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Video of this event will be livestreamed online at http://www.american.com/watch/aei-livestream
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) was one of the most accomplished and admired statesmen of the past half century, serving in senior positions in the Kennedy, Johnson,
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Nixon, and Ford administrations, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and India, and as U.S. senator from New York for twenty-four years. His years in Richard Nixon's White House (1969-71) are receiving increased attention this year with the release of his papers by the National Archives-Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and the publication of Steven R. Weisman's Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary. At this event, one of a series of Nixon Legacy Forums sponsored by the Richard Nixon Foundation, four members of Mr. Moynihan's White House staff will discuss his relations with Nixon and their collaborations on welfare reform, education policy, and other issues. Mr. Weisman will moderate the session.
GEOFFREY C. SHEPARD, Richard Nixon Foundation
WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 10, 2010--Four members of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's staff in the Nixon White House (1969-71) discussed Moynihan's ideas, his approach to policy and politics, and his working relationship with President Nixon at an American Enterprise Institute event sponsored by the Richard Nixon Foundation and the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Recurrent themes were Moynihan's commitment to reform, his use of social science research to inform policymaking, his respect for the presidency, his practical and bipartisan manner, and his Irish wit. David S. Ferriero, archivist of the United States, and Geoffrey C. Shepard of the Nixon Foundation introduced the session by discussing Moynihan's special relationships with the National Archives and with President Nixon. Panel moderator Steven Weisman, editor of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary (2010), noted that Moynihan had provided the National Archives with the largest collection of manuscripts from a single individual in U.S. history--more than 3,700 boxes. In the archival research for his letters collection, Weisman discovered early documents concerning Moynihan's troubled family background; although Moynihan evidently never spoke of these troubles as an adult, Weisman became convinced that they were the source of Moynihan's lifelong concern with family stability and policies to promote it. Christopher DeMuth opened the panel discussion by describing the tumultuous, violent year of 1968 that forged the Nixon-Moynihan alliance: the two were united by a desire to overcome the angry divisions of that time, and also by their practical, results-oriented approach to policymaking, exemplified by their combining the LBJ Model Cities program with conservative "revenue sharing" ideas to produce a new and better program. Stephen Hess described the Nixon-Moynihan collaboration in detail, emphasizing Moynihan's use of White House procedures (and his wonderful sense of humor), and Nixon's desire for bold initiatives, as the keys to Nixon's landmark proposal of the Family Assistance Plan in 1969; Hess also quoted Nixon's recollections of the ravages of the Depression on families in the small town where he was raised, and, citing Weisman's remarks, suggested that both men's boyhood experiences had made it natural for them to work together on policies to strengthen the American family. John Price remembered Moynihan's respectful, practical, and flexible approach to bipartisan policymaking, his conviviality, and his efforts to promote government sponsorship of social science research and to make greater use of that research in policy debate and decision making. Chester E. Finn Jr. discussed Moynihan's use of the 1966 Coleman Report on the determinants of school performance and showed how Nixon attempted to change the debate on education policy from resource inputs to performance outputs--thirty years before George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative and the current focus on school performance standards and results-oriented education policy.
--KERIANN HOPKINS
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) served in the Richard Nixon White House from January 1969 to January 1971, first as assistant to the president for urban affairs and executive secretary of the Council for Urban Affairs, later as counsellor to the president with Cabinet rank. He had previously been assistant U.S. secretary of labor for policy planning and research in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and he was later U.S. ambassador to India in the Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations and U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations in the Ford administration--the only individual to hold senior posts in four administrations of both political parties. Mr. Moynihan was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 1976 and reelected three times, retiring at the end of 2000; during his Senate years he was chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Finance Committee. He wrote nineteen books and an enormous number of essays; in the course of his academic career he was professor of government and of education at Harvard University, director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, and faculty member at Wesleyan University and at Syracuse University. Among his innumerable scholarly and public service awards, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 2000. He was a member of AEI's Council of Academic Advisers from 2001 to 2003. AEI's Michael Barone, writing in the Almanac of American Politics, described Mr. Moynihan as "the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson."
Speaker biographies
David S. Ferriero is the tenth archivist of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2009. Previously, he was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL), where he integrated the NYPL's four research libraries and eighty-seven branch libraries and developed its digital collection and web site. Following service in the U.S. Navy, where he was a medical corpsman in Vietnam, Mr. Ferriero spent thirty-one years with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries, rising to associate director for public services and acting codirector of libraries. Between MIT and NYPL, he was university librarian of Duke University for eight years.
Steven R. Weisman is editorial director and public policy fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and editor of the widely acclaimed Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary (PublicAffairs, 2010). During his forty years at the New York Times (1968-2008), he was chief international economics correspondent, a member of the editorial board, chief diplomatic correspondent, deputy foreign editor, bureau chief in Tokyo and in New Delhi, and senior White House correspondent during President Ronald Reagan's first term. He has received numerous journalism awards.
Christopher DeMuth was staff assistant to the president from 1969 to 1970, where he worked for Pat Moynihan on the Model Cities and related programs. He subsequently practiced law and economic consulting, taught at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, and held posts in the Ronald Reagan administration dealing with regulatory policy. He was president of AEI from 1986 to 2008 and is now D.C. Searle senior fellow at AEI.
Stephen Hess was deputy assistant to the president in 1969, serving as chief of staff to Pat Moynihan and the Council for Urban Affairs. He subsequently served in the Nixon administration as national chairman of the White House Conference on Children and Youth from 1969 to 1971. In 1972 he joined the Brookings Institution, where he is now senior fellow emeritus. Mr. Hess has also been a fellow of the Faculty of Government at Harvard University, U.S. representative to the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO General Conference, and distinguished research professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University (2004-2009). Later this month, Mr. Hess will publish his twentieth book, American Political Cartoons: The Evolution of a National Identity, 1754-2010 (Transaction Publishers, forthcoming 2010, with Sandy Northrop); his other books include America's Political Dynasties (Transaction Publishers, 1997) and Organizing the Presidency (Brookings Institution Press, 2002, 3rd ed.).
John R. Price was counsel to Pat Moynihan in 1969 and in December of that year succeeded him as executive secretary of the Council for Urban Affairs and became special assistant to the president. He was Pat Moynihan's key staff person on welfare reform, hunger and nutrition, and urban growth policy, and he also focused on health care and health insurance policy. Mr. Price returned to New York in 1971 and worked in finance for thirty years; he is currently president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh. He was a Rhodes Scholar and founding chairman of Americans for Oxford and is a life trustee of Grinnell College.
Chester E. "Checker" Finn Jr. was staff assistant to the president from 1969 to 1970, working for Pat Moynihan on education policy. He had previously been a doctoral student of Pat's at Harvard University and later worked for him in New Delhi and in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Finn has since been a professor at Vanderbilt University, assistant U.S. secretary of education for research and improvement, and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, Hudson Institute, and Manhattan Institute. He is now president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
