This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchelor.

The historian Nick Bunker, in the shadow of fear, America and the world in 1950.

We've met the Democrats in charge of Congress and the executive.

Now we need to meet the Republicans.

Bob Taft, Mr. Conservative, the son of a president, a man who dominates Ohio except for he's

running for re-election.

He's bald.

He's energetic.

He's extremely exciting because he comes up with arguments that are intellectual at the

same time populist.

And he drives his own car around Ohio.

However, there's much more to Bob Taft than just talking about Ohio.

There is his foreign policy visions.

Nick, Bob Taft, surprising to learn, was pro-Taiwan, was very much a man who was thinking about the world outside of the Middle West, which is where the Republicans were strong at this moment.

He has ambitions. First, he wants to get reelected in 1950. Is he thinking about himself as president at this time? Oh, yes. I think he was definitely

thinking about himself as the presidential candidate for 52. And generally speaking, most commentators

at the time thought there was going to be a choice between Dwight D. Eisenhower or Taft as

the candidate in 1952. That was really a very common view. Now, Taft was

very interesting character. It's really rather unfair that, of course, he's rather been forgotten

and neglected nowadays. The reason really being simply that he died quite young, he died of

pancreatic cancer just a few years after the events we're describing here. And so he's,

he didn't have as long a career as he

...