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BOOK REVIEW
Friend of India, friend
of the world
The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan -
A Biography, by Godfrey Hodgson
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
 At
a recent Harvard commencement address, former US Senator Daniel
Patrick Moynihan reminded his audience that "as the United
States reacts to the mass murder of September 11, and prepares
for more, it would do well to consider how much terror India
endured in the second half of the last century".
That a Democratic politician would speak so directly against the
grain of conventional Western cliches about the
India-Pakistan-China triangle is testament to the deep
intellect, value system, and sense of propriety for which
Moynihan is justly famous on Capitol Hill and at the Maxwell
School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where he is now
emeritus professor.
Having heard Moynihan at various podium lectures on a range of
public policy subjects, including South Asia, I cannot but help
imagine how much more positive America's global image would be
if this great seer's opinions were implemented. Godfrey
Hodgson's semi-authorized biography of Moynihan captures the
essence of this "Ideas Man" of US politics, whose rectitude,
decency, wisdom and commitment to good causes have won the
hearts of New Yorkers, Indians and people around the world.
Shoeshine boy
Moynihan was born in 1927 to second-generation Irish Catholic
immigrants who moved from Indiana to New York. His comfortable
middle-class upbringing came tumbling down when his gambling
father abandoned his mother in 1937, leading to a loss of both
income and status for the family. Moynihan shined shoes in Times
Square not just for pocket money but to buy essential provisions
which his mother could not provide with the meager welfare
rations.
At high school in East Harlem, Moynihan was influenced by
Mensheviks like Kerensky and also Catholic anti-communists, a
mixture of extreme left and right that would later lead to his
lifelong ideological ambivalence. To make up for school dues,
Moynihan worked on the New York piers as a stevedore, earning 78
cents an hour. In 1944, Moynihan joined the US Navy, opening the
way to recouping the opportunities lost when his father deserted
the family.
Political baptism
The naval assignment took Moynihan to Tufts University and then
to the London School of Economics as a Fulbright Scholar.
Commingling with Social Democrats of the British Labour Party,
Moynihan's anti-communism was confirmed and strengthened. Even
the radical LSE of the 1950s could not convert him into
"anything but a New York Democrat who had some friends and who
worked on the docks and drank beer after work". (p.46).
A chance encounter on the way back to America led to Moynihan
working for the Robert Wagner Democratic campaign for the
mayoralty of New York City. His brilliant journalistic skills
soon took him to writing the campaign speeches of Averell
Harriman for the New York state governorship. So enjoyable was
Moynihan's stint with Harriman that he claimed, "I am carrying
the briefcase, literally, of one of the central world figures of
the mid-20th century." (p.53). It was on the Harriman campaign
that he met Elizabeth Brennan and got married by virtue of being
"the funniest man she knew".
Moynihan's first serious writing assignment came at the end of
the Harriman administration in 1959, when the Maxwell School of
Syracuse commissioned him to write a history of his boss'
achievements in the state. With a flair for what Charles Blitzer
called "uncanny ability to fix upon issues that are not yet
widely noticed", Moynihan also began contributing hard-hitting
articles to The Public Interest on a range of topics from
automobile safety on American highways to organized crime and
the effeteness of federal intelligence. This phase marked the
rise of a new star who would be known for restless skepticism of
the claims of powerful interest groups and "an enduring concern
for the American city and its people". (p.65)
In Beyond the Melting Pot, Moynihan shattered the myth
about New York City being a fish bowl in which individual
cultures are subsumed, and predicted, "principal ethnic groups
of New York will be seen maintaining a distinct identity, albeit
a changing one from one generation to the other". (p.68)
Mr Ideas
After a limited role in the 1960 Kennedy presidential campaign,
Moynihan was inducted into the US Department of Labor. J Edgar
Hoover, the super-powerful FBI chief, tried blocking Moynihan's
appointment for his stinging critiques of how the FBI avoided
fighting organized crime, but the crisis passed. Assistant
Secretary Moynihan, for the first time in life, felt financially
secure.
Moynihan's personal relation with the Kennedys was not very
intimate, although many Irish Catholics and "New Frontier"
Democrats idolized JFK. One of Moynihan's earliest jobs was to
develop a plan to stem "urban decay" and redevelop Pennsylvania
Avenue in Washington DC, tasks that invigorated his visceral
interest in architecture. Under the aegis of Kennedy's war on
poverty, Moynihan forcefully argued that what the poor needed
most was not "community action" or a "domestic Peace Corps", but
jobs and money.
