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Slow & Painful. A regular contributor to magazines—one of his articles was a major critique of automobile safety, which inspired one of his Labor Department coworkers, Ralph Nader—Moynihan wrote a piece on Democratic politics that attracted Sociologist Nathan Glazer, who asked him to write a chapter on the Irish for a book on New York's ethnic groups, Beyond the Melting Pot. With the same careful eye that he was later to focus on the Ne gro family, Moynihan surveyed his own brethren, and found that Irish progress in America by most standards has been slow and painful. "Paddy and Sambo are the same people," says Moynihan —both from rural, unschooled backgrounds, both shattered by urban experiences, both falling into patterns of drink and violence.
Moynihan worked in the Kennedy campaign of 1960, and J.F.K. rewarded him by making him, at 34, the youngest sub-Cabinet member in Washington. He stayed through two Secretaries of Labor and even into the Johnson Administration. Shortly after the President's Howard University speech, Moynihan went back to New York to run for the city council presidency. Bobby Kennedy had some part in persuading him to make the run, though the two have never been close friends; Moynihan feels he should be as critical of Kennedy as he can be within the framework of their similar ideo logical positions. "I didn't have much to lose," says Moynihan of his only try for elective office. "It was like a $2 bet at the races." He lost the bet—Queens District Attorney Frank O'Connor defeated him handily. The day after the election, the telephone rang: the M.I.T.-Harvard Joint Center asked him to be director. Moynihan decided to spend a quieter year first, took a fellowship at Wesleyan (in Connecticut), then accepted the center's offer.
Ouija-Board Sociology. "From his position at the key institution on urban affairs," says a top Administration urbanologist, Moynihan "has the greatest broker position in the world." Moynihan, to be sure, is not universally admired, nor are his ideas. Some critics, like the Rev. Henry Browne, a Catholic priest on Manhattan's upper West Side, accuse him of practicing "Ouija-board sociology," while a friend from the London days, Broadcaster Paul Niven, notes that he has a "natural instinct for self-publicity." Yet few have articulated the urban crisis so well, and few have put forth so many thoughtful, or at least ingenious, remedies. Among the other top urbanologists: