Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

In office
January 3, 1977 – January 3, 2001
Preceded by James L. Buckley
Succeeded by Hillary Rodham Clinton
12th[1] United States Ambassador to the United Nations
In office
1975–1976
President Gerald R. Ford
Preceded by John A. Scali
Succeeded by William W. Scranton
10th United States Ambassador to India
In office
1973–1975
President Richard Nixon
Gerald R. Ford
Preceded by Kenneth Keating
Succeeded by William W. Scranton
Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee
In office
1993–1995
Preceded by Lloyd Bentsen
Succeeded by Robert Packwood
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
In office
1992–1993
Preceded by Quentin N. Burdick
Succeeded by Max Baucus
Born March 16, 1927(1927-03-16)
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Died March 26, 2003(2003-03-26) (aged 76)
Washington, D.C.
Nationality American
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Elizabeth Moynihan
Alma mater Tufts University (BA, MA, Ph.D)
London School of Economics
Profession Sociologist, diplomat
Religion Roman Catholic
Military service
Service/branch United States Navy
Years of service 1944-1947

Daniel Patrick “Pat” Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times (in 1982, 1988, and 1994). He declined to run for re-election in 2000. Prior to his years in the Senate, Moynihan was the United States' ambassador to the United Nations and to India, and was a member of four successive presidential administrations, beginning with the administration of John F. Kennedy, and continuing through Gerald Ford.

Contents

Early life and education

Moynihan was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma but moved to New York City at the age of six. Brought up in a poor neighborhood, he shined shoes, attended various public, private, and parochial schools, and ultimately graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in Harlem. He and his brother spent most of their childhood summers at his grandfather's farm in Bluffton, Indiana. After high school, Moynihan worked as a longshoreman before entering City College of New York (CCNY), which at that time provided free higher education.

After a year at CCNY, he joined the United States Navy, receiving V-12 officer training at Tufts University, where he graduated with a B.A. He was on active duty from 1944 to 1947, last serving as gunnery officer of the USS Quirinus. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, also at Tufts. Moynihan then studied as a Fulbright fellow at the London School of Economics. Many years later, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Tufts.

Political career

Moynihan's political career started in the 1950s when he served as a member of New York governor Averell Harriman's staff, a stint which ended following Harriman's defeat to Nelson Rockefeller in the 1958 general election. Two years later, Moynihan was a delegate to the 1960 Democratic National Convention as part of John F. Kennedy's delegate pool.

Assistant Secretary of Labor; controversy over the War on Poverty

Moynihan was an Assistant Secretary of Labor for policy in the Kennedy Administration and in the early part of the Lyndon Johnson Administration. In that capacity, he did not have operational responsibilities, allowing him to devote all of his time to trying to formulate national policy for what would become the War on Poverty. He had a small staff including Paul Barton, Ellen Broderick, and Ralph Nader (who at 29 years of age, hitchhiked to Washington, D.C. and got a job working for Moynihan in 1963).

They took inspiration from the book Slavery written by Stanley Elkins. Elkins essentially contended that slavery had made black Americans dependent on the dominant society, and that that dependence still existed a century later. This supported the concept that government must go beyond simply ensuring that members of minority groups have the same rights as the majority but must also "act affirmatively" in order to counter the problem.

Moynihan's research of Labor Department data demonstrated that even as fewer people were unemployed, more people were joining the welfare rolls. These recipients were families with children but only one parent (almost invariably the mother). The laws at that time permitted such families to receive welfare payments in certain parts of the United States.

Moynihan issued his research under the title The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, now commonly known as The Moynihan Report. Moynihan's report[2] fueled a debate over the proper course for government to take with regard to the economic underclass, especially blacks. Critics on the left attacked it as "blaming the victim",[3] a slogan coined by psychologist William Ryan.[4] Some suggested that Moynihan was propagating the views of racists[5] because much of the press coverage of the report focused on the discussion of children being born out of wedlock. Despite Moynihan's warnings, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program included rules for payments only if the "Man [was] out of the house." Critics said that the nation was paying poor women to throw their husbands out of the house. Moynihan supported Richard Nixon's idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI). Daniel Patrick Moynihan had significant discussions concerning a Basic Income Guarantee with Russell B. Long and Louis O. Kelso.

After the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, Moynihan agreed that correction was needed for a welfare system that possibly encouraged women to raise their children without fathers: "The Republicans are saying we have a helluva problem, and we do."[6]

Local New York City politics and academic career

By the 1964 election, Moynihan was politically supporting Robert F. Kennedy. For this reason he was not favored by then-President Johnson, and he left the Johnson Administration in 1965. He ran for office in the Democratic Party primary for the presidency of the New York City Council, a position now known as the New York City Public Advocate. However, he was defeated by Queens District Attorney Frank D. O'Connor. He then became Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With turmoil and riots in the United States, he wrote that the next administration would have to be able to unite the nation again.

