Building St. Patrick's Cathedral

...He lauds "supported work" —which offers counseling and paid on-the-job training, along with courses in "life skills" —although in a trial this expensive program managed to help only 7 percent of welfare mothers and failed completely for three other underclass target groups...

...striding along with an old, battered Irish hat on his head...

...a de facto policy...

...Who speaks for the center on issues of proMickey Kaus is a correspondent for The New Republic and a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...

...She had been blacklisted as a fellow-traveler...

...The 1965 article was titled "The Case for a Family Policy...

...What if the father refuses—does he go to jail...

...In fact, the senator's performance was more of the Academy Award variety, as has been the applause of most of his reviewers...

...This is a possibility Moynihan's breathtaking career as a welfare reformer does not seem to have prepared him to confront...

...All this legislation actually did was to create the Council of Economic Advisors...

...Well . . . I don't know," said Moynihan...

...When Carter proposed a revised plan that also made no structural changes, Moynihan then denounced it as "tireless tinkering" Moynihan's major activity in this period was whining about fiscal relief for New York...

...Like Hellman, Moynihan had been wronged...

...Are jobs available only to fathers...

...It is mainly about whether one particular policyoffering welfare to poor single mothers with children—has a major anti-family impact...

...This "was a tactical advantage," he now claims, because criticism might have focused on whatever it was he would have proposed...

...The steps are familiar...

...On page 21 he describes his frustration that actual "job creation" was "something just missed in the Employment Act of 1946...

...But the real beauty of the We-Need-APolicy approach, for Washingtonians like Moynihan, is the way it lets them jump into the public debate while glossing over nasty questions as to what, exactly, the policy should be...

...The need-a-policy pose magnifies this flaw, because without a healthy discussion of solutions, the problems themselves remain illdefined...

...If welfare subsidizes the decision of teenagers to have illegitimate babies, might not higher benefits make things worse...

...Like the "feminization of poverty," it is a get-up-and-get-a-beer line, an evocatively ambiguous phrase that makes us all feel terribly concerned and knowledgeable but does little to tell us what, exactly, the problem is, much less what to do about it...

...Welfare reform was "still a grand ideal, a noble ideal," he said in 1979, "but the time has come to think of ourselves!' During Reagan's first term, with the Republicans now in charge of the Senate, Moynihan pursued no major welfare initiatives...

...The essence of family policy is that it focuses on the outcomes of other policies .") Then note ominously that these outcomes are uncoordinated, ad hoc...

...Both of these may be humane suggestions...

...not to have mastered a basic brief on his or her programs...

...Policy for Policy's sake "In 1965 I published in America an article," Moynihan tells us in the book's first line...

...Moynihan says Jimmy Carter "came to office proclaiming the importance of family policy...

...But he says no more about this idea, failing to think through even the most obvious problems: Who provides the jobs...

...He wouldn't be satisfied with "statements ." Instead, he would tenaciously pursue every lead until he had a program that he thought might work or had proved to himself and his readers that despair was the only course...

...Thus, Moynihan condemns Jimmy Carter's Health, Education, and Welfare secretary, Joseph Califano, for his "routine intonation" that welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC) breaks up families: "[T]here was simply no excuse for the head of the cabinet department responsible...

...He lauds the Act on page ten...

...PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL by Mickey Kaus We've lionized Moynihan for asking the right questions about poverty, even though he's struck out on finding the answers...

...Moynihan admits that "I had precious little idea as to what a family policy would amount to but had in mind the example of the Employment Act of 1946...

...Achieving them is hard...

...He calls for tougher child-support enforcement against absent fathers...

...Here Moynihan makes his only promising suggestion: "a federal work program—compulsory when a court has previously ordered him to support his children—with the wages shared between the father and the mother...

...The Harvard lectures offered Moynihan a chance to take a bow, and bask in some belated apologies...

...Instead, Moynihan restricted himself to a call for "national policy...

...The point was not what answers were provided, but what questions were posed," he says...

...Would recent trends in family structure change...

...found national concern...

...But they hardly come to grips with the central dilemma of welfare, which is precisely that compassionate no-strings-attached assistance to husbandless mothers may help sustain a culture of poverty...

