GENTLEMAN FROM NEW YORK: Daniel Patrick Moynihan - A Biography.

• Author: Brazaitis, Tom
• Position: Review

GENTLEMAN FROM NEW YORK: Daniel Patrick Moynihan--A Biography

By Godfrey Hodgson Houghton Miffin Co., $38.00

GODFREY HODGSON, A FRIEND and confidant of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his family for almost 40 years, frets at the start of this new biography about putting their long-standing friendship at risk by trying to write truthfully. Not to worry. If Moynihan takes offense at this tribute, his skin is even thinner than anyone knew. Gentleman From New York opens with a chapter titled, "The Prophet," and closes with "The Legislator as Magnifico." Hodgson twice quotes journalist Michael Barone's assessment of Moynihan as "the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln, and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson." Lest anyone miss the point, he throws in the observation by Moynihan's close friend, Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, that "few people in our history, save Thomas Jefferson, have had as much impact on our nation and our government."

Since Moynihan never was elected president, never ran for president, never was considered for vice president, and yet is favorably compared with two of our greatest presidents, one might conclude that he is an underachiever. Three-quarters through the book, Hodgson reports that "at times in 1978 and 1979 [when Jimmy Carter was foundering in the White House] he did think quite a lot about running for president." But there was the difficulty of running against an incumbent president of one's own party to consider. And if Sen. Edward Kennedy wanted to try it, which he eventually did, his candidacy "might make a Moynihan campaign look trivial by comparison," Hodgson writes.

Then Hodgson reports, as if revealing a state secret, that "several of his friends have suggested to me another personal factor: alcohol. They believe that he did not run for president at least in part because he (and his wife) were aware that he might be betrayed, even humiliated, by talk of his drinking." Hodgson says the key question is whether alcohol has affected Moynihan's performance as a politician or as a public servant. "My own view is that it has not," he says. "Others claim to have seen him staggering. I can only say that I have not, after observing him on a large number of occasions...." He punctuates his defense by paraphrasing Lincoln's order to supply his other generals with a barrel of whatever whiskey Ulysses S. Grant was drinking, coincidentally the same anecdote George Will employed in a tribute to...