Daniel p moynihan biography

In the minority, Moynihan voted against a Republican-sponsored welfare reform bill to abolish Aid to Dependent Children and was profoundly shaken when Clinton signed it. In a heated exchange with the president on Air Force One, Moynihan accused him of abandoning traditional Democratic Party principles. The Clinton administration regarded the senator as a cantankerous gadfly whose temperament seemed better suited for a critic of politics than a player.

Yet by comparison to the new class of intensely partisan members of Congress, Moynihan appeared a thoughtful scholar-statesman. In President Clinton awarded Moynihan the Presidential Medal of Freedom an honor that Moynihan helped establish during the Kennedy administration. He lived in an apartment above Pennsylvania Avenue, whose redevelopment he had successfully advocated, and maintained a small farm near Pindars Corner in upstate New York.

He died of complications from a ruptured appendix. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Eloquent, urbane, amusing, and knowledgeable in debate, Moynihan could be an exceedingly unpredictable politician. Over his long career he was variously identified as a liberal, a neoconservative, a neoliberal, a pragmatist, and an iconoclast. His only ideology, Moynihan insisted, was the avoidance of ideology.

He played the role of public intellectual, addressing himself to public audiences rather than just to his academic peers. He combined social science theory with political action, but having changed from a social engineer to a skeptic of social engineering, he concluded that the true role of the social sciences was to call attention to problems and to measure the results of policies, not to formulate policy.

Despite the corkscrew turns in his thinking, he remained consistent in his passionate concern for families, preparing future generations to live productive lives. Biographies include Douglas E. Katzmann, ed. Columbia University has a brief oral history interview with him. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

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Moynihan left the administration in Beginning in the late s and through the s, Moynihan was a prolific writer for such journals as The ReporterCommentary and The Public Interest. Inhe and the sociologist Nathan Glazer coauthored Beyond the Melting Potushering in a lifelong collaboration on ethnicity and other topics. InPresident-elect Richard M.

Sensing that the Democratic Party was experiencing political exhaustion after the turmoil of the late s and believing Nixon could be molded into a Tory reformer on the model of Benjamin Disraeli, Moynihan accepted. 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 UN ambassador, Moynihan continued his hardline rhetoric, which he described 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. InMoynihan was elected to the U. Buckley in the general election.

Shortly after election Moynihan ran a query on the State of New York's budget and whether it was paying out more in federal taxes than it received in spending. The further implications of this led to a yearly report known as the FISC. Moynihan's strong support for Israel while U. Ambassador may have increased support among the state's Jewish daniel p moynihan biography. While considered by many to be a liberal, Moynihan did break with the orthodox positions of his party on numerous occasions.

As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee he strongly opposed President Bill Clinton 's proposal to expand health care coverage to all Americans. Seeking to focus the debate on health insurance and the financing of health care costs, Moynihan created controversy by stating that, "there is no health care crisis in this country. 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, however accurately, that there was no active Soviet-backed daniel p moynihan biography in Latin America, or anywhere, instead suggesting that the U.

In a December 21,editorial in The New York TimesMoynihan penned an editorial predicting the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, and blasting the Reagan Administration's "consuming obsession with the expansion of Communism—which is not in fact going on. In the mids, 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? He complained to them saying, "you women are ruining the Democratic Party with your insistence on abortion. Moynihan was a political liberal. He was critical of proposals to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax.

Moynihan surprised many inwhen he voted against daniel p moynihan biography 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 He was sharply critical of the bill and certain Democrats who crossed party lines to support it. Inafter retiring from the Senate, Moynihan died at the age of 76 after complications suffered from an emergency appendectomy about a month earlier.

In the Post— Cold War Era, the rd 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 ofand made recommendations on the statutory regulation of classified information.

The Committee's findings and recommendations were presented to the President in As part of the effort, Moynihan secured release from the Federal Bureau of Investigation of its classified Venona file. The family lived an itinerant life, much of it in New York, following his father's indifferent career in journalism and advertising. In his father deserted the family, leaving the fate of the children in his mother's hands.

Moynihan's father, an advertising copywriter for RKO Pictures, left home never to see his family again. Used to a middle-class existence, his mother and her three children disappeared from their life in the New York City suburbs and into shabby apartments, including one above a bar in the rough Hell's Kitchen area of New York. Moynihan's mother supported the family through welfare until she was able to get back on her feet.