...When he has endorsed jobs programs, they have been jobs for ghetto men...

...Moynihan started out in 1964 as an advocate of a "jobs" strategy, toying with proposals like twice-a-day mail delivery as a means of creating jobs for black men...

...They are still occurring, but they are unplanned—not to have a policy is to have (shudder...

...But it was too late...

...We can leave that detail work to the "policymakers," once we have declared our bold pro-family goal...

...Which is why Moynihan-the-author can't help sounding, through the applause, like a tired man who has given up...

...I don't think it's farfetched to suggest the report might have been embraced by black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., who saw the terrible family trends and favored a jobs solution...

...Moynihan's talks were awaited especially eagerly by Democrats, who have been groping unsuccessfully for a consensus on what to do about the black family crisis...

...As an official in the Nixon White House, he shifted to an "income strategy," unsuccessfully pushing Nixon's Family Assistance Plan (FAP), basically a guaranteed income scheme for families with children...

...Daniel Patrick Moynihan...

...Pick something important: Youth, Education, Industry—or Family...

...The government...

...The mere declaration of policy was an event . . .The less specific the legislation, the more chances of its having influence...

...Instead, Moynihan again quickly abandons the idea: "the disorder of the times would likely enough defeat it ." But it would still "make a statement...

...In fact, it was a tragic mistake...

...These professorial homilies go to the core of Moynihan's failings as a leader...

...We do not know...

...The point was not what answers were provided, but what questions were posed," he says...

...Moynihan's defenders, such as Michael Harrington, attempted to do the same...

...More likely, a single office— preferably cabinet level—pulling together the "principal government programs" from a "family perspective...

...When it comes to the family, the unfortunate truth is we can't be sure what specific policies will strengthen it...

...Pat Moynihan thinks with his heart and writes with his fist, but ...is a trained scholar careful of his facts . ...No doubt he stuns his hearers with his passion...

...But that is precisely why it's not enough simply to declare a "national policy" of helping the family...

...Whether or not it's accepted, it's going to be social history?' This "annoyed" the assistant secretary, who "had not worked for weeks . . . just to provide social history for a chapter in a Moynihan book" 20 year setback "To ask questions...

...Back when he first posed the question of the black family's "pathology" in his famous 1965 report, Moynihan also provided no answers...

...then admits that it is probably futile...

...Most recently he called for creation of a new Senate committee to function as a "focal point" for "family policy...

...There it is," declares Moynihan toward the end of Family and Nation, groping for an upbeat note...

...Unlike an Oscar winner, though, a lecturer can't say a few mawkish words and then stand there while everyone claps...

...Moynihan's won that one...

...Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95...

...It will have no legislative authority...

...Moynihan's flaws, then, may have had graver consequences than just the disappointment of his latest book...

...Then, when he came under fire from the civil rights movement, he launched a desperate counterattack, giving interviews and going on television to explain that he favored employment, education, and housing programs, feverishly attempting to add to his report the last chapter—the one with the answers—that wasn't there...

...In one 1977 hearing, Moynihan ridiculed Carter's plan to offer welfare mothers physical jobs such as removing lead paint, weatherizing homes, and conserving national parks...

...Moynihan concludes we don't really know whether AFDC breaks up families, so the conservative solution of ending welfare shouldn't be tried...

...There is no single agency toting them up...

...Admitting that even after his tax cuts and welfare increases "the problem of dependency remains," he half-heartedly tosses out a grab bag of unpromising ideas, most of which he snatches right back...

...You can't help thinking that someone who actually felt the problem of the underclass was as urgent as Moynihan says it is wouldn't have let it go at that...

...What do they pay...

...His distaste for making mothers work also inclines him against proposals such as "workfare" that seek to break up the culture of poverty by requiring welfare mothers to perform public service jobs...

...Would it have been possible for black leaders to characterize the report as a rationalization for inaction, an attempt to blame blacks for their own problems...

...What's it going to be like...

...In the Godkin lectures themselves, he even endorsed the idea that " `[M]ajor reform appears both infeasible and undesirable.' " In the book version, he tries a bit harder...

