Titles Are Hard

The impetus for this conference was the shared interest in and affinity for Daniel Patrick Moynihan that was nurtured in your humble conveners by our D.Phil. supervisor, Gareth Davies. So this is a tribute of sorts. However, it could not have gone ahead if Moynihan was not such a useful prism through which to view numerous developments in the public life of the United States in the second half of the twentieth century.

A onetime shoeshine boy and stevedore, Moynihan was an advisor to the governor of New York, an official in four successive presidential administrations, a Harvard professor, ambassador to India and to the U.N., and senator from New York. He was a Kennedy delegate to the 1960 Democratic Convention and was succeeded in the Senate by Hillary Clinton. He co-wrote Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 commencement address at Howard University, possibly the boldest rhetorical commitment to African-American civil rights ever made by a president; played a crucial role in the rejuvenation of Pennsylvania Avenue; and, as ambassador and plenipotentiary, wrote a cheque for $2.1 billion to the Indian government, still the largest cheque ever written.  

He published books on race, ethnicity, crime, poverty, the guaranteed income, the welfare state, politics, governance, the family, government secrecy, and diplomacy, and produced articles on countless other subjects. Famously, he was described by Michael Barone as ‘the nation’s best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson.’ The range of his experiences and interests is staggering and we hope that, by using him as a central figure, this conference will produce new perspectives on recent U.S. history.

In the early stages of devising this conference, the issue that probably gave us the most trouble was the title. Our original submission, “The Forrest Gump of American Politics,” met with some misgivings as it might appear we were implying that Moynihan was an idiot savant. We took the quote from Steven Hayward’s The Age of Reagan and it’s actually a reference to Moynihan’s Zelig-like habit of being at the centre of almost every major controversy in the post-1960s U.S. Nonetheless, we agreed that it was best to avoid any potential misunderstandings. For similar reasons, we decided against submitting “American Burke or American Berk?” as an alternative.

In any case, our original title only compounded a problem that confronted us as we sought to define the purpose of the conference: how could we ensure that by making Moynihan the focus we weren’t excluding the vast number of young scholars – strange as it is to contemplate – who aren’t actually working directly on Moynihan’s life? Needless to say, we hope that our efforts will secure at least a handful of converts.

There were other pitfalls to be avoided. For instance, we reluctantly discarded “America in the Moynihan Years,” which initially had an appealing immodesty, because, as it was a deliberate homage to Taylor Branch’s three-volume biography of Martin Luther King, there was a danger we would look as though we were trying to usurp King’s place in American history in favour of another dead white dude. Given the controversy that attended, and still attends, Moynihan’s opinions on race, we decided that this was perhaps not the wisest course.  

Having settled on our title (the direct and hopefully inclusive “Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s America”), we turned our attention to distinctive ways to promote the conference. We considered attempting our own Buzzfeed-style listicle, but “26 Koalas That Look Like Pat Moynihan” was quickly abandoned as demeaning. And anyway, we couldn’t find enough koala photographs.

That’s where this blog comes in. Here we plan to post reflections on Moynihan’s life and career, useful links from around the internet, interesting and/or amusing bits of trivia, and anything else that occurs to us. Of course, we encourage guest posts, and if you would like to contribute something, please do e-mail us at moynihan2016@gmail.com.