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Jewish World Review Jan. 4, 2000 / 9 Teves, 5761

Chris Matthews

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Consumer Reports


Sen. Moynihan's career: 1976-2000


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- AS A STREET KID in New York, Pat Moynihan learned how to hustle a buck or two.

"I'd buy the Daily News at about 9:30 at Broadway and 96th Street, then sell it along the bars on Amsterdam Avenue for a nickel. At 14, I knew that if you paid two cents and got a nickel, you made 150 percent profit."

Economists call this "time preference." It's how much money a consumer, in this case a fellow spending the evening at his favorite tavern, will pay to get something fast.

Unaware of the term, young Pat understood its meaning. The guy eager for an early peak at the next morning's sports pages was ready to pay top penny for the one-star edition. For five decades, Daniel Patrick Moynihan has kept company with colleagues lacking in such early childhood development. In a public career that has included service for both his beloved John F. Kennedy and the enigmatic Richard M. Nixon, as UN ambassador and 24 years as U.S. senator, he has instructed the mighty on what a bright lad could learn hawking the bulldog on Amsterdam Avenue.

Such as:

-- Ethnicity counts! Whether an immigrant's roots run back to Ireland, Italy, the Dominican Republic or Bangladesh, don't expect the family to snip them when passing the Statue of Liberty.

-- Families count! When the father is not married to the mother, when the truant teen-age daughter is staying home with a daughter of her own, don't be surprised if the teen-age son gets into trouble.

-- Self-respect counts! When America let the "neutral" crowd over at the UN trash our country and our friends back in the early 1970s, it shouldn't have surprised us that the world's bullies would be quick to take advantage.

-- Nationality counts! When the Soviet empire began to break apart ethnically, it would not long survive politically.

The street smarts to spot these realities early has carried a certain price. "Never argue with a man," a cabdriver once quoted H.L. Mencken to me, "whose job depends on not being convinced."

Moynihan has dared remind the community advocate that, yes, some social ailments rise from the community. He has dared admonish the diplomat steeped in cross-cultural sensitivity that some situations call for simple declarative sentences. "We're right. You're wrong."

On one of his last days as a senator, standing in his grand Capitol Hill office, the great man offered me one last senatorial blast of his street corner perspicacity, his Hell's Kitchen audacity.

A liberal Democrat with the best of them. The "Gentleman from New York" praised George W. Bush's proposal to let the working stiff dedicate a portion of his or her payroll tax to private investment. (Unlike the president-elect, he called for a number of tough-minded reforms to finance the plan without tapping the basic Social Security benefit program.)

"Then you would have the most powerful social insurance idea of the century, which is that workers should end their lives with a measure of wealth."

Moynihan spoke with enthusiasm of "elevator operators and doormen" sharing the same ambition as those who live "upstairs" in the penthouses: leaving a legacy to their kids and grandkids.

"It would change society!"

Pat Moynihan -- as street smart at 73 as he was at 14.



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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