Daniel Patrick Moynihan, RIP
In his first volume of The Age of Reagan, covering the years 1964-1980, author Steven Hayward ingeniously uses Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a kind of Greek chorus to comment on the significant events of the era. Moynihan seemingly had a connection to all of them, and certainly had things of interest to say about all of them.
Steve is therefore the ideal elegist of Senator Moynihan's life on the occasion of his death. Steve notes that "[F]ew could claim a more prescient vision. He predicted back in 1965 that the increase of single-mother households and illegitimacy would bring social disaster in our cities. He told Richard Nixon in 1969 that women’s rights would be the emerging issue of the 1970s. He was one of only two people—the other was Ronald Reagan—who predicted in the early 1980s that the Soviet Union was headed the way of the Dodo bird. 'The defining event of the decade,' he wrote in 1980, 'might well be the breakup of the Soviet Union.'"
No Left Turns has Steve's fine piece: "Pat Moynihan, RIP."
