Mr. Republican Robert Taft lost the nomination three times, yet won the party

Name the men who beat Robert Taft for the Republican nomination. Go ahead. One of them is a household name, and we will get to him. The other two are, for most Americans, a bit of trivia that comes up on a quiz night. Now name the senator from Ohio who, for fourteen years, was the most important Republican in the Senate, the man the party called "Mr. Republican," the author of the labor law that is still on the books, and the figure whose philosophy lives on in almost every argument conservatives have about the size of government and the reach of American power. You do not need a second guess. The losers sometimes write the future.

That is the paradox of Robert Alphonso Taft, and it is the reason I find him one of the most useful figures in the history of our party. He asks a question that every primary season raises again: should a party prefer its principled leader or its electable one? Taft tried to be the first kind, lost three times, and in doing so showed what each choice costs. Let me tell it in order.

The son of a President

Robert Taft was born in 1889, the son of William Howard Taft, who served as President and later as Chief Justice, a story told in William Howard Taft lost the White House and then got the job he wanted. He grew up in a family where public service was the expected career. He became a lawyer in Cincinnati, served in the Ohio legislature, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1938. He took his seat in January 1939 and stayed until his death.

What kind of man was he? A famously dry one. He was no showman. He did not tell stories on the stump. He read the bills. He was known for his command of detail and for a logical, sometimes forbidding, style in debate. Supporters called him honest to the bone, and critics called him cold. Both descriptions were fair. He did not pretend to be anything he was not, and in a business built on pretending, that was both his charm and his handicap.

1940: the first loss

In 1940 Taft was a leading contender for the Republican nomination, just after his first term began. The convention met in Philadelphia that summer, with the war in Europe raging and the question of American involvement hanging over everything. Taft was skeptical of getting the United States into the conflict. The nomination went instead to Wendell Willkie, a businessman who had never held public office and who supported aid to Britain. Willkie won on the sixth ballot after a late surge. The party chose the newcomer who could attract independents and internationalists over the man who had spent years in the Senate.

Remember that detail, because it will happen again. In 1940 the electable candidate beat the principled one, and the electable candidate lost in November to Franklin Roosevelt.

1948: the second loss

In 1948 Taft sought the nomination again. The convention was again in Philadelphia. The favorite was Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York, who had been the nominee in 1944 and who commanded the support of the party's eastern establishment. Dewey won the nomination on the third ballot. Taft had made a serious run but could not break through. Dewey then lost the general election to Harry Truman, in an upset that is still famous.

Pause on the pattern. Twice the party picked the candidate the establishment thought was more electable, and twice that candidate lost in the fall. This is not an argument that Taft would have won. Nobody can know that. It is an argument that "electable" is a prediction, not a fact, and predictions can be wrong.

Taft-Hartley and the veto that failed

Between the second and third loss, Taft did something that mattered more than any nomination. In 1947 the Republicans held a majority in Congress for the first time in years, and Taft was the powerful chairman of the Senate Labor Committee. He wrote, with Representative Fred Hartley of New Jersey, the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act.

The law amended the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Among other things it banned the closed shop, which required an employer to hire only union members; allowed states to pass what we call right-to-work laws, which bar contracts that require a worker to join a union to keep a job; allowed the government to seek an 80-day cooling-off period in strikes that threatened the national health or safety; and listed unfair practices for unions as well as for employers. Supporters said it restored balance after years of one-sided law. Critics, including organized labor, called it a "slave labor" act. President Truman vetoed it in June 1947. Congress overrode the veto within days. You can read about how the law lets states choose their own path on union membership in What Right-to-Work Means and How Taft-Hartley Let States Decide.

Whatever you think of the policy, notice the political point. The man who could not win a nomination could pass a law over a President's veto. That is a measure of real power. It is also a reminder that influence in Washington and success in a primary are two different skills.

The vote against NATO

Taft's most controversial stand came in 1949, on the North Atlantic Treaty. He voted against ratifying the treaty that created NATO. This is the vote that makes his critics wince and his admirers wince too, so let me be careful about what he argued.

Taft did not say the Soviet Union was harmless. He did not oppose resisting communism. His objection was constitutional and strategic. He worried that a permanent peacetime military commitment to defend a list of European countries, tied to a program of sending them American arms, would commit the nation to war in ways that Congress had not clearly decided, and would provoke the Soviets rather than deter them. He later pressed the "Great Debate" in 1951 over whether the President could send ground troops to Europe without congressional approval. His position was that Congress, not the executive alone, must decide about such commitments.

Here is the argument the other way. One, the alliance deterred the Soviet Union from moving west, and the long peace in Europe is the proof. Two, collective defense is cheaper in the long run than standing alone. Three, the treaty's Article 5 left the decision about how to respond in the hands of each member, and was ratified by the Senate with a big majority. History largely sided with the alliance, and most Republicans today support NATO. But Taft's questions about how much power should lie with the President on matters of war and peace have not gone away, and they are the subject of How Republican presidents asked Congress for war powers from Formosa to Iraq. For the Republican debate over treaties more generally, see Lodge in 1919 and Vandenberg in 1948 gave two Republican answers on treaties. And for the contest between the Taft view of the world and the Eisenhower view, Taft Versus Eisenhower and the Republican Fight Over the World picks up the thread.

