Moynihan (7/10)

by Tony Medley

runtime 105 minutes

Although I disagreed with him, mostly, I always liked Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. And the main reason I liked him was, unlike almost all the cowardly politicians throughout my lifetime, he would answer questions yes or no. He was the best political interviewee because he wasn’t afraid to admit to his positions regardless of how his admissions might be received by the population as a whole.

Whenever I see these craven politicians dance around an answer, I think of Moynihan, and how he would hear the tough question and smile and say, “yes” or “no.” I loved it even when I disagreed with his position.

Moynihan was right on a lot of things. For instance, in 1981, at the beginning of the successful Reagan effort to defeat the Soviet Union without a shot being fired, Moynihan said that the biggest issue facing us at that time was how to deal with the “disintegration” of the Soviet Empire, because that was what was going to happen.

Much earlier, he wrote the Moynihan Report, which stated, that “At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric negro society is the deterioration of the negro family.” He reported, alarmingly, that by 1960 24% of negro families were headed by single parents, 8 times greater than for white families. He told President Johnson that “the richest inheritance any child can have is a stable, loving, disciplined family life.” Today fully 2/3 of black families are headed by a single parent (almost always a mother). In 2016, 1/3 of families headed by a single parent were in poverty, vs. only 7% of two-parent families. So even though he was excoriated by black “leaders” he was on the right track, obviously; in fact, way ahead of the field.

While most people probably think that Moynihan was to the manor born (I certainly did), he actually had a hardscrabble upbringing (with a single mother!) and no money. But his way of speaking and his erudition belied this.

His mother, who owned and operated a bar, once told one of his friends, “I’m so sorry that a boy like you is a friend of Pat’s,” implying that Pat was a bad person. But Pat left school at Tufts for two months to run the bar for his mother.

This is an interesting documentary on a fascinating man.