She married again briefly to an older man who provided temporary financial security and a move back to the suburbs. Nevertheless, Moynihan's adolescence was far from stable, moving around each time his mother took a new job. A strong-willed, pragmatic woman, Moynihan's mother poured her life into her children's educations. His yearbook predicted that he would grow up to be "cussing out the labor unions and durn radicals.

Moynihan insisted college was a fluke for him, taking the entrance exam only to prove he was "as smart as I thought I was. The Navy sent Moynihan to continue his education at Tufts in Medford, Massachusetts, where he earned a bachelor's and master's degree. His interests were extremely broad, including urban politics, international labor, auto safety, and race relations.

Although he started doctoral work at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy soon after earning his master's degree inhe did not graduate until But the s were well spent. Three years in England, including a one-year Fulbright at the London School of Economics at age 33, broadened him greatly, as did campaigns for New York's mayoral and gubernatorial candidates.

He also chose a career in academe which took him to Syracuse, Wesleyan, and finally Harvard. When Moynihan returned to the U. As a volunteer in Robert Wagner's mayoral campaign, he learned he was enjoying politics and went on to work on Averell Harriman's race for governor. It was here where he met Elizabeth Brennan, bursting into her room one night soon after they met and declaring, "You are going to marry me," before passing out on her floor.

They married in She became her husband's chief advisor and handler, running his Senate campaigns. By the time of the Kennedy-Nixon campaign ofMoynihan had wide contacts and held iconoclastic but insightful opinions on many subjects. His association with urban politics and strong sympathies for the poor, whose plight he knew firsthand, impressed Kennedy's advisers and brought him appointment as assistant to Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg.

Far removed from President Kennedy's inner circle, Moynihan was nevertheless " New Frontier " material. He soon made powerful friends among the dynamic men who surrounded the young president. He moved to assistant secretary of labor in Kennedy's assassination that November affected him deeply, diverting his loyalties to Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, who won a Senate seat from New York in Moynihan served President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society administration loyally and effectively but did not enjoy the fullest confidence of Johnson's inner circle.

In as an assistant secretary in the Labor Department of President Johnson's cabinet, Moynihan wrote a report entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, which careened him to the lowest point in his career. In the report he warned that rising illegitimacy rates and a "tangle of pathology" threatened the stability of African American families and put at risk the income and equality gains African Americans had achieved through the Civil Rights Movement.

Instead of receiving recognition for his perceived keen insight, he was widely criticized by African Americans and liberals as a racist. A popular work of scholarship called Beyond the Melting Pot brought him national attention even though his co-author, Nathan Glazer, wrote most of the work. Moynihan's principal but not sole contribution was the chapter on New York's Irish.

He moved in and out of government, and unsuccessfully sought the New York City Council presidential nomination. Moynihan's commitment to the Democratic party was deeply rooted in his family. Yet it did not prevent him from serving the Nixon administration in an unusual and extremely influential way. President-elect Nixon, finding Moynihan's thinking "refreshing and stimulating" as he later recounted in his Memoirsnamed him head of the newly created Urban Affairs Council.

Moreover, Moynihan became a presidential mentor who could always be relied upon to speak his mind candidly. He even provided reading lists for Nixon's edification. The president accepted his advice on many matters, but was especially sympathetic to him as a fellow "outsider" whose humble origins he shared. One major incident that proved embarrassing to the administration consisted of an observation made by Moynihan that African American families might benefit from being left alone a bit to work out their own destinies.

This apparently innocent possibility was described by Moynihan as "benign neglect," and the press and some segments of the public inferred from it a diminished ardor for civil rightswhich the administration—rightly or wrongly—had never been noted for previously. Notwithstanding this flap, Nixon retained complete confidence in Moynihan, viewing his chief domestic adviser as an invaluable public servant.

After his reelection, Nixon offered Moynihan the post of ambassador to India, a selection demonstrating Moynihan's Chaucerian adaptability and Nixon's perspicacity in recognizing it. He served for two years under both the Nixon and Ford administrations, receiving an appointment in by President Ford as the nation's permanent representative to the United Nations.

In this latter capacity he became a powerful voice of post-Vietnam American moralism, condemning Soviet obstructionism and imperialism and excoriating the venality of many Third World countries. He refused, as he once put it, to apologize for his fallible nation, challenging his listeners to "find its equal. In he was elected to the United States Senate and served New York in this capacity for the next decade and a half, being reelected in and Although he can put his Johnson report and Nixon memo behind him, his past follows him.