Nixon Administration

Connecting with President-elect Richard Nixon in 1968, Moynihan joined Nixon's White House Staff as Counselor to the President for Urban Affairs. He was very influential at that time, and was one of the few people in Nixon's inner circle who had done academic research related to social policies.

In 1969, on the initiative of Nixon, NATO tried to establish a third civil column, establishing a hub of research and initiatives in the civil region, dealing as well with environmental topics [7]. Moynihan[7] named Acid Rain and the Greenhouse effect as suitable international challenges to be dealt by NATO. NATO was chosen, since the organization had suitable expertise in the field and as well experience with international research coordination. The German government was skeptical and saw the initiative as an attempt by the US to regain international terrain after the lost Vietnam War. The topics gained momentum in civil conferences and institutions[7].

In 1970, Moynihan wrote a memo to President Nixon saying: "[T]he issue of race could benefit from a period of 'benign neglect.' The subject has been too much talked about… We need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades." He argued that Nixon's conservative tactics (meaning particularly the speeches of Vice-President Spiro Agnew) were playing into the hands of radicals. Moynihan regretted that critics misinterpreted his memo as advocating that the government should neglect minorities.

U.N. Ambassador

Nixon appointed Moynihan as United States Ambassador to India, where he served from 1973 to 1975. President Gerald Ford appointed him as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN), serving a rotation as President of the United Nations Security Council in 1976. As ambassador, Moynihan took a hardline anti-communist stance, in line with the agenda of the White House at the time. He was also consistently a strong supporter of Israel,[8] condemning the 1975 UN resolution that declared Zionism to be a form of racism.[9]

Perhaps the most controversial action of Moynihan's career was his response as Ambassador to the UN, to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. The Ford Administration considered Indonesia, then under a military dictatorship, a key ally against Communism. Moynihan ensured that the UN Security Council took no action against the larger nation's annexation of a small country. Indonesia caused massacres that killed more than 200,000 Timorese. In his memoir, Moynihan wrote:

"The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."[10] Later, he said he had defended a "shameless" Cold War policy toward East Timor.[11]

Moynihan's thinking began to change during his tenure at the U.N. In his 1993 book on nationalism, Pandaemonium, he wrote that as time progressed, he began to view the Soviet Union in less ideological terms. He regarded it less as an expansionist, imperialist Marxist[ state, and more as a weak realist state in decline. He believed it was most motivated by self-preservation. This view would influence his thinking in subsequent years, when he became an outspoken proponent of the then-unpopular view that the Soviet Union was a failed state headed for implosion.

Nevertheless, for the duration of his tenure as ambassador, Moynihan continued his hardline rhetoric, which he describes in Pandaemonium as extreme to the point where "I became something of an embarrassment to my own government, and fairly soon left before I was fired."

Career in the Senate

In 1976, Moynihan was elected to the U.S. Senate from the State of New York, defeating U.S. Representative Bella Abzug, Ramsey Clark, Paul O'Dwyer and Abraham Hirschfeld in the Democratic primary, and Conservative Party incumbent James L. Buckley in the general election. Shortly after election, Moynihan analyzed the State of New York's budget to determine whether it was paying out more in federal taxes than it received in spending. Finding that it was, he produced a yearly report known as the Fisc (from the French[12]). Moynihan's strong support for Israel while U.N. Ambassador may have increased support for him among the state's Jewish population.[13]

Moynihan's strong advocacy for New York's interests in the Senate, buttressed by the Fisc reports and recalling his strong advocacy for US positions in the UN, did at least on one occasion allow his advocacy to escalate into a physical attack. Sen. Kit Bond, nearing retirement in 2010, recalled with some embarrassment in a conversation on civility in political discourse that Moynihan had once "slugged [Bond] on the Senate floor after Bond denounced an earmark Moynihan had slipped into a highway appropriations bill. Some months later Moynihan apologized, and the two occasionally would relax in Moynihan’s office after a long day to discuss their shared interest in urban renewal over a glass of port."[14]

Moynihan continued to be interested in foreign policy as a Senator, sitting on the Select Committee on Intelligence. His strongly anti-Soviet views became far more moderate, as he emerged as a critic of the Ronald Reagan Administration's hawkish Cold War policies, such as support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Moynihan argued there was no active Soviet-backed conspiracy in Latin America, or anywhere. He suggested the U.S.S.R. was suffering from massive internal problems, such as rising ethnic nationalism and a collapsing economy. In a December 21, 1986 editorial in the New York Times, Moynihan predicted the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. He blasted the Reagan Administration's "consuming obsession with the expansion of Communism— which is not in fact going on."

