toledoblade.com --

In 2002, the Taft Museum in Cincinnati was long overdue for renovations. Home to nearly 700 works of art and the site where William Howard Taft accepted the Republican party nomination for the presidency in 1908, the building's roof was leaking, the galleries were cramped and dim, and an air of mildew hung over the site.

Determined to rejuvenate the institution, board members launched an ambitious capital campaign to raise $17.5 million. With a reputation as an exquisite if overlooked small museum and a solid plan for redevelopment, the museum was in good shape to receive state funds to help with the refurbishment. Of course, a Taft in the governor's mansion couldn't hurt.

But if museum officials thought family connections would swing things their way, they were mistaken.

Concerned to avoid even the taint of favoritism or impropriety, Gov. Bob Taft in 2002 refused to back a request for $2 million.

"He was very conscious that anything with the Taft name on it would be squeaky clean," said Phillip C. Long, the director of the Taft Museum.

In the months that followed, the Taft administration partially relented, earmarking $500,000 for the museum, but the principle had been made clear. With a Taft in power, there would be no favors, no blurred lines.

Three years later, the episode stands in awkward contrast to the four criminal convictions for ethics violations recently handed to Governor Taft, the growing investment scandal centered on Toledo-area coin dealer Tom Noe that has mired his second term, and the calls for his resignation or impeachment.

What once looked like propriety now appears to be the height of hypocrisy.

The Taft family is well-known in America, boasting a president, a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, two U.S. senators, a congressman, and a reputation for integrity, public service, and honor. What remains unclear is why Ohio's current governor would jeopardize his reputation and family legacy for a few free rounds of golf.

"That's what makes the current situation so inexplicable," says David H. Burton, a leading scholar of the Taft family and the author of five books on William Howard Taft, the 27th president of the United States. "For a few thousand dollars worth of golf games, a criminal act? My god, it's unthinkable."

Principled reputation

Described by friends and relatives as decent, honest, and hard working, Bob Taft was known for his political principles before his criminal conviction.

In his first inaugural address he made clear his intention to govern in the best traditions of his family.

"The Taft family has worked hard to earn a reputation for common sense, for getting things done to help others, and for striving to live up to the highest standards of honesty and personal integrity," Mr. Taft said in 1999.

"And that's the kind of administration I'll lead."

Over the last two weeks, the governor repeatedly has admitted his error and apologized for his behavior, but he has not yet explained to the public or to relatives how and why he came to set aside the principles with which he was raised, the values that have carried his family to prominence, and the ethics he swore as governor to uphold.

For members of the Taft family, the dissonance between the convicted politician and the cousin, stepbrother, and friend known affectionately as "young Bob" is particularly difficult to comprehend.

"It just doesn't make sense that [he] would put our family reputation on the line for the sake of a few golf outings," said Mary Taft, the governor's stepsister. "He would never do that intentionally."

Ms. Taft, who spent her teenage years living on the historic Taft family estate on Drake Road outside Cincinnati, knew her stepbrother well, discussing politics and current affairs with him over the dinner table and on holidays spent at a summer home in Maine.

Attempts to reach the governor's other siblings were unsuccessful. His brother, Jonathan Taft, failed to return messages left at his home, and twice someone answering the phone at the home of his sister, Sarah Taft Jones, hung up on reporters.

Day-to-day interactions over time have convinced Mary Taft that her stepbother is "just the most honest guy."

"My heart goes out to him and Hope," she said.

To reconcile contemporary fact with family history and personal experience, relatives have developed a number of theories.

Some point to the potential pitfalls inherent in public service.

"I can understand how it happens," said Seth Chase Taft, Governor Taft's cousin. He served for many years as a Cuyahoga county commissioner, a post where he encountered many temptations.

People would send gifts to his home, hoping to purchase some influence, and his wife would donate them to local charities. Giving away liquor proved to be more of a problem.

Still, he says, the rules of the game are pretty clear. "If you are in public office and you accept to play a game of golf and the other guy picks up the bill, you are asking for trouble," Seth Chase Taft said.

Others feel that Bob Taft was duped by manipulative courtiers.

"I think he was led astray," said Frances Taft, Seth Taft's wife. "Bob was really naive and I think he was taken in by that Tom Noe."

