Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
Mashed potatoes The Bush II administration is looking a lot like Bush I, though it also bears some resemblance to the Nixon-Ford and Reagan years. In choosing cabinet members and close...
...DIONNE Jr...
...Where conservatives argued that nothing could have been worse than the old welfare system, Moynihan insisted, in good conservative fashion, that things could indeed be made worse...
...The first big controversy of Moynihan's life was his famous 1965 report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action...
...Because Moynihan is a large personality with an intricate mind, different people rally to him for very different reasons...
...Voting rights Your stand against the bombastic activities of the Bush campaign was courageous, ("Votes Count," December 15, 2000...
...Their ideas and records are not promising...
...Both men will be hard pressed to match the monetary expertise and finesse of Clinton treasury secretaries, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers...
...Oh maybe, the Asiago cheese from Wisconsin (Governor Tommy Thompson), and the smoked elk from Colorado (Gale Norton) are a culinary reach for the down-home cook...
...There is a cult of Moynihan in Washington, and I confess to being part of it...
...5 E.J...
...Bush has been playing up the current economic slow-down, perhaps as a prelude to a large tax cut...
...DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN Foe of ideological certainties magine Henry Kissinger writing the following sentence to anyone: "I stand corrected...
...This view led to Moynihan's great, unsuccessful crusade against the welfare-reform bill in 1996...
...Nor will he be sheltered even temporarily by the regard of the electorate...
...The editorial echoes the sentiments of many Americans, even beyond partisanship, yet speaks volumes about our resilient, but battered democratic system of government and the primacy of the vote...
...This led him to a critique of sixties' liberalism, but also of conservatism in the eighties and nineties...
...Is the goal (agenda) of the church, while showing compassion to gays, to support research to eliminate this objective disorder through means acceptable to the church, for example, genetic surgery in utero with no adverse side effects...
...Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who introduced that resolution and received that note from Kissinger, served his last full day in the Senate on January 2,2001...
...But with the deficit now under control is this a financially prudent move...
...Members of the cult cross ideological lines, but it includes a disproportionate number of academics and political writers...
...A close election in which he lost the popular vote and was awarded Florida's contested electoral vote by the U.S...
...Half of registered voters didn't go to the polls at all, and the more-than-half who did voted for his opponent...
...Such a thought sends tremors of fear and distrust into the minds and hearts of the gay community, who are already fighting an uphill battle for their legitimate place at the Lord's table...
...In choosing cabinet members and close advisers, President-elect George W. Bush is reaching into the Republican past for a range and depth of government experience wanting on his own resume...
...Bush does not come to office with that cushion: he lacks charisma and shows few signs of political acuity...
...Moynihan was denounced for "blaming the victim...
...The second of Moynihan's great conservative insights is that grand plans often run afoul of messy reality He fears ideological certainty...
...It is in part because of his sensitivity to ethnicity that Moynihan saw earlier than most that, as he put it in 1979: "The Soviet Empire is coming under tremendous strain...
...Because this is a cult, it's important to acknowledge that its object is not a perfect man—as Moynihan, a believer in Original Sin, would be the first to acknowledge...
...As most of his former critics now acknowledge, Moynihan was years ahead in seeing that if you care about social justice, you have to care about strong families...
...There's plenty of blame to go around on this issue, but Moynihan and Clinton could have built a public monument whose importance would have more than offset the banality of that Senate office building Moynihan couldn't stand...
...The men and women Bush has gathered for his administration seem to promise a conservative agenda pragmatically carried out, yet there are some pointed questions to be asked about their plans...
...In fact, as the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset argues in a collection of tributes to Moynihan published by the Johns Hopkins University Press (and admirably summarized in the current issue of The Public Interest), Moynihan "was not blaming the victim...
...Yet, those familiar faces, some from decades ago, belong on the comfort-food menu, especially for all of those who still hanker for Reagan's third term...
...Is the cut intended as a sound economic measure or as part of the continuing Republican effort to downsize government...
...We shuddered at and dismissed the thought that the appointment of two women to these posts will leave lots of room for the oil guys to get their way—sounds too much like a sexist conspiracy...
