Robert A. Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 8, 1889, the eldest child of the future U.S. president William Howard Taft. Educated at Yale College and Harvard Law School, the younger Taft practiced law in Cincinnati for several years, but with his father’s substantial political career—as secretary of war, then president, then chief justice— forming the backdrop for his early life, it was perhaps natural that he would also choose politics as a career. Taft served several terms in both houses of the Ohio state legislature in the 1920s and early 1930s. His election to the U.S. Senate in 1938 provided him with the opportunity to become one of the era’s most influential spokespersons for the Republican Party and for American conservatism.