William Howard Taft IV - Government Service and Legal Career

Government Service and Legal Career

After researching the FTC as one of "Nader's Raiders", Taft served briefly as attorney adviser to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in 1970.

From 1970 to 1973, he was the principal assistant to Caspar W. Weinberger, who was deputy director, then director, of the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President under President Richard Nixon. Taft assisted him in the management of the budgetary process, policy review, and program oversight for the entire federal government.

Taft married Julia Vadala in 1974.

Taft served from 1973 to 1976 as the executive assistant to the United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. In April 1976 Taft was appointed by President Gerald Ford to serve as general counsel of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In that post, as the chief lawyer for the department and the principal administrator of the Office of the General Counsel, he supervised over 350 lawyers in Washington and 10 regional offices.

During the Carter administration, he was an attorney with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Leva, Hawes, Symington, Martin and Oppenheimer.

In February 1981, as one of his first appointments, President Ronald Reagan appointed Taft as General Counsel of the Department of Defense. Taft was then appointed Deputy Secretary of Defense and served from January 1984 to April 1989. He served as acting Secretary of Defense from January to March 1989 after George H. W. Bush became president. Bush's initial nominee, John Tower, was not confirmed by the United States Senate after much contentious debate and testimony. The eventual appointee confirmed in March was Richard B. Cheney (later Vice President of the United States, 2001–2009). Although he was only acting Secretary of Defense, and never confirmed as the permanent Secretary, he became the third member of his family to hold a position as civilian head of a military department, following his great-great-grandfather Alphonso Taft (under President Ulysses S. Grant) and his great-grandfather William Howard Taft (under President Theodore Roosevelt).

Taft served as U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, which has the rank of ambassador, from 1989 to 1992, during the Gulf War.

During the Clinton administration, Taft entered private practice with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.