Lingering in the background is a sense that the governor's indiscretions have received far more attention than they merit. "It's very hard when people are always trying to find things to make you look bad," Mary Taft said.

"There's a feeling that being a Taft is a little like living in a fish bowl." As a teenager, she said, the family name and the attention it generated scared off many potential boyfriends.

For those who can't see a way past the governor's court appearance, the bigger picture provides some comfort. In the future people will recall the financial measures Governor Taft has introduced in Ohio, said William H. Taft IV, a former deputy secretary of defense and the governor's first cousin. They "should have a very salutary effect on the economy, and I think that is the most important part of his legacy."

And there is some solace to be taken in the way that the governor has handled the recent scandal. After discovering that he had failed to report his weekend golf activities, "he acted immediately to bring it to the attention of the ethics committee and corrected it, which is exactly the right thing to do," William H. Taft IV said.

A 'proper' family

The Taft family is known for many things: philanthropy, public service, illustrious senators, powerful lawyers, a president who couldn't fit in the bath tub. But it is the manner in which they have performed each of their honors and positions that has become their hallmark.

The Tafts "are one of the most proper families," said Stephen Hess, a professor at George Washington University and the author of America's Political Dynasties, a book analyzing the great lineages in the United States.

"They are noted for providing good service, for honor."

While the Kennedys, Adamses, and other prestigious families have had their black sheep - their scoundrels and drunks - the Tafts have been straight to a man, Mr. Hess said. That makes the current scandal "unprecedented."

The Taft family history began early in America with Robert Taft, a carpenter who emigrated from England and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1670s.

And service to community and country began early as well. The first Robert Taft became a town selectman. His son Joseph Taft was a militia captain. Other Tafts served as town clerks and members of state legislatures and eventually held presidential cabinet posts.

But it was Alphonso Taft, born in 1810 in Vermont, who first brought the family to national prominence, serving as a government minister and an ambassador and establishing many of the values and traditions that subsequent Taft generations would follow and embellish.

"He was very civic-minded, utterly honest, and ambitious in a good way," Mr. Burton said. Alphonso Taft graduated from Yale University in 1833, speaking at graduation on the topic of "political integrity," and subsequently became a lawyer - a profession that generations of Tafts would adopt.

Indeed, the law became a guiding principle for the family. "They put an enormous faith in the law," Mr. Burton said.

"It became almost a quasi-religion for them, something to rely on and also to use positively."

Characteristically, one of Alphonso Taft's first major legal successes before the U.S. Supreme Court involved both a point of principle and a question of the public good.

In the 1861 the heirs of Edward McMicken challenged his bequest of $500,000 of land to the city of Cincinnati, but Mr. Taft successfully defended the will. The University of Cincinnati was eventually built on the plot.

"From this point on the family was drawn into public service and civic virtue," said Mr. Burton, with each generation passing on values to the next. Tafts have taken many career paths, but as one family member said, whatever their choices, “the Taft family has historically focused on acting with honesty and integrity from the past to the present.”

Virtuous president

Certainly that was true for Alphonso Taft, who in turn raised his son, William Howard, “to be a proper gentleman, a proper student, a proper person in every way,” Mr. Burton said.

And it succeeded. Educated at Yale University and then at Cincinnati law school, William Howard Taft would go on to become governor of the Philippines, president of the United States, and chief justice of the Supreme Court, and renowned for many of the same virtues as his father.

Temptation came his way, Mr. Burton said, but William Howard Taft remained untainted. In 1882, he was appointed a federal tax collector in Ohio but resigned shortly thereafter, concerned by the amounts of money changing hands.

“He said to his father, ‘I’m going to get smeared,’ and he wanted no part of it,” Mr. Burton said.

William Howard Taft relied on family money. His campaign for the presidency was financed by his brother, Charles Phelps Taft, who inherited $15 million after his father-in-law’s death in 1900.

That inheritance paid for an art museum and the foundations of a political dynasty.

But a concern with reputation continued with the President’s son, Robert A. Taft, three-term U.S. senator, unsuccessful candidate for president — a man dubbed “Mr. Republican.”