The surprise: Taft and the safety net

Here is the part the cartoon version of Taft leaves out. He was not an enemy of every government program. He supported federal aid for public housing, and he worked with Senator Allen Ellender and Senator Robert Wagner on the Housing Act of 1949, which funded public housing and slum clearance. He backed a federal aid-to-education bill that passed the Senate in 1948 but died in the House. His reasoning was a kind of conservative minimalism: that the federal government might provide a floor, a basic minimum for those who could not provide for themselves, while leaving the rest to markets and local communities.

Not every conservative will agree with that stance. Some will say he opened the door to programs that grew beyond his limits, and that is a respectable objection. But Taft's willingness to name a role for government, rather than condemning every program in sight, made his conservatism harder to caricature. It also shows that "Mr. Republican" was a man of principle in the sense that he applied his own tests, not anyone else's slogans.

A speech in 1946

One more piece of the picture belongs here. In October 1946 Taft gave a speech in which he criticized the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, arguing that trying men for acts that were not crimes when they were committed violated the principle that law should not be applied backward. It was an unpopular position and it cost him politically. Many years later, John F. Kennedy included a chapter on Taft in Profiles in Courage. You can disagree with Taft's conclusion, and many do, and still admire a politician who said something he knew would hurt him because he thought a principle was at stake. That is the quality that made him respected even by opponents.

1952: the contested delegates

Which brings us to the third loss, and the famous one. In 1952 Taft entered the convention with a large bloc of delegates, and many believed it was finally his turn. His opponent was General Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of the war in Europe, who had been persuaded to run in part because he disagreed with Taft about the Western alliance and feared a Taft isolationism.

The convention met in Chicago. The fight turned on delegations from several Southern states, including Texas, Georgia and Louisiana, where there were rival slates of delegates, one favoring Taft and one favoring Eisenhower. Eisenhower's supporters pressed a "fair play" rule that would bar contested delegates from voting on the contests, and they accused the Taft forces of using party machinery to seat their favorites. The Taft side said the rules were being changed in the middle of the game. Eisenhower's side won the procedural fight and then the nomination, which was clinched on the first ballot after the Minnesota delegation switched its votes to him.

The rights and wrongs of the contested delegate fight are still debated. If you want a clear picture of how conventions work and how delegates are chosen, read how delegates are chosen and what they really do at a national convention. What I will say is that this episode is one of the best illustrations of why the rules of a nominating process matter. They decide who wins the arguments before the arguments begin. And for the broader evolution from smoke-filled rooms to primaries, How Republicans Pick Nominees from Party Bosses to Primaries and Caucuses will fill in the story.

Losing, and then winning the party

After the convention Taft did something that many bitter losers do not do. He met with Eisenhower in New York in September 1952 and gave his support, and the two settled terms of a working peace. Eisenhower won the presidency that fall. In January 1953 the Republicans held the Senate, and Taft became Majority Leader, the man who would manage the new President's legislative program.

He did not get long. He fell ill in the spring of 1953, stepped aside as leader, and died on July 31, 1953. He was in his sixties. Think about the brevity of it: three failed bids for the nomination, and then, just as he reached the top of the Senate, the end.

And yet the party was his. The Republican Party of the fifties and sixties argued in Taft's terms: limited federal power, skepticism about foreign entanglements and executive war-making, suspicion of Washington planning, support for the rights of states. Barry Goldwater, who entered the Senate in January 1953, the year Taft died, carried the same banner. The movement that eventually took over the party owed him a debt, and you can trace the line from Taft through Goldwater to Reagan. The story of that line is the subject of Barry Goldwater lost 44 states and won the next generation of conservatives.

What to learn from Taft

1. A losing candidate can win the argument. Taft's ideas shaped the party long after his campaigns ended. Do not assume that a defeat in a primary is a defeat for a cause.
2. Electability is a guess. In 1940 and 1948 the "electable" nominee lost the general election. That should humble anyone who claims to know in advance who will win.
3. Process is power. The 1952 fight over delegates shows how much hangs on rules that most voters never read. Learn the rules in your state party.
4. Principle has a cost. Taft's NATO vote and his Nuremberg speech were costly. A politician who never pays a price for a position has probably never taken a hard one.
5. Be a good loser. Taft backed the candidate who beat him. That is how parties survive.

The bottom line

• When your party picks between the principled candidate and the electable one, look at the record. The electable candidates of 1940 and 1948 both lost. Principle does not guarantee victory, and neither does the safe choice.
• Learn how your state picks delegates and runs primaries. The people who read the rules win the fights that others do not know are happening.
• Whatever you think of his NATO vote, Taft's questions about who decides on war and treaties are as live as ever. Ask your senators where they stand on the Senate's role.
• Support the nominee after the fight. Taft did, and the party was stronger for it.
• Read the primary sources: the Taft-Hartley Act text is on Congress.gov, and the Senate's own history office has a biography of Taft.