Robert Taft: Infuriating Man of Principle

The Robert A. Taft Memorial. Photo by USCapitol, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1946, a conference was held at Kenyon College in Ohio to discuss the state of the world in the wake of WWII. Many eminent Americans and foreigners including the poet Robert Frost took part, and people flocked from all over the state to be in the audience. But the true “star” of the show was Robert Taft, the Republican Senator from Ohio.

Towards the end of his speech, Taft condemned the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders and war criminals, just concluded at the time, as “vengeance” rather than justice, as the lawless imposition of ex post-facto punishment contrary to the entirety of the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence, and as an act which would serve as a “blot” on America’s name.

To say this caused a firestorm is an understatement. America had just fought the second bloodiest war in its history to rid the world of Nazi Germany and its allies. The realities of the Holocaust, now undeniable to all but the most deluded, were common knowledge throughout the west. The people who had been sentenced were unquestionably moral monsters, something Taft himself did not deny.

Nor was Robert Taft some obscure nobody seeking to get easy attention and press with some off the cuff or provocative remarks. The son of President William Howard Taft and known as “Mister Republican” to his colleagues in DC and often throughout the country, Robert Taft was the closest thing the Republican Party had to a one-man think tank. Taft was the kind of man who engaged the media but also spent many hours reading legislation, regulations, and books to try to flesh out the party’s stances on complicated issues and even convince his friends across the aisle. Very little of what he did or said – good or bad, right or wrong – was done without a lot of forethought.

The easy retort in our age would be to blast Taft as simply a bigot or Nazi sympathizer and nothing more, yet another example of how retrograde and reactionary Republicans always were. It is true that many on what would be called the Old Right, who considered FDR a dictator who tricked the country into war and who harbored sympathies for Nazi Germany for various reasons, can legitimately be tarred with that brush. Since Taft is often associated with this label as opposed to the more progressive and liberal wings of his party at the time, including men such as Thomas Dewey, it would seem an easy case to make.

It would also be wrong. Taft made serious efforts during a war he was ambivalent about to try and ensure Jews in Europe were aided as much as possible. He was also a vocal and consistent Zionist. This, at a time when Jews were overwhelmingly Democratic and prejudices against Jews among the non-Jewish population, even after Pearl Harbor, were still very strong.

In my opinion, Taft’s stance on Nuremberg may be incredibly infuriating (including to myself as a Jew and hater of tyranny), but it was unquestionably principled, as can be seen from his entire career in the Senate from 1939 to 1953, when he died of cancer. It was no coincidence that he was included among JFK’s eight Senators to be lauded as “profiles in courage” in standing athwart overwhelming opposition for what they thought right.

If there was one clear thread connecting that career, it was his die-hard, unequivocal opposition to what he considered not only government overreach but also government unrestrained by clear, explicit law. Contrary to later mythology, Robert Taft was no ribald libertarian and supported targeted government funding for schools and housing, as well as reasonable labor regulations. But he always stood athwart anything giving the government power not explicitly granted it in law and carefully delineated in legislation.

It was on these grounds that he opposed not only many federal government programs but also sweeping wartime projects. The same principle that led him to oppose Nuremberg as lawless also led him to be the only Senator in either party to oppose the internment of the Japanese as being “sweeping” to the point of being entirely indiscriminate.

And therein lies the rub: You cannot have one without the other. You cannot separate Robert Taft’s opposition to Nuremberg and his opposition to internment. They draw from the same root. Nor can we just handwave away his views as that of a man of the past whom the world had passed by. His arguments on pretty much every issue were serious and carefully considered, even if often wrong or too clever by half, and the passage of time makes no difference as to their correctness or incorrectness.

Whenever history is brought up in public discourse, it is often how the present judges the past, or how the future will judge our present. People like Robert Taft remind us that there are many arguments or ideas made in the past which can resonate or unsettle us just as strongly today as then, even if we think – incorrectly – that the matter was “settled.” We would do well to learn from them, afford them that respect, and realize that “dialogues” with the past must always cut both ways.