Robert Taft was one of eight senators singled out in John F. Kennedy’s best-seller Profiles In Courage for his brave if controversial stand criticizing the Nuremburg Trials as examples of victors, justice and contrary to the letter of the law.

“He was more than a political leader, more than ‘Mr. Republican,’” Mr. Kennedy wrote while he himself was a U.S. senator. “He was also a Taft — and thus ‘Mr. Integrity.’”

The trait has stood the Taft family in good stead.

Alphonso Taft was made secretary of war in 1876 when scandal struck President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration and made the appointment of a man of “unblemished reputation,” as one historian phrased it, a necessity.

Of course the Tafts have benefited from other, more arcane levers of power. Alphonso Taft was a founding member of the Yale secret society, the Order of the Skull and Bones, says Alexandra Robbins, author of Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League and the Hidden Paths of Power.

In total, 10 members of the Taft family have been “bonesmen,” an honor that has given them and their descendants access to an “elite alumni network” that includes both the current President, George W. Bush, and his erstwhile challenger, John F. Kerry.

“Being a bonesman can give you access to money, power, and connections, just by being part of the network,” Ms. Robbins said.
President William H. Taft, himself a member of the order, selected two fellow bonesmen to his 11-man cabinet between 1909 and 1913, Ms. Robbins said.

And succeeding generations have benefited from the Taft brand name that Alphonso and his children established, and from the values it embodies, said Stephen Hess.

The family name “supplies the impetus which gives a man his start,” said Robert A. Taft, according to Mr. Hess’ book, America’s Political Dynasties. But, he added, “after the start is made it is only by his own efforts a man can keep going, and one with a family name has a lot to live up to.”

Raised with integrity

Young Bob Taft embodied the Taft ethos as much as anyone. “He is known for his honesty and integrity,” said William H. Taft IV, and also as being “goal-oriented’ and “hard-working,” Mary Taft said.

Growing up, Bob Taft was surrounded by the legacy of his ancestors.
Like many in his family before him, he was educated at the Taft School, a boarding school in Watertown, Conn., named after its founder, Horace Dutton Taft, Bob Taft’s great-uncle.

There “young Bob” was given an education that stressed achievement, encouraged competition, but emphasized character and duty as well. “Not to be served but to serve” proclaimed the school motto, and classes in debating and civics helped drum it in.

So did the athletics program in which Bob Taft participated. For the school’s founder, borrowing from the example of British prep schools, the sports field was a place where high principles were turned into personality traits.

“If in a contest in which his whole mind and heart are engaged, a boy learns to be scrupulously fair,” Horace Dutton Taft wrote in his autobiography, “he has learned a lesson which is pure gold and which will stand him in good stead in the business or political temptations which may come in the battle of life.”

Yale College, a master’s degree from Princeton, and then a law degree from the University of Cincinnati law school followed his years at the Taft School.

Political introduction

At home in Cincinnati, Bob Taft was introduced to the family’s proud heritage and to the excitement of politics at the dinner table, where his father would tell stories about Alphonso Taft, whose portrait hung on the wall, and the family would debate current affairs.

“We had wonderful dining room conversation,” said Mary Taft, recalling the time when Bob Taft and his wife, Hope, moved in with his father during an election campaign.

“It was the early ’70s and there were many controversial things going on and lots of things to debate.”

A career in politics was never forced on Bob Taft, that was not the family way, but it was assumed, expected. He received an “unstated message” from relatives and friends that he had a “certain responsibility” he said in an interview with The Blade in 1998.

It also was expected that in office he would serve in the family tradition, working hard and playing fair. And he did. As county commissioner, state representative, and Ohio secretary of state, Bob Taft impressed people, said Paul A. Beck, a professor of politics at Ohio State University.

“There was a widespread feeling that he was a very capable administrator.”

At the same time he built a reputation for clean politics. “He was stringent about holding employees to high ethical standards, dismissing them quickly if they broke the rules,” said Mr. Beck.

Taken with the Taft legacy, that makes the current ethics charges all the more surprising.

“The question that people are wondering about is how did it happen?” Mr. Beck said, adding the answers are potentially threefold.

“Was it an omission by staff, was it the slip of an overworked office, or was it more deliberate?”

Contact Jeremy Lemer at: jlemer@theblade.com or 419-724-6050.

Permanent Link