REPUBLICANS: Fighting Bob

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¶ Ohio's Representative Clarence Brown, manager of the Taft '48 campaign, in charge of congressional relations.

¶ Victor Johnston, tall, white-haired political career man, "director of operations." He set up the Taft headquarters in the Standard Oil Building at the foot of Capitol Hill, and now spends much time beating the bushes for delegates.

¶ L. Richard Guylay, smooth, soft-voiced New York publicity man whose specialty is promoting political campaigns, now spending 90% of his time on Taft public relations.

A Missing Campaigner. One important Taft campaigner from 1938 to 1950 is missing this year. Ready-witted, popular Martha Taft, who always added bounce and good humor to her husband's campaigns, is still confined to a wheelchair as a result of a stroke in 1950. In their 26-room Victorian home in Georgetown, Mrs. Taft clips newspapers for the candidate and criticizes his TV performances (her chief advice: "Don't talk so fast"). If she weren't ill, Martha Taft would be out on the hustings, twitting the opposition and getting plenty of laughs. This year one of her rare public appearances was at the Washington opening of Call Me Madam, May 5. Senator Taft wheeled her chair into the theater and carried her up ten steps to their seats.

The four Taft sons—William, 36, a Defense Department employee; Robert, 35, a Cincinnati lawyer; Lloyd, 29, a Cincinnati newspaperman; and Horace, 27, a graduate student in physics at the University of Chicago—have taken little part in the presidential campaigns. But the nine grandchildren have contributed their bit with a highly appropriate nickname for the candidate. They call him "The Gop."

The letters G.O.P. fit Bob Taft well. His deepest political instinct is party loyalty. From his start as a precinct worker and doorbell pusher in the wards of Cincinnati, to his third campaign for the presidential nomination, he has been unmistakably Republican.

Through the years, Taft has opposed in whole or in part almost every major proposal of the New and Fair Deals. He has been the unrelenting foe of bureaucracy, always on the warpath against the Federal Government's expenditures and its powers. On the campaign trail last week, he said with a sly grin: "Of course, there are some features [of the Democratic administration] which we agree with. But I don't think we should emphasize them."

In the Republican 80th Congress, Taft was the domestic-policy leader. He pushed through a program which included the controversial Taft-Hartley law. He startled some of his conservative Republican friends when he rewrote administration bills for federal aid in housing, health and education (Taft's versions gave more control to the states). In the role of framer of a constructive program, Taft is better than as a leader of the opposition. In the 80th Congress, Taft showed a brilliant grasp of practical legislative problems, a willingness to move with the changing patterns of American life. But opposition chafes him: then he seems captious, impatient, and gives many the impression that he is a reactionary.