William Howard Taft and the Taft family: An overlooked political dynasty?
Jeff Suess
Cincinnati Enquirer

“The Tafts” book by George W. Liebmann, published by Twelve Tables Press, examines the Taft political family, including William Howard Taft and Robert A. Taft.
A Cincinnati family is a somewhat overlooked political dynasty. Not just locally, but nationally. The Tafts have been active in politics and law since Alphonso Taft arrived in Cincinnati in 1839. Judges, city councilmen, senators, Cabinet members, a governor, a president and a Supreme Court chief justice have been among them. Generations of the family are still in law and politics today.

“They are much longer lived than any other political dynasty,” said George W. Liebmann, who has written a new book, “The Tafts,” about five generations of the Taft family. “They had this ethic of self-control, academic excellence, marrying carefully and not drinking. That’s really what did it for them.”

People may not think of the Tafts the way they might the Kennedys, the Adamses or the Bushes. But consider:

Cincinnati-born William Howard Taft was the 27th president of the United States and the 10th chief justice, the only person to hold both positions. Yet he is more likely to be associated with the popular local beer brand that shares his name than for his political accomplishments.

His son, Robert A. Taft, was a longtime senator known as Mr. Republican, the face of conservative politics in the 1940s until his death in 1953. Robert Taft is best remembered for co-sponsoring the Taft-Hartley Act that restricted the power and activities of labor unions, and for his three failed attempts to be the Republican nominee for president.

Liebmann blames the lack of attention on the Tafts to their biographers being unsympathetic to their politics and not knowledgeable in legal matters. Liebmann has been a practicing lawyer for more than 50 years. “That was a considerable advantage in writing about the Tafts, all of whom essentially were lawyers,” he said.

In his introduction, he wrote, “This long-overdue reconsideration of the Tafts shows them to be far-sighted, fair-minded and in many ways good guides in dealing with today’s concerns.”

“I think people really have distorted views about both of them (William Howard Taft and Robert Taft),” Liebmann said in a phone interview with The Enquirer.

“In the case of William Howard, they think of him as a stand-patter conservative, whereas in fact he was a progressive, I think, by any standard. Very much concerned about the problem of plutocracy (government controlled by the wealthy), perhaps more than any president in American history in terms of doing anything about it. Both his antitrust campaign and support for a corporate income tax, and also his support for graduated inheritance taxes. He does not fit the image of him as some sort of fat cat.”

Liebmann wrote profiles of 36 members of the Taft family, including Hulbert Taft, founder of Taft Broadcasting Inc., and Bob Taft (Robert A. Taft III), governor of Ohio from 1999 to 2007. “It’s really a biography of their beliefs as much as their accomplishments,” Liebmann said.