Moynihan introduced Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which cost certain professionals (e.g., computer programmers, engineers, draftspersons, designers) who depended on intermediary agencies (consulting firms) a self-employed tax status option, while other professionals (e.g. accountants, lawyers) continued to enjoy Section 530 exemptions from payroll taxes. This change in the tax code was expected to offset the tax revenue losses of other legislation Moynihan proposed that changed the law of foreign taxes of Americans working abroad.[15] Joseph Stack, who flew his airplane into a building housing IRS offices on February 18 of 2010, posted a suicide note that, among many factors, mentioned the Section 1706 change to the Internal Revenue Code.[16][17]

In the mid-1990s, Moynihan was one of the Democrats to support the ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion. He said of the procedure: "I think this is just too close to infanticide. A child has been born and it has exited the uterus. What on Earth is this procedure?" Earlier in his career in the Senate, Moynihan had expressed his annoyance with the adamantly pro-choice interest groups petitioning him and others on the issue. He challenged them saying, "you women are ruining the Democratic Party with your insistence on abortion."[18][19]

Moynihan broke with orthodox liberal positions of his party on numerous occasions. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, in the 1990s, he strongly opposed President Bill Clinton's proposal to expand health care coverage to all Americans. Seeking to focus the debate over health insurance on the financing of health care, Moynihan garnered controversy by stating, "[T]here is no health care crisis in this country."

A liberal, he voted against the death penalty, the flag desecration amendment,[20] the balanced budget amendment, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, the Communications Decency Act, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. He was critical of proposals to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax. Moynihan surprised many in 1991 when he voted against authorization of the Gulf War. Despite his earlier writings on the negative effects of the welfare state, he surprised many people again by voting against welfare reform in 1996. He was sharply critical of the bill and certain Democrats who crossed party lines to support it.

Public speaker

Moynihan was a popular public speaker with a distinctly patrician style. He had some peculiar mannerisms of speech, in the form of slight stuttering and drawn-out vowels for emphasis. Some observers compared his speaking style to that of William F. Buckley, Jr.

Commission on Government Secrecy

In the Post–Cold War Era, the 103rd Congress enacted legislation directing an inquiry into the uses of government secrecy. Moynihan chaired the Commission. The Committee studied and made recommendations on the "culture of secrecy" that pervaded the United States government and its intelligence community for 80 years, beginning with the Espionage Act of 1917, and made recommendations on the statutory regulation of classified information.

The Committee's findings and recommendations were presented to the President in 1997. As part of the effort, Moynihan secured release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation of its classified Venona file. This file documents the FBI's joint counterintelligence investigation, with the United States Signals Intelligence Service, into Soviet espionage within the United States. Much of the information had been collected and classified as secret information for over fifty years.

After release of the information, Moynihan authored Secrecy: The American Experience[21] where he discussed the impact government secrecy has had on the domestic politics of America for the past half century, and how myths and suspicion created an unnecessary partisan chasm.

Career as scholar

In addition to his career as a politician and diplomat, Moynihan worked as a sociologist. He was Director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a Fellow on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University from 1964 to 1967. In magazines such as Commentary and The Public Interest, he published articles on urban ethnic politics and on the problems of the poor in cities of the Northeast.

Moynihan coined the term "professionalization of reform," by which the government bureaucracy thinks up problems for government to solve rather than simply responding to problems identified elsewhere.[22]

Soon after his 1971 return to Harvard, having served two years in the Nixon White House as Counselor to the President, Moynihan became a professor in the Department of Government. In 1983 he was awarded the Hubert H. Humphrey Award given by the American Political Science Association "in recognition of notable public service by a political scientist." He wrote 19 books, leading his personal friend, columnist and former professor George F. Will, to remark that Dr. Moynihan "wrote more books than most senators have read." He also joined the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as a public administration faculty after retiring from the Senate.

Moynihan's scholarly accomplishments led Michael Barone, writing in the Almanac of American Politics to describe the senator as "the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson."[23] Moynihan's 1993 article, "Defining Deviancy Down",[24] was notably controversial.[25][26]

Selected books

Beyond the Melting Pot, an influential study of American ethnicity, which he co-authored with Nathan Glazer (1963)

Awards and honors

Death and posthumous honors

In 2003, Moynihan died at the age of 76 after complications suffered from an emergency appendectomy about a month earlier. He was survived by his wife of 39 years, Elizabeth Brennan Moynihan, three grown children: Timothy Patrick Moynihan, Maura Russell Moynihan, and John McCloskey Moynihan; and two grandchildren, Michael Patrick and Zora Olea.[29][30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36]

Moynihan was honored posthumously as well.