...That, by the way, is why Kissinger graciously conceded the superiority of Moynihan's crystal ball...
...Or imagine a United States senator so concerned that public buildings be designed to be beautiful that when the plastic cover protecting the soon-to-be-opened Hart Senate Office Building was removed in 1981, he introduced the following resolution: "Whereas the plastic cover has now been removed revealing, as feared, a building whose banality is exceeded only by its expense...
...The man is more important than the office...
...But beware of certainty where none exists...
...You don't have to be a United States senator to be Daniel Patrick Moynihan...
...Your crystal ball was better than mine...
...Oh yes, class is important, but so is ethnicity, the ties of clan and tribe...
...Ideological certainty easily degenerates into insistence upon ignorance...
...It is quite possible to live with uncertainty, with the possibility, even the likelihood, that one is wrong," Moynihan wrote in 1993...
...Supreme Court's five most conservative justices leaves him on shaky ground, if not constitutionally than certainly politically and psychologically...
...Do Paul O'Neill, named secretary of the treasury, and Lawrence Lindsey, designated to head the Council of Economic Advisers, have the knowledge or skills for making a soft landing if the downturn grows...
...He must quickly show that he is able to govern the country and his divided party, and that he is able to work with congressional Democrats who will be ready to criticize and resist many of his measures, and certainly some of his appointments...
...But Moynihan's warnings will be a useful guide to reforming the welfare reform when it comes up for renewal in 2002...
...Until such time as the church can move toward a more neutral stance on the interpretation of the orientation itself—at root, a difficult, but serious theological and philosophical question—most dialogue between the gay community and the church will remain one of defensive posturing ROBERT J. COMISKEY Springfield, Va The editors comment: We doubt that the official church is supporting research to eliminate gays through genetic surgery, or otherwise...
...He'll go on teaching (at Syracuse University) and writing, and, one hopes, making the occasional prediction...
...So far, low unemployment has undercut the most dire predictions about that welfare bill...
...On the other hand, both men were deeply trusted and regarded with affection by a large number of Americans...
...Moynihan was alarmed by the growth in single-parent (meaning fatherless) families in the African-American community...
...I will keep a copy of your editorial with my Boston Globe from the day after the election as a reminder of the preciousness of my vote and everyone else's...
...My affection is rooted in respect for his skill at putting conservative ideas to progressive uses...
...In unprecedented circumstances, the presidency is Bush's to win, or not, post-election...
...Gale Norton (interior) and Governor Christie Whitman (environmental protection) will be in charge of air and water as well as set the rules for federal land use...
...and Whereas even in a democracy there are things it is as well the people do not know about government: Now, therefore, be it resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that the plastic cover be put back...
...DIANE LAVOS Natick, Mass...
...While the "national-interest-only" views of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice deserve serious scrutiny, it is those who will oversee the economy, the environment, and the military that initially raise the most serious questions...
...he was blaming the society, the white society" along with "external social factors and economic conditions...
...Fortunately, Moynihan is not disappearing...
...Lastly, Moynihan always resisted the Marxist idea that economic class is the only thing that matters in politics...
...One of the great failures of reform in the last decade was the inability of Moynihan and President Bill Clinton to work together to pass comprehensive health-insurance legislation in 1994...
...If there is a political equivalent of comfort food—familiar and consoling—Bush II looks to be it...
...But I also agree with those who said Gore should have asked for the statewide recount first thing, so it wouldn't look like he hand-picked the counties where he expected the most support...
...Perhaps it is the president-elect more than anyone else who needs a good meal of comfort food as he takes office...
...It could blow up...
...D © 2000, Washington Post Writers Group 6 (Continued from page 4) it is a virtual certainty that, given the rapid advances in these fields, we will know with a high level of confidence its causes within the next several decades...
...Presidential delegation to more expert and experienced cabinet members was the practice of both Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, neither of whom was a policy wonk...
...And, of course, Moynihan pays kind attention to members of his guild...
...After twentyfour years, the Senate will be Moynihanless, and a lesser Senate for that...
...He spoke of a "tangle of pathology" confronting the poorest black children...
Vol. 128 • January 2001 • No. 1
