Daniel P. Moynihan: “An American Visionary”

I recently came across an interesting book “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary“, edited by Steven Weisman (PublicAffairs; 671 pages; $35). I came to know Moynihan (better known as “Pat”) as a young journalist when he was the U.S. ambassador in India in the early 1970s. Pat was described as “the nation’s best thinker among politicians since Lincoln, and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson”.

Pat served four presidents—John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford—as adviser, speechwriter and ambassador, in Delhi and at the United Nations. He represented New York for 24 years in the United States Senate. When he retired, one scholar said he brought to that job “luminous intellect, personal conviction, deep historical knowledge, the eye of an artist and the pen of an angel, and above all, an incorruptible devotion to the common good”, states The Economist while reviewing the book.

Now a New York Times journalist, Steven Weisman has edited a 671-page collection of Pat’s letters, diary entries, reports to his New York constituents (addressing them as “Dear New Yorker”) and what amount to state papers written for his four presidents. Almost every page is enlivened by a sharply minted phrase, an enchanting vignette, a joke or a shrewd inversion of the conventional wisdom. More here…

Another scholar recalls: “Soon after Pat Moynihan had been appointed Ambassador to India by President Nixon, he learned that a vast sum of Indian rupees had accumulated in a US government account from the sale of American wheat to India. These ‘PB 484′ fund, as they were called, could not be exchanged for dollars, but they could be used to purchase business-class air tickets. So Pat instituted what he called the ‘Star Series’ through which the State Department would buy tickets for his friends willing to give lectures in India. I qualified.” More here…

Pat began his life as a shoeshine boy. An old interview brings out a wonderful profile of the man. See here…