I loved Moynihan. That's really upsetting. The NYT has yet to put a story up, just a "news alert" at the top of the page.
My favorite Moynihan quote I've quoted this here before: "Am I embarrassed to speak for a less-than-perfect democracy?" asked former Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan. His answer: "Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do."
A last of a dying breed. Moynihan was a principled man who put the good of the nation ahead of his own personal ambitions. As a conservative, I can say that there are few Democrats that I admire. However, sadly, two of those men, Moynihan and Wellstone, have died in recent months and our Republic is the worse off for it.
How many of you have met him face to face? He was a MASTER politician, but he could be a jackass to the "little people". I met him a number of times and he was either A). drunk of his ass or B). treating people like shit. I met him a total of 9 times and 8 out of the 9 he was an ass. The other time he was actually decent to people. Will I miss him, hell no. But I have to admit that he was good at what he did. He was one hell of a politician.
Elaborate how... you want details? like the time he called an anchorwoman at a local television station a bitch to her face because he didn't feel like doing a pre-arranged interview. How about the time he nearly fell flat on his face at a Democratic fundraiser for the Broome County Demcrats because he drank WAY to much. There are lots of stories about him. I'm not denying he wasn't a good politician, because like I said he was a master politician.
Brilliant people often have a history of being an a$$ outside of their arena, e.g., Diego, Larry Byrd, Magic, et al...
Also, I by no means mean to insinuate that he's the only politician like that. I worked in the Senate for a year and saw PLENTY of Senators who fit the bill.
Let him rest in peace. From a secondhand source who met him in DC while interning for Richard Lugar..... "Moynihan, is revered by all, Conservatives, Liberals, Democrats, Republicans, as the the smartest man in D.C." Rest in Peace
Same thing happens to businessmen, I've noticed. That said, our nation has lost one of the few voices of reason left today.
There are few true statesmen left in our society. One fewer today. And yes, "greatness" often goes hand-in-hand with hubris and ego. I expect great people to be great at what they do, not saintly. I too, have felt the sharp tounge of the high and mighty... some of them "higher" than others, if you catch my meaning. RIP Daniel.
"The Soviet Union is a seriously troubled, even sick society. The indices of economic stagnation and even decline are extraordinary. The indices of social disorder — social pathology is not too strong a term — are even more so. The defining event of the decade might well be the breakup of the Soviet empire." Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the US Senate, January 1980.
He's also responsible, indirectly, for a wave of scholarship in African American History after his 1965 report The Negro Family: the Case for National Action called black families "a tangle of pathology" because they were predominantly matriarchal. A good deal of African American History for the next decade constituted a direct attack on Moynihan's report.