The Age of Taft

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The day began at seven. Senator Robert Alphonso Taft got up and faced the day. At breakfast he ate one egg, as usual. Then he picked up his large briefcase, climbed into his car and drove through Georgetown, over Rock Creek, through the nasty, wet snow to his office in the Senate building.

First things came first: he dictated letters. Then he was ready for the callers. That morning they were: a committee from a dental association, the president of a college, the representatives of a radio station, a delegation from an Ohio rural electrification cooperative and a newspaper man to talk about foreign policy. At noon, a luncheon. At 2 p.m., a meeting of the Senate Republican policy committee. At 4 p.m., he was available again to visitors. By now he looked a little austere. But his looks belied him. "Bob is not austere," his wife once explained. "He's just departmentalized."

At 7 p.m. he packed his briefcase again. In went: the draft of an article he had promised to write for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a report on RFC consolidation, a report by the monetary committee of the International Chamber of Commerce, an article on the Niirnberg trials, the Economic Report of the President. In a corner of his office he noticed one of the brooms which Ohio's Congressman George Bender, for a gag, had distributed to his G.O.P. colleagues when the new-broom Republican Congress had convened. Senator Taft, recalling the nasty morning, took it along. His car would be covered with snow.

Hat on dead center, coattails flapping, briefcase in one hand, broom in the other, he marched down the corridor, heading for home, with the firm tread of a man who has thought of everything.

The Boss. It had been, altogether, a triumphant new year for Bob Taft. He had shouldered his way into the key senatorial jobs he wanted: chairman of the policy (steering) committee; chairman of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee; and senior member of the

Finance Committee under Colorado's Eugene Millikin, his able right hand. No other Senator had so many major jobs. No other Senator had his capacity for work, either, or his efficiency.

Not all G.O.P. Senators had happily acquiesced in his leadership. Some of them had fought him, some had even resented the praise he had received. One boiling colleague heated up an old wheeze: "I don't mind one man calling the signals, taking the ball, throwing the forward pass, running around and catching it, making the touchdown and then marking up the score. But I'm goddamed if I like it when he rushes over after that and leads the cheers."

Nevertheless, last week Bob Taft could view with satisfaction the job he had done. With Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg, he was in command of all the legislation likely to come out of the first six months of the 80th Senate. It would be Vandenberg on foreign affairs; Taft on domestic matters.

And the dominant figure, most of the time, will be Taft—working overtime in his quiet office, slouching in his seat on the Senate floor, jumping to his feet to argue in his flat voice, grinning like a Cheshire cat even when he is wrathful, disgorging facts, facts and more facts from his fat briefcase.