I have always found Terry to be an astute observer of things political. Whatever one may think of him in other contexts, his insights into politics are not only insightful but also remarkably free from the taint of personal gain or ambition. Recently he wrote about an article by Joe Kline of the NY Times about Danial Patric Moynahan. Terry worked for Moynahan in the White House on the Guaranteed National Income Nixon had been toying with at the time.
“This is an excellent and timely essay on where we have been and where we are going. It puts the current so-called “inflection point” in historical context. I too knew Moynihan; I worked for him, along with my colleague Cliff Hendrix, for many months in the Nixon White House on assignment from West Point 1969-1970.”
“I’ll never forget an intimate meeting in his WH office to discuss our next project for him. I had suggested doing a study on the impact of American English accents: the southern drawl, the Black jive, the Bostonian broad “A” as in “Haaavard Yaaard” etc. on class perceptions and discrimination. He responded that such a study was far too theoretical to be useful and the conclusion was obvious anyway: language is a dead giveaway for discrimination.”
“He suggested something more practical: a detailed factual survey of how food assistance programs, food stamps, and the like, were manipulated at the local political level to control Blacks, Latinos, and white dissidents, such as hippies. THAT, he said, could be useful in support of his and Nixon’s Guaranteed Annual Income bill then in Congress. Bingo!”
“And OFF Cliff and I were to four different states: Mississippi, Missouri, California, and New York on what the New Republic columnist TRB called the “Goggin Hegira” (Originally used to describe the flight of Muhammad
from Mecca and commonly used today to describe a departure from danger; I didn’t know that either and had to look it up). Subsequently, our ‘Report to Dr.Moynihan, Assistant to The President’, became briefly famous and the subject of Congressional Hearings, The Today Show and the CBS Morning News, etc. “
“The Report was heavy on anecdotal evidence, but also on statistics from County officials, which was a passion for Moynihan. And we provided it to him. What eventually happened was that the Democrats in Congress failed to pass the GAI, much to their later regret, because the “Southern Democrats “ later Republicans, thought that: ‘if you just give poor mothers cash, it would lead to the misuse of the money on liquor and cigarettes rather than on food for their children. Such poppycock! “
“Anyway this essay is a mighty read about a wonderful prophet, and Harvard intellectual, who thought like an “Irish Mick” from Hell’s Kitchen, where he grew up.”
“Daniel Patrick Moynihan Was Often Right. Joe Klein on Why It Still Matters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/books/review/daniel-patrick-moynihan-was-often-right-joe-klein-on-why-it-still-matters.html?referringSource=articleShare”