| When We Needed Him Most |
31 March 2003
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Daniel Patrick Moynihan Dies at 76
Daniel Patrick Moynihan died last week at the age of 76 due to complications following an emergency appendectomy. While he was not one of a kind, he was one of a very few -- an intellectual who applied his knowledge to make his society better and did so without the millstone of ideology.
Senator, Ambassador, Doctor, Professor. To everyone, he was Pat, even if he couldn't quite remember the names of some of the young people in the room he had been addressing. He held office not because he wanted to be those things, but rather because he wanted to do things that required him to hold office.
It is a tribute to American society that someone born poor, whose father ran off, managed to find away into college, and graduate school, to become an advisor to 4 presidents, of different parties, before being elected to the Senate 4 times. Along the way, he spent three years at the London School of Economics (an institution which holds a unique place in hearts here), and left a confirmed Anglophile without ever being less an Irish-American.
Years ago, George Will wrote the best line about Pat, "He has written more books than most senators have read." With his passing, the country mourns the loss of a great mind, and a great patriot whose wisdom is sorely needed now. Brains and politics rarely mix well; in Pat, though, they were inseparable.