosso, ed., ''Research Guide to American Historical Biography'' (1988) 1477–80〕 A 1957 Senate committee named Taft as one of America's five greatest senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert La Follette.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The "Famous Five" )〕 ==Family== Taft was a product of one of America's most prominent political families. He was the grandson of Attorney General and Secretary of War Alphonso Taft, and the son of President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Helen Louise "Nellie" Herron. His younger brother, Charles Phelps Taft II, served as the Mayor of Cincinnati and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio in 1952. As a boy he spent four years in the Philippines, where his father was governor. He was first in his class at the Taft School (run by his uncle), at Yale College (1910), and at Harvard Law School (1913). He was a member of Skull and Bones, and edited the ''Harvard Law Review''. In 1913 Taft scored the highest in the state on the Ohio bar exam. He then practiced for four years with the firm of Maxwell and Ramsey (now Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP) in Cincinnati, his family's ancestral city. After a two-year stint in Washington working for the Food and Drug Administration, he returned to Cincinnati and opened his own law office. In 1924 he and his brother Charles helped form the law partnership Taft, Stettinius, and Hollister, with whom he continued to be associated until his death and which continues to carry his name today. On October 17, 1914, he married Martha Wheaton Bowers (1889–1958),〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Myrootsplace )〕 daughter of Lloyd Wheaton Bowers and Louisa Bennett Wilson. Taft himself appeared taciturn and coldly intellectual, characteristics that were offset by his gregarious wife, who served the same role his mother had for his father, as a confidante and powerful asset to her husband's political career. In 1949 Martha suffered a severe stroke which left her an invalid; after her stroke Taft faithfully assisted his wife, even helping to feed and take care of her at public functions, a fact which, his admirers noted, belied his public image as a cold and uncaring person. They had four sons: William Howard Taft III (1915–1991), who became ambassador to Ireland; Robert Alphonso Taft, Jr. (1917–1993), who was also elected to the U.S. Senate; Lloyd Bowers Taft (1923–1985),〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Myrootsplace )〕 who worked as an investment banker in Cincinnati, and Horace Dwight Taft (1925–1983), who became a professor of physics and dean at Yale. Two of Robert and Martha's grandsons are Robert Alphonso "Bob" Taft III (born 1942), Governor of Ohio from 1999 to 2007, and William Howard Taft IV (born 1945), Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1984 to 1989. In 1917 Taft and his wife Martha bought a farm in Indian Hill, a well-to-do suburb of Cincinnati. Called "Sky Farm", it would serve as Taft's primary residence for the rest of his life. The Tafts gradually made extensive renovations that turned the small farmhouse into a sixteen-room mansion. On the farm Taft enjoyed growing strawberries, asparagus, and potatoes for profit. During the summer Taft often vacationed with his wife and children at the Taft family's summer home at Murray Bay, in Quebec, Canada.〔(Patterson, pp. 112–16)〕 Although he was nominally a member of the Episcopal church, his biographer James Patterson noted that Taft's "religious inclinations were weak" and that he was a "Sunday morning golfer, not a church-going Episcopalian."〔(Patterson, p. 399)〕 When reporters asked his wife Martha what church he attended, she jokingly replied "I'd have to say the Burning Tree", an exclusive country club and golf course in suburban Washington.〔(Patterson, p. 332)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert A. Taft」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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