Gil Troy, Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism

A similarly Manichaean dichotomy seems at times to operate in his treatment of Moynihan’s estrangement from the radical left of the late 1960s. Troy suggests that Moynihan’s disgust with this “totalitarian left”—which the book correctly captures—drove him to Richard Nixon’s White House, as in this description of the former Kennedy and Johnson aide’s reaction to LBJ’s forced retirement in 1968: “Moynihan’s indignation and self-righteous anger freed him to accept a White House job offer from the liberals’ bête noire, Richard Nixon, in 1969.” (49) Yet this is, again, a neoconservative narrative. It fits such thinkers as Irving Kristol who, disillusioned, turned from their liberal commitments and, broadly speaking, embraced conservative ones. Moynihan—who as a board member of Americans for Democratic Action had voted not to endorse Johnson for re-election—never did. The Nixon Administration—“Tory men, Whig measures,” as Moynihan, following Disraeli, advised the President—simply provided a forward-moving vehicle for his policy aspirations, which included such measures as a guaranteed income. The false perception that Moynihan had in any fundamental sense changed his views explains the confused disillusionment of neoconservatives disappointed by his record in the Senate, which some had expected to be more conservative when in fact it defied labels but often leaned liberal—as in his rousing defense of a national commitment to welfare in 1995 and 1996.