After Kennedy's assassination (of which Moynihan said, famously,
"we'll laugh again, but we'll never be young again"), Moynihan
continued arguing on these lines as a bureaucrat in the Lyndon
Johnson government. LBJ's "Great Society" could be brought
about, Moynihan said, by giving the poor work and reducing
unemployment. In 1964, he initiated ground-breaking research on
black unemployment and the breakdown of the African American
family and concluded that exploitation, discrimination, poverty
and unemployment have "profoundly weakened the Negro family
structure".
Later christened the "Moynihan Report", the study courageously
advocated affirmative action long before it became a given in
American domestic policy. So epochal were Moynihan's
recommendations that they figured verbatim in LBJ's landmark
Howard University "Equality of Outcome" speech in 1965.
But accusations that Moynihan was a "Kennedy man" and that his
report on race problems could be politically dangerous ended in
his resignation and move to Wesleyan and Harvard universities as
a faculty member. At Harvard, Moynihan reflected on why the war
on poverty failed and slowly developed wariness about
governmental actions in the welfare area. LBJ's dream of "the
Negro as an equal human being rather than a separate but equal
human being" failed due to, inter alia, the sabotage of liberal
left Democrats. Moynihan would never forget this skulduggery of
so-called progressives.
Around this time of political exile, Moynihan began questioning
America's desire to export its political system worldwide at a
time when democratic values were not secure at home and when "we
have not been able to get rid of racism". (p.137)
Working for Nixon
In 1968, Moynihan, the embittered Democrat, crossed over into
the Republican White House after Richard Nixon promised to
tackle unemployment as the key to social stability. It was a
risky move that raised eyebrows and whispers of opportunism, but
to Moynihan, commitment to equality was more important than
labels like Democrat or Republican. His relations with Nixon
were "excellent indeed", by self-admission, and it was Moynihan
who took the bold measure of writing to Nixon telling him
Vietnam was "a disastrous mistake" and that "we can never win
such a war".
In a "General Assessment" sent to the president, Moynihan also
called for a period of "benign neglect" on the rhetoric of
racial equality and genuine progress toward egalitarian society.
He fought bitterly against intramural rivals and spoke boldly
about a family assistance plan for the poor to raise their
standard of living. This eventually cost him his job, another
bitter exit which he chose to blame not on Nixon or
conservatives, but on fellow liberals who changed spots like
chameleons.
Taking India seriously
Following a brief stint as US Public Delegate to the UN,
Moynihan was sent to Delhi as ambassador in 1973. As a keen
observer of world events, Moynihan had earlier "totally
disagreed with Kissinger's analysis" of the 1971 Bangladesh war,
asking "what the hell are we doing backing a military regime
(Pakistan) and a losing one at that?" (p.199)
On speculation that Indira Gandhi was a communist, Moynihan
defended her, "She had her leftist days at Oxford, but who did
not?" On her allegations of covert CIA plots, he was frank
enough to admit, "They know we have done such things in India."
Ambassador Moynihan grumbled incessantly in diplomatic mail that
American Congress and administrations "were eerily indifferent
to so large and important a country as India" and that "the
image of India as a land of fakirs and oxcarts was too deeply
embedded in Washington".
As far as he was concerned, "there is an American interest in
the economic success of India, a great nation which will be
greater still". (p.212) Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's
attitude of "screw India, who needs it?" and his age-old
American preference for China over India seemed quixotic to
Moynihan. It reflected a deeper philosophical flaw in American
thinking that the world can be either Western or communist but
not non-aligned. Since the advent of the Cold War, "we saw newly
independent countries as candidates for the American tradition
or the Russian, not perceiving that they already had a tradition
of their own". (p.218)
Ambassador to the UN
Moynihan brought "unfeigned fervor and passionate commitment" to
his next posting as US ambassador to the UN under Gerald Ford.
His outspokenness at the Security Council, especially when
racist and dictatorial regimes like Idi Amin's Uganda or Abdul
Aziz Bouteflika's Algeria accused Israel of racism, won public
and media encomiums. "We are not about to be lectured by police
states on the processes of electoral democracy," he inveighed on
one occasion.
At the same time, he disagreed with Kissinger's determination to
block the admission of North Vietnam into the General Assembly,
later culminating in a bitter personal feud and press rumors
that "Kissinger was jealous of Moynihan's celebrity". (p.242) On
Angola, Moynihan confronted Ford that he was troubled by CIA
covert actions and refused to believe the president's assurance
that "we are winning there".
New York's greatest senator
Moynihan's backing of Scoop Jackson for the Democratic
presidential primary failed to stop Jimmy Carter in 1977, but
opened the way for his own senatorial career in New York. During
a hard-fought election against Bella Abzug, the New York Times
recommended Moynihan in glowing terms: "In any discussion of our
nation's social distress or international posture, the mind and
voice of Pat Moynihan promise unique contributions." Borrowing
desperately to finance his campaign against a much richer rival,
Moynihan triumphed and embarked on a career that would cover him
with glory.
Despite the busy schedule as New York senator, Moynihan squeezed
out time to write for Newsweek, predicting in 1979 that the USSR
might not outlast the 20th century. He also wrote against IRA
violence in Northern Ireland and appealed to Irish Americans not
to fund murderousness in the name of religion. Moynihan
successfully sponsored bills increasing federal spending for New
York and "setting out to teach people that New York was home to
some of the poorest people and the hardest pressed communities".
(p.288)
Cutting social spending for defense expenditure was particularly
bad for New York state, a conviction that slowly drove Moynihan
into caustic criticism of both Carter and Reagan
administrations. Reagan's tax cuts and reckless spending on the
military were destroying half a century's worth of government
commitment to improve "health, education and welfare of our
people". It was a credit to his performance in office that
Moynihan's re-election in 1982 came about by the biggest margin
in New York state electoral history.
During his second term, Moynihan earned a sobriquet as the
"sharpest Reagan critic", lambasting US clandestine and military
activities in Nicaragua and El Salvador and openly warning
William J Casey, the CIA chief, "I don't like this. I don't like
it one bit from the president or you." (p.307)
Upon the US invasion of Grenada (1983), Moynihan wrote in "The
Law of Nations" that it was "clearly a violation of the UN
Charter" and expressed dismay at how
international law or the international community mattered little in Washington. Jeane Kirkpatrick's assertion that "legalistic approaches" could
not deal with "communist aggression" was equally specious to a
prophet who had realized that the USSR's strength and menace
were being overestimated. In words that would be prescient,
Moynihan chided Reagan, "Anti-communism should not be taken to
the point of abandoning common sense." (p.312)
On the domestic front, Moynihan was a leading mover of the 1986
tax reform bill which dismantled tax shelters for oil, mining
and banking interests and restored fairness and integrity to the
fiscal system. His image as champion of the laity against
cartels and special interest lobbies was so resounding that the
1988 re-election broke all previous records for margin of
victory in any state.
The third term witnessed Moynihan coining the famous conceptual
phrase "defining deviancy down", and his timely memo to
President Bill Clinton asking him to act in Bosnia before it was
too late "to come to terms with the forces of hate in the
world". (p.332) The Moynihan bill on mass transit punctured, to
an extent, the automobile industry's vested interest by raising
gasoline prices and persuading residents of bigger cities to use
public transport. Moynihan also inveigled his loathing for
handguns and ammunition into Clinton's ambitious healthcare
reform by raising taxes on weapons, as well as tobacco and
alcohol, to defray state expenditure on universalizing health
insurance.
Retiring from the ring
By the time of his fourth term, Moynihan "had become a legend, a
monument, a Grand Old Man". (p.368) He denounced the new welfare
bill flavored with Newt Gingrich's conservatism as "fashioning
our own coffin". Cuts in welfare spending would put 3.5 million
poor children "to the sword by 2001".
In his position as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
Moynihan called for freedom of information against a "culture of
secrecy" that had done great damage to policy making. Secrecy
"served not to protect national security, but the careers and
reputations of civil servants and politicians" and prolonged a
"Cold War mentality". (p.389) At the ripe old age of 70,
Moynihan was asking the younger generation to move in sync with
the times!
On the subject of NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe, he
cautioned against encouraging the feeling that "the West was
encroaching and encircling Russia". On Clinton's impeachment
proceedings, Moynihan made one last superlative intervention
before bowing out by agreeing to censure but not impeach the
president because "high crimes and misdemeanors", as per the US
constitution, had to be "offenses against the United States",
while Clinton's Lewinksy affair was only a "low crime".
Long after Moynihan is gone, he will be remembered by Americans,
Indians and many others for what Hodgson says was "an
incorruptible devotion to the common good". (p.404) In a
Kissingerian America of machtpolitik and viciousness, it will be
remembered that a gentleman from New York called Daniel Patrick
Moynihan stood as a paladin for uprightness and decency.
The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan - A
Biography, by Godfrey Hodgson, Houghton Mifflin Co, 2000.
ISBN 0395860423. Price US$38, 452 pages.
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