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A carregar... Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionarypor Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. You can often get to know someone better through their correspondence than through a biography. This is the case with Moynihan. I have never read a biography of him (if indeed there are any), but I feel that I learned a lot about him from his letters. He was one of the leading American public intellectuals, and his letters show why. But, unfortunately, this type of collection may become increasingly rare in the future. Who writers letters anymore? Perhaps in the future we will see the collected emails and text messages of public figures. I'll take letters any day. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
When Daniel Patrick Moynihan died in 2003 the Economist described him as "a philosopher-politician-diplomat who two centuries earlier would not have been out of place among the Founding Fathers." Though Moynihan never wrote an autobiography, he was a gifted author and voluminous correspondent, and in this selection from his letters Steven Weisman has compiled a vivid portrait of Moynihan's life, in the senator's own words. Before his four terms as Senator from New York, Moynihan served in key positions under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. His letters offer an extraordinary window into particular moments in history, from his feelings of loss at JFK's assassination, to his passionate pleas to Nixon not to make Vietnam a Nixon war, to his frustrations over healthcare and welfare reform during the Clinton era. This book showcases the unbridled range of Moynihan's intellect and interests, his appreciation for his constituents, his renowned wit, and his warmth even for those with whom he profoundly disagreed. Its publication is a significant literary event. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)973.92092History and Geography North America United States 1901- Eisenhower Through Clinton Administrations BiographyClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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If that is all the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said or did he would be my hero for life.
But he said and wrote much more and we can thank former editor and journalist Steven R. Weissman for this excellent sampling from Moynihan’s mountain of letters.
Editorialists excoriated Moynihan at the end of his career as having accomplished little as a politician. He wrote many books. He taught at Harvard, and MIT, and Syracuse. Before becoming a politician himself he served four American presidents in succession starting as one of the frontiersmen in John F. Kennedy’s administration.
To his critics he appeared to switch sides from being a liberal Democrat to a conservative for Richard Nixon. He was called a neocon and hated the term.
In his social science research he was labelled a racist by African American scholars for identifying problems in the nuclear family unit as one source of poverty for inner-city blacks.
But the story is more nuanced.
He fought in Nixon’s cabinet for a Guaranteed Annual Income, something Nixon approved of but never came to pass.
He wrote and lobbied for family support payments, something Republican conservatives forced President Clinton to back down on.
He detested the CIA and complained endlessly about secrecy in government. If the CIA was so good, he asked, why didn’t they predict the fall of the Soviet. Union, something he was expecting for a decade or longer.
He was unfairly pinned for gunning down Hilary Clinton’s health reform while he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, but even Clinton herself came to acknowledge that she should have listened to him more closely.
Reading the letters of a politician in a democracy could be as dull as watching paint dry, but when you see up close how hard it is, and how poorly compensated these wretches are, you realize all the more how fragile democracy is and must be to work. ( )