...Moynihan's right the second time...

...If the pay is high enough to "share," won't it be high enough to discourage taking a private job...

...Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a natural choice in 1985 when Harvard was looking for someone to deliver its Godkin lectures on government—natural in the same way it was natural for Hollywood to invite Lillian Hellman back to pick up an honorary Academy Award a few years ago...

...When it finally arrives, in the last 40 pages of the book, Moynihan first recommends an increase in the dependent tax exemption (which would make it easier for low-income families to get by) and an indexed national standard for AFDC (in other words, increased welfare benefits...

...Family and Nation...

...In 1965, at the time of the famous report, he even suggested redesigning women's jobs so that men would do them...

...It's tempting to say that if Pat Moynihan can't come up with an answer to the intertwined problems of the black family and the black underclass, then the situation is hopeless...

...Declaring national goals is easy...

...The topic wouldn't come up again for 20 years...

...No one until last night ." When the lectures were expanded and published in book form as Family and Nation, Michael Kramer wrote in New York magazine that Moynihan was "a man who has learned from experience...and in our hearts we know he's right ." Jonathan Yardley produced a rave review for The Washington Post, while James Reston painted a Lincolnesque profile in courage—this "tall figure...

...He knows something about human frailty...

...It seemed it was always like that ." In other words, the Full Employment Act of 1946, while declaring a "national policy" of full employment, failed to have much impact precisely because declaring a policy of full employment is not the same as taking the steps (such as government job programs) necessary to actually achieving it...

...Instead, Moynihan pushed a welfare bill that would have made no major structural reforms...

...Point out that various existing government programs affect this something...

...He praises an Urban League PR campaign urging ghetto men, "Don't make a baby if you can't be a father," but he immediately doubts that it will "have the least influence on young men ." He demands that the federal government take "responsibility" for fighting drugs (What We Need Is...

...The only option is whether these will be purposeful, intended policies or whether they will be residual, derivative, in a sense concealed ones ." What we need is . . . perhaps a "family impact statement" on all federal laws...

...history in which a person is more likely to be poor if young rather than old!' Sounds awfully significant...

...What does this tell us about the value of proclaiming the importance of family policy...

...Consistency sure hasn't been Moynihan's hobgoblin...

...To read the reviews, you would think Moynihan's appearance was a show-stopping success...

...Yet it had had far greater impact than any 'jobs bill It had declared a national policy...

...This possible impact has hardly been "concealed ." People have been arguing about it heatedly for decades...

...In Family and Nation, Moynihan takes a few elegant turns on the runway, acknowledges the ovation, adds some self-congratulation of his own, and then with great flair fails to rise to the occasion...

...If Moynihan didn't revel in the graceful discourse of academia, of sifting data, of apportioning flattering praise or deft criticism—if he didn't enjoy so much the sound of his own voice—then he might have made a more strenuous and more successful effort to come up with some of those answers...

...Now, it's surely true that the family has been damaged by the unintended consequences of government actions—the "marriage penalty" in the Internal Revenue Code is an obvious, minor example...

...But what does it mean...

...Moynihan notes ominously that "the United States has become the first society in "To ask questions, there it is," declares Moynihan...

...But I was also reminded of an anecdote in Vincent and Vee Burke's account of Moynihan's fight in the Nixon White House to promote the guaranteed income...

...What Moynihan is giving us is an erudite version of that Washington staple, the We-Need-APolicy pitch...

...Practically everybody, including most black leaders, now agrees the problems of poor black Americans have something to do with a ghetto culture in which it's considered normal for young girls to have babies and go on welfare rather than form stable two-parent families...

...Moynihan at the time favored a huge federal jobs program...

...Moynihan's fevered italics convey the exaggerated importance he gives to this act...

...But if there are enduring principles underlying his shifting positions, they would seem to be, first, a desire to defend welfare benefits for single mothers, and second, a belief that the solution to the decline of the black family lies in getting black men, rather than welfare mothers, to work...

...Wouldn't a frank discussion of the black family problem have been easier if it had been associated with a positive step the government could have taken to improve things...

