Scope and Content Note
The papers of William Howard Taft IV (1945- ) span the years 1958-1989, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1970-1989 when he served in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan in postings at the Federal Trade Commission, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and Department of Defense. The papers are organized in General Correspondence, Government File, and Miscellany series.
The General Correspondence series includes correspondence with family members Barbara Bradfield Hoult Taft (mother), William Howard Taft III (father), Julia Vadala Taft (wife), John Thomas Taft (brother), Robert Taft, Jr. (uncle), and Helen Taft Manning (great aunt), daughter of president William H. Taft. Also in the General Correspondence are personal letters to and from friends and colleagues, including Chaplin B. Barnes, Jonathan C. Brown, Lloyd N. Cutler, Richard Norman Perle, John Derek Schoonmaker, Edward Byron Smith, Jr., Peter G. Stillman, Charles M. Super, Paul Thayer, and Caspar W. Weinberger.
The Government File, the largest series in the collection, is arranged into Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW), and Department of Defense (DOD) subseries documenting Taft's government service. The OMB and HEW subseries consist mainly of chronologically arranged official correspondence, memoranda, and other daily records. The DoD subseries includes a large chronological file of official correspondence, memoranda, and other daily records. The files from OMB, HEW, and DOD complement the General Correspondence.
Taft's government service started in 1970 at the Federal Trade Commission during the Nixon administration. From 1968 to 1970 he participated in a project initiated by consumer advocate Ralph Nader to probe the effectiveness of the Federal Trade Commission. The new chairman of the commission, Caspar W. Weinberger, on reading a study produced by the FTC Investigation Project, asked Nader if any of the project staff were qualified for service with the commission. Nader recommended Taft, and he was named attorney-advisor to Weinberger. This appointment was the start of a long professional relationship between the two. Material related to the FTC Investigation Project and Taft's attorney-advisor tenure comprise the Federal Trade Commission file of the Government series.
The bulk of the material in the Office of Management and Budget subseries parallels the period 1970-1973 during the Nixon administration, when Taft worked as Weinberger's principal executive assistant while the latter was deputy director and director of OMB. Subjects of memoranda to Weinberger and others include meeting agendas of the Domestic Council and the Council of Economic Advisors, federal-state revenue sharing, guidelines for drafting legislation, projections on the effects of an aging population on entitlement programs, presidential impoundment of appropriated funds, tax expenditure analysis, the defense budget, and the "peace dividend" occasioned by the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. Other participants in OMB internal communication include Samuel M. Cohn and Arthur B. Laffer.
During 1973, Taft served as Caspar Weinberger's executive assistant when Weinberger held the dual offices of secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and counselor to the president for human resources during Nixon's second term. There is substantial material in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare subseries on the scope, purpose, and activities of the newly-created office of counselor to the president for human resources. Weinberger continued to serve as secretary of HEW until 1975, early in the Ford administration, and Taft continued as his executive assistant. During 1976-1977, Taft was general counsel, or chief lawyer, for HEW under secretary Forrest David Mathews. Recurring topics in the HEW subseries include welfare reform, the negative income tax, school desegregation cases, swine flu vaccine liability, and national health insurance. Internal and external correspondents besides Weinberger and Mathews include Terrel Howard Bell, Peter J. Brennan, Frank Charles Carlucci, James H. Cavanaugh, Lewis M. Helm, Russell B. Long, William A. Morrill, Elliot L. Richardson, Pat Schroeder, and Julia Vadala (Taft).
Between 1981 and 1989, Taft was successively general counsel and deputy secretary of the Defense Department under secretaries of defense Caspar Weinberger and Frank Charles Carlucci during the Reagan presidential administration. The Department of Defense (DoD) file documenting Taft's service in this agency is the largest subseries of the Government series. It consists mainly of official outgoing correspondence with attached correspondence and other daily records arranged chronologically and inventoried by addressee, subject, and control number. Frequent correspondents besides the secretaries of defense include Joseph Patrick Addabbo, Les Aspin, Jack Brooks, Robinson O. Everett, Michael Horowitz, Tip O'Neill, Richard Norman Perle, Colin L. Powell, Melvin Price, William V. Roth, Carl R. Smith, David Alan Stockman, W. Paul Thayer, Strom Thurmond, John G. Tower, and Joseph Robert Wright.
The most numerous document types in the Miscellany series are records related to Taft's law partnership with the Washington firm of Leva, Hawes, Symington, Martin and Oppenheimer and writings not related to his governmental duties, such as college term papers. Speeches and writings resulting from his official duties are housed in the Government Fileewith the files of the appropriate governmental entity. For example, a speeches and writings file of Taft material is part of the DOD subseries of the Government File.