Pat Moynihan, R.I.P.

TownHall.com ^ | Thursday, March 27, 2003 | by George Will

[JohnHuang2]

WASHINGTON--Many of America's largest public careers have been those of presidents. Many, but by no means all. Chief Justice John Marshall was more consequential than all but two presidents--Washington and Lincoln. Among 20th- century public servants, Gen. George Marshall--whose many achievements included discerning the talents of a Col. Eisenhower--may have been second in importance only to Franklin Roosevelt. And no 20th-century public career was as many-faceted, and involved so much prescience about as many matters, as that of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died Wednesday at 76.

He was born in Tulsa but spent his formative years on Manhattan's Lower East Side, from which he rose to Harvard's faculty and the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, serving as, among other things, ambassador to India and the U.S. representative at the United Nations. Then four Senate terms. Along the way he wrote more books than some of his colleagues read, and became something that, like Atlantis, is rumored to have once existed but has not recently been seen--the Democratic Party's mind.

His was the most penetrating political intellect to come from New York since Alexander Hamilton, who, like Moynihan, saw over the horizon of his time, anticipating the evolving possibilities and problems of a consolidated, urbanized, industrial nation. A liberal who did not flinch from the label, he reminded conservatives that the Constitution's framers ``had more thoughts about power than merely its limitation.''

[JohnHuang2]

Thursday, March 27, 2003

Quote of the Day by jwalsh07

[Notwithstanding]

Moynihan was a career pro-abort.

May God have mercy upon his soul.

[ClearCase_guy]

I disagreed with Moynihan on a lot of issues, but he was a giant. He was like John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and other figures of the nineteenth century -- we no longer see many people of his caliber.

However, when Ted Kennedy dies, he will also receive such memorial essays (probably not from George Will). Kennedy does not deserve them at all. He's a big man, but far from being a giant.

[mikeb704]

He was, but did have the sense to characterize partial-birth abortions as infanticide.

Michael M. Bates: My Side of the Swamp

[Notwithstanding]

Yeah, what a guy!

I mean, who wouldn't laud him because he opposed the brutal killing of 4,000 babies a year - even though he maintained his support for the brutal killing of 1.2 Million babies per year?

[Notwithstanding]

Moynihan was a disgrace: Moynihan rightly understood that the disintegration of the traditional family was the cause of cultural decline - and yet he always voted to undermine the traditional family in order to win re-election, I suppose.

He is like many Democrats - they vote liberal simply to win office.

[yarddog]

I always had mixed feelings about Moynahan. I wanted to like him, but everytime I began to think he was ok, he would do something which proved he was not alright, but a typical leftist.

While I think he was doing evil things he did not come across as evil. On the other hand, I guess in the end, actions are more important than impressions.

[uncbob]

An overrated blowhard who was incoherent on a lot of shows

A gun grabber who wanted to tax ammunition out of existence

A hypocrit who warned about disintregration of the black
family and then proceeded to vote for every socialistic program that caused the problem

id NOTHINGg to convict Clinton

He is in the same category as Byrd and Kennedy
GIANT BS artists who the press connonized

[legman]

I disagreed with Senator Moynihan on many issues, but he was a statesman. I can't remember him being anything like the evil extremes of partisanism that we are witnessing among the Democrat Senators today. He was a forward thinker, especially on issues like Social Security. He differed from his party's status quo by looking for solutions instead of building a career on exploiting the problems.

New York replaced him with Hillary. We all lost.

[happygrl]

Moynihan's voting record was evidence of the necessity to prostitute oneself in order to be a Democrat.

That was his flaw; he didn't have the courage to abandon his party, although he was, at heart, much better a person than the Democrats deserved.

[TLBSHOW]

from my local paper, as he used to live here and had a office on Main Street.....

Moynihan dies at 76

Staff and Wire Reports

Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a part-time Pindars Corners gentleman farmer who became an iconoclastic scholar-politician and served four terms in the Senate, died Wednesday. He was 76.


The New York Democrat and former United Nations ambassador had been in ill health. He was hospitalized in January for an intestinal disorder, and again soon after for a back injury. His latest setback was an infection after an emergency appendectomy on March 11 at the Washington Hospital Center.


Moynihan served in the Senate from 1977 to 2001. He was succeeded by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who announced her Senate candidacy in a torch-passing news conference at Moynihan's farm in July 1999.


She announced his death Wednesday on the Senate floor.


"We have lost a great American, an extraordinary senator, an intellectual and a man of passion and understanding for what really makes the country work," she said.


After retiring from politics, Moynihan became a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Fellow legislators named Manhattan's new federal courthouse in his honor.


The lanky, pink-faced lawmaker, who preferred bow ties and professorial tweeds to the Senate uniform of lawyer-like pinstripes, reveled in speaking his mind and defying conventional labels.


Known for his ability to spot emerging issues and trends, Moynihan was a leader in welfare reform and transportation initiatives, and an authority on Social Security and foreign policy.


