Before the rise of the Bush family, the Tafts of Ohio were the most successful political dynasty in the Republican Party. Along with the Democratic Kennedys and flexible Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Adamses, they remain one of the top political families in U.S. history. They are also the oldest still-active family, and longest-running direct descendancy, stretching from Secretary of War Alphonso Taft (1876) to current Ohio Gov. Bob Taft II. The middlemost member of this line, and the longest-serving among them, was Robert A. Taft I, who is memorialized on Capitol Hill at the appropriately named Robert A. Taft I Memorial and Carillon.

Taft’s well-known nickname was “Mr. Republican,” earned for his role as the party’s ideological spokesperson. Educated at Yale and Harvard, he was conservative for his day — viz., an opponent of the New Deal and isolationist until the attack on Pearl Harbor. He made multiple unsuccessful runs at the GOP presidential nomination, and finally ’52 was supposed to be his year. Then Ike came along. “Mr. Republican” as he was, Taft became Eisenhower’s biggest congressional supporter, albeit not for long — he succumbed to hip cancer the following year. His last District address was at 1688 31st St. NW. It didn’t take long for his colleagues to pass a resolution calling for a monument. A million dollars were raised, and it was finished barely seven years later, with an April 14, 1959 dedication ceremony featuring former President Herbert Hoover.