...In the 20 years of polite silence about the black family that followed Moynihan's report, black illegitimacy rates more than doubled, from 25 percent to almost 60 percent...

...But how do you get money from an absent father who has no income...

...In 1985, despite his previous mea culpas, he introduced another FAP-like guaranteed income plan...

...Moynihan seems to feel that fuzzy and fragmented arguments are part of his amiably desultory style...

...He also joined Democratic efforts to expand the existing "WIN" program of voluntary job training as an alternative to a Reagan proposal for mandatory "workfare...

...So Moynihan has criticized AFDC not because it is available to single mothers but because it is not available to two-parent families (as it would have been under FAP...

...What Moynihan can't quite bring himself to admit is that extending welfare to two-parent families isn't enough—that underclass culture iS now so advanced that young girls will have illegitimate babies and go on welfare even if they could get married and go on welfare...

...That Moynihan leaves such obvious contradictions squatting there in the pages of his book is one example of his most annoying flaw: intellectual laziness...

...If he'd included this proposal in his report, would it have been possible for liberals to charge (as they did) that Moynihan was racist because he ignored the link between unemployment and black family breakup...

...He has to lecture...

...Does it mean today's youth are going to hell in a handbasket...

...Moynihan's initial example—the Employment Act of 1946, the one that was so marvelous in its vagueness—is the most decisive refutation of his own We-Need-A-Policyism...

...But it is not necessary to know (and probably not possible...

...Maybe this is too harsh a judgment—the man is a senator, after all, and he says more in this book than most senators say in a lifetime...

...Moynihan was flying in a helicopter to Camp David for the final showdown argument...

...Moynihan almost always takes as his reference point something he published, or an address he delivered, as if the entire public discourse of the last 20 years consisted of his recorded utterances...

...Does it mean we should congratulate ourselves on eliminating poverty among the elderly...

...We might have spent two decades solving it...

...Black leaders had been put on the defensive about the culture of their community...

...Does it imply we should expand welfare...

...Perhaps Moynihan, having seen it coming, having spent two decades in public life thinking, writing, and trying to do something about it, had some answers...

...Seemingly it is calamitous...

...But the debate over the black family is no longer about broad goals—whether two-parent families are a good thing...

...Without his predilection for questions over answers, we might not be applauding him today for recognizing the black family crisis two lost decades ago...

...Yet "in the end he accomplished nothing...

...That assumes the experts will be able to decide, free from messy ideological biases, what the likely results of various possible policies are...

...When Jimmy Carter became president, Moynihan, as chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on public assistance, initially called Carter's welfare proposal (which was a guaranteed income plus public service jobs) "a magnificent program ." Two months later, after being pressured by liberals and labor officials worried the jobs might undercut wage rates, Moynihan pronounced the plan "grievously flawed ." When studies showed that giving families cash might encourage them to break up, Moynihan suddenly announced he'd been "wrong about a guaranteed income...

...asked a nervous assistant secretary...

...These professorial homilies got to the core of Moynihan's failings as a leader...

...But I don't think that's true because, in addition to telling us what's wrong with the family, this book tells us something about what may be wrong with Moynihan...

...Unlike Hellman, Moynihan had been right...

...Eliminate welfare...

...his 1965 report predicting the decline of the black family had been hooted down as racist...

...asked The New York Times the morning after the first Godkin talk...

...But when it comes to one of his own pet proposals, raising the personal deduction in the income tax, Moynihan is suddenly quite prepared to proceed in ignorance...

...He approvingly cites Edmund Burke and Glenn Loury for the proposition that the problems of contemporary blacks "lie beyond the reach of the government ." On the next page he vigorously defends "those who advocate a role for government ." This is all the more maddening because 15 pages later, in a completely different context, he lets slip a synthesis of the two viewpoints that seems to me so wise as to alone be worth the $12.95 cover price: "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society...

...Questions are fine for scholars, but when it comes to governing you need the answers...

...Bring the concealed impacts to the surface, study them, and well-educated men of good will in high government positions will be able to Make Coherent Policy...

...The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself" The most depressing examples of Moynihan's laziness come when he finally has to face the music and tell us just what his national family policy might do, a moment not even he can put off forever...