Quotes

See also

References

  1. ↑ US ambassadors to the UN
  2. ↑ Moynihan's War on Poverty report
  3. ↑ The National Review; March 27, 2003
  4. ↑ See William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, Random House, 1971
  5. ↑ Graebner, William. "The End of Liberalism: Narrating Welfare's Decline, from the Moynihan Report (1965) to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996)", Journal of Policy History, Vol. 14, Number 2, 2002, pp. 170-190
  6. ↑ Lacayo, Richard (December 19, 1994). "Down on the Downtrodden". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982006,00.html. Retrieved 2007-07-22. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Die Frühgeschichte der globalen Umweltkrise und die Formierung der deutschen Umweltpolitik(1950-1973) (Early history of the environmental crisis and the setup of German environmental policy 1950-1973), Kai F. Hünemörder, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004 ISBN 3515081887
  8. ↑ Daniel Moynihan, WRMEA.
  9. ↑ Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 320. ISBN 0465041957. 
  10. ↑ A Dangerous Place, Little Brown, 1980, p. 247
  11. ↑ p. 153, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics, Oxford University Press 1993.
  12. ↑ "The History of the Fisc", on the Fisc Report website. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
  13. ↑ Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Oxford University Press Political Biography.
  14. ↑ "Uncivil society: Jim Leach ’64 leads an effort to restore respectful discourse to our national life, but it’s tough going", by Mark F. Bernstein, Princeton Alumni Weekly, June 2, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
  15. ↑ "New Tax Law threatens high-tech consultants" by Karla Jennings, The New York Times, February 22, 1987 (p. 11 in paper). Link retrieved 2010-06-17.
  16. ↑ Newsday, February 22, 2010, p. A19; "Simmering for decades, engineer's grudge explodes" by Allen G. Breed, The Associated Press via Newsday, February 21, 2010. Subscription only access. Link retrieved 2010-06-17.
  17. ↑ "Tax Law Was Cited in Software Engineer’s Suicide Note" by David Kay Johnston, The New York Times, February 18, 2010. In this article, the Moynihan action is labeled "a favor to IBM", though that was not mentioned in the contemporaneous 2/22/87 Times article cited immediately above. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
  18. ↑ Human Life Review, Summer 2003, page 13.
  19. ↑ Chapter4: Too close to infanticide GB link at Google Books
  20. ↑ S.J.Res. 14, 106th Congress, 2nd Session, Record Vote Number: 48
  21. ↑ Secrecy: The American Experience
  22. ↑ The Public Interest, volume 1 Issue 1 1965
  23. ↑ Barone, Michael; Grant Ujifusa (1999). The Almanac of American Politics 2000. Washington D.C.: National Journal. pp. 1090–1091. ISBN 0-8129-3194-7. "Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson, now approaches the end of a long career in public office." 
  24. ↑ The American Spectator, vol. 62, no. 1, winter 1993, pp. 17-3
  25. ↑ Defining Deviancy
  26. ↑ Defining Deviancy down
  27. ↑ The Heinz Awards, Daniel Patrick Moynihan profile
  28. ↑ Washington File - Transcript: Clinton Remarks at Medal of Freedom Awards
  29. ↑ "Daniel Patrick Moynihan Is Dead; Senator From Academia Was 76" 2003-03-27
  30. ↑ Lemann, Nicholas (2000) The Promised Land . Includes Bill Clinton's statements when awarding Moynihan the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, and statements by Senators on the occasion of his death in 2003.
  31. ↑
  32. ↑ AP obituary
  33. ↑ MoynihanStation.org
  34. ↑ Moynihan Commission Report
  35. ↑ George Will Tribute Column
  36. ↑ Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
  37. ↑ In Their Own Words. US News and World Report. May 26-June 2, 2008. 
  38. ↑ Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins. Why Can't People Feed Themselves
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by
Kenneth Keating		 United States Ambassador to India
1973 – 1975		 Succeeded by
William B. Saxbe
Preceded by
John A. Scali		 U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
1975–1976		 Succeeded by
William W. Scranton
United States Senate
Preceded by
James L. Buckley		 United States Senator (Class 1) from New York
1977–2001
Served alongside: Jacob K. Javits, Alfonse D'Amato, Charles Schumer		 Succeeded by
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Political offices
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Quentin N. Burdick
North Dakota		 Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
1992–1993		 Succeeded by
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Texas		 Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee
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