After leaving public office, Moynihan stayed active in politics, from campaigning for Clinton to his recent work as co-chairman of President Bush's Social Security commission. He also championed a plan to revitalize Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station.


He and his wife, Elizabeth Brennan, spent summers on a 500-acre estate near the hamlet of Pindars Corners in the town of Davenport in Delaware County. The spread included a former one-room schoolhouse, where Moynihan liked to write.


The couple bought the estate, called Derrymore, in 1964 and spent vacations, especially during summer months, there. The former senator often was seen in area communities — whether at a Memorial Day service or an old-fashioned Fourth of July at Hanford Mills.


They sold the estate in 2001.


Moynihan established his academic credentials early, teaching economics and urban studies at Harvard. He returned to the classroom in spring 2001 as professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School.


During his first hour-long class there, he wondered aloud if something had gone wrong with Washington.


"We have lessened our capacity for large national initiatives," he said. "Something's lacking. Can it be that our energies have run out?"


In his own college days, the 6-foot-5 Moynihan spent one summer tending bar, and later earned a reputation as gregarious and drink-loving.


In debates on the Senate floor he was known for a love of often obscure academic references.


Moynihan left Syracuse University in 1961 to work for John F. Kennedy, the first of four presidents he served.


He worked in the Labor Department in the Kennedy administration, and almost immediately found himself at odds with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI over an article he'd written about the mafia.


An internal agency memo called Moynihan "an egghead that talks in circles." At the bottom of the memo, Hoover scrawled, "I am not going to see this skunk."


During the next 15 years, Moynihan served as a high-ranking official in the administrations of both Democrats and Republicans - carving out a sometimes controversial Washington career.


As President Nixon's urban affairs adviser, he proposed a policy of "benign neglect" toward minorities that drew heavy criticism. A 1965 report to President Johnson created a major policy flap when he warned that the rising rate of out-of-wedlock births threatened the stability of black families.


Moynihan saw himself at the time as a liberal observer warning of future problems. Rather than hearing praise, he was denounced as promoting racism. The controversy haunted Moynihan for years and resurfaced as late as the 1994 elections.


As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he beat the drum of anti-communism and demanded that other countries temper their anti-U.S. rhetoric if they wanted American help.


His unyielding support of Israel made him popular with New York's Jewish population and his televised statements at the United Nations elevated Moynihan to near-celebrity status.


Hoping to win a Senate seat in 1976, Moynihan emerged the winner of a bitter five-way Democratic primary. In the general election he defeated incumbent Republican James Buckley by portraying him as out of touch with New York City's fiscal crisis. Moynihan's own ads proclaimed: "He spoke up for America. He'd speak up for New York."


Moynihan's fascination with global affairs never waned, and he continued to speak and write about world events, at one point foretelling the collapse of the Soviet Union.


"The Soviet Union is a seriously troubled, even sick society," he said in a January 1980 speech on the Senate floor. "The defining event of the decade might well be the break-up of the Soviet empire."


With a staccato delivery that emphasized unexpected syllables, Moynihan's speaking style was often mimicked. He wrote or edited 19 books - more it was said, than some of his Senate colleagues had read.


During his years in the Senate, Moynihan became a champion of many of the liberal Democratic programs he had once questioned, defending public jobs programs and fighting to increase federal aid to help offset New York's crushing welfare burden.


In 1988 Moynihan, long one of the nation's foremost authorities on work and family, helped bring together conservatives and liberals to enact the Family Support Act, a major revision of the nation's welfare laws.


Born in Tulsa, Okla., Moynihan was the eldest of three children. He spent his early childhood in Indiana, before moving to New York City.


The Moynihan children were raised by their mother after their father deserted the family when Daniel Patrick was just 10. To help provide money for the family, Moynihan became a shoe shine boy. As a teenager, he first heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor while working on a customer's shoes outside Central Park.


Moynihan graduated from high school, worked on the docks and attended City College. After a stint in the Navy, he went on to college at Tufts on the G.I. Bill. He also attended the London School of Economics with a Fulbright scholarship.


Moynihan and his wife had three grown children, Timothy, Maura and John. http://www.thedailystar.com/news/stories/2003/03/27/sen.html

[litany_of_lies]

I respected DPM to an extent, but gave up on him when he wouldn't vote for impeachment. To me, that vote was a litmus test.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

His was the most penetrating political intellect to come from New York since Alexander Hamilton

Says a lot about "our betters" in NYC.

[putupon]

I always liked this guy.

He set the stage for the Hildebeast to become his personally approved replacement. You need better friends.

[Sonny M]

Personally, I wish every single (not including Zell Miller here) democratic senator was like him. The one problem I had with him, was always the same, no spine or backbone. He talked about Welfare reform, but allowed himself to be intimidated by minorites who didn't like him talking about the gravy train. He studied issues, knew the answers, spoke about them, but then feared the backlash, and voted differently. He was a politician first, a statesman second. There are a few good things he did do, he supported privatizing social security, and he made sure the Clinton Health Care program died in commitee.