Liberal social policy - once regnant, now at bay - is the subject
of this loosely organized, often bitterly observant collection of
essays and speeches by New York's senior US senator. Moynihan
(Pandemonium, 1993; On the Law of Nations, 1990) has carved out a
niche as the Paul Revere of the Senate, raising alarms at
approaching menaces. In the wake of the Republican takeover of the
House and Senate in the 1994 midyear elections, Moynihan, one of
the few Democratic survivors of the electoral bloodbath, assessed
how fellow Democrats (rarely himself - there's an overwhelming
whiff of "I told you so" here) lost the old consensus for activist
government. Moynihan is in a position to know: He worked as an
assistant to presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and has served
four terms as a Senator. We have, he argues, moved into a
postindustrial age in which the economy operates smoothly but
social ills proliferate. Our social legislation, largely based on
19th-century European models, is not designed to handle such
challenges. We need, he asserts, to rethink the very basis of
social legislation. His most heartfelt remarks concern the crisis
of illegitimacy, which he first noted in the 1965 Moynihan Report,
a paper that sparked such denunciation by various groups as to
close off serious discussion for nearly two decades. Now, after
left-liberal denials of social problems, we witness punitive
welfare legislation (passed over Moynihan's impassioned objections)
that verges on "vengeance against children." Other pieces include a
dissection of the Clinton administration's bungled attempt at
health care reform, an impassioned call to route drug-war funds to
programs that can reduce drug use, and an attack on the
balanced-budget amendment as a bludgeon that can exacerbate an
economic reverse. Hardly a coherent "history," as the subtitle
implies, but sobering reflections nonetheless on the cost of
precipitous action taken without the benefit of social science
research or humane reflection. (Kirkus Reviews)
Has liberalism lost its way--or merely its voice? This book by one
of the nation's most insightful, articulate, and powerful Democrats
at last breaks the silence that has greeted the Republican Party's
revolution of 1994. When voters handed Democrats their worst defeat
in 100 years, New Yorkers returned Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the
Senate for his fourth term. Amid the wreck of his party's control
and the disarray of programs and policies he has championed for
three decades, Senator Moynihan here takes stock of the politics,
economics, and social problems that have brought us to this pass.
With a clarity and civility far too rare in the political arena, he
offers a wide-ranging meditation on the nation's social strategies
for the last 60 years, as well as a vision for the years to come.
Because Senator Moynihan has long been a defender of the policies
whose fortunes he follows here, Miles to Go is in a sense
autobiographical, an exemplary account of the social life of the
body politic. As it guides us through government's attempts to
grapple with thorny problems like family disintegration, welfare,
health care, deviance, and addiction, Moynihan writes of "The
Coming of Age of American Social Policy." Through most of our
history American social policy has dealt with issues that first
arose in Europe, and essentially followed European models. Now, in
a post-industrial society we face issues that first appear in the
United States for which we will have to devise our own responses.
Ringing with the wisdom of experience, decency, and common sense,
Miles to Go asks "why liberalism cannot be taught what
conservatives seem to know instinctively"--to heed the political
and moral sentiments of the people and reshape itself for the
coming age.
General
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