During a recent campaign the Reverend Al Sharptonan African American protestor, made his own run for Senate and tried to remind voters of the latter incidents. Known for his quirkiness Elise O'Shaughnessy's profile of him in Vanity Fair described his gestures and speech patterns as belonging to someone with "intellectual Tourette's syndrome"Moynihan's oddity, nevertheless, has worked for him.

Daniel p moynihan biography

Recognized for his ability to recall and process voluminous amounts of information and popularize the ideas of others than for facilitating his own scholarship or original thinking, Moynihan has significantly contributed to the Senate. His popularity among voters he's been elected for four terms and served in the cabinets or sub-cabinets of four presidents and his firm belief that a government's purpose is to promote goodness in society earned him the chair of the Finance Committee when Lloyd Bentsen left to become head of the Treasury Department.

Although he also has a reputation for making his own government nervous he criticized President Clinton's health-care bills; battled for better welfare reform—his pet issue—calling Clinton's ideas "boob bait for the Bubbas;" and suggested that a special prosecutor ought to look into the controversial Whitewater affairmost people realize that his candid personality contributes to the forward motion of government.

Wherever he traveled in government or academic life, Moynihan brought his wit and capacity for innovative thinking. His brief assignment to the United Nations produced A Dangerous Place, a zesty account of America's rendezvous with world government. On the Law of Nations briefly but trenchantly continues the subject of the nation's efforts to carve its place in world history.

Counting our Blessings, dedicated to his colleague Nathan Glazer, ranges far and wide, but never very far from his first loves: the family, the needy, and those deprived of participating in the dream by racial or ethnic factors. He is, as Time reporter Hugh Sidey stated, "the Senate's most eccentric, brilliant and fearless purveyor of uncomfortable truth.

He has probably shaped as much national, social, and economic policy … as any other person. Douglas Schoen's Pat is a clear and sympathetic account of the senator's life and career. Richard Nixon's R. Moynihan's many books give insight into his ideas and hopes for America and its society. Periodical references can be located in "The Professor and the Lb.

Despite the fact that he is commonly associated with the northeastern United StatesMoynihan was actually born in Oklahoma, the first of three children of John Henry Moynihan, a journalist and advertising copywriter for RKO Pictures, and Margaret Ann Phipps, a homemaker. The family made its way to New York City when Moynihan was still a small child, and by Moynihan was living in a middle-class suburb.

In that year, however, Moynihan's father deserted the family. Suddenly in poverty, the family drifted from one bad neighborhood to another, living for a time above a bar in Hell's Kitchen, one of the seedier neighborhoods in midtown Manhattan. A year later he joined the U. Naval Reserve and enrolled in the navy's V daniel p moynihan biography at Middlebury College in Vermont, where he underwent officer training.

The navy then sent him to Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, where he earned four degrees: a bachelor of naval sciencea bachelor of artscum laudea master of artsand a Ph. Though he began work on the latter degree intwo years after leaving the navy, Moynihan did not actually earn his doctorate until In the meantime, Moynihan spent two years — at the London School of Economics and Political Science on a Fulbright scholarship; gained his first practical political experience by volunteering in the New York mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns of Robert Wagner and Averell Harriman, respectively, in ; and, on 29 Maymarried the painter and sculptor Elizabeth Brennan.

Brennan, with whom he had three children, later served as his adviser during his campaigns for the U. After serving the city and state of New York in various capacities during the late s, Moynihan went to Washington, D. Kennedyin He served in the office of the secretary of labor from that year untilfirst as special assistant — to Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg ; then as executive assistant — to Goldberg and W.

Willard Wirtz, who became the new secretary in ; and, finally, as Wirtz's assistant secretary of labor for policy planning and research — Moynihan's own experience with poverty gave him a deep sense of compassion for the poor, while his Irish Catholic background instilled in him an awareness of ethnicity and ethnic marginalization not common among most Americans of white western European extraction.

Furthermore, his father's absence had given him firsthand experience with the connection between poverty and the breakdown of the family. These concerns motivated not only his work with the labor department but also his writing as a scholar on policy issues. A prolific author with more than two dozen books to his name by the beginning of the twenty-first century, Moynihan first established a reputation as a writer and commentator in the s.

One of these books, The Negro Family, would bring upon Moynihan a firestorm of disapprobation that constituted the greatest crisis of his career. The book was actually a Department of Labor pamphlet published at a time when the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson was poised to launch the " Great Society ," a set of government programs by which Johnson intended to declare "war on poverty.