Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Jim Webb's Role Model

What else do Jim Webb and Daniel Patrick Moynihan have in common?  According to a New York Times book review of Godfrey Hodgson's "The Gentleman From New York" entitled, "The Senate's Philosopher-King," Moynihan "spent a lifetime confounding allies and enemies alike."  Moynihan's political journey, in other words, is not totally unlike Jim Webb's: born and raised a New Deal Democrat, Moynihan then went on a journey that would not be unfamiliar to Jim Webb, not at all:

Bruised by the tumult of the 1960's... Moynihan became for a time the right's favorite liberal, or the left's favorite neocon, or both, before emerging again in the Reagan and Clinton years as a staunch defender of the liberal tradition.

In other words, Moynihan, like Webb, was not easily pigeonholed as a "liberal" or a "conservative."  Not coincidentally, Jim Webb talks frequently about how the old labels of "liberal" and "conservative" no longer apply, and also about his own meandering political odyssey from FDR Democrat to "Reagan Democrat" to...Moynihan Democrat? 
According to the New York Times book review by Todd Purdum, "it is folly to seek any label that fits Moynihan, except perhaps skeptic."  I would argue similarly that Jim Webb cannot be labeled, certainly not easily, except perhaps as "skeptic."  One thing about Moynihan, and I would argue about Jim Webb as well, is that he was - as Purdum writes - "ahead of his time."  Perhaps the following passage from the Purdum review, written about Moynihan, will also help illuminate the character of Senator-elect Jim Webb:

...perhaps more striking, given Moynihan's long run on the national stage, are the durability and diversity of his friendships across ideological lines and the modesty with which, in the twilight of his career, he regards his and his government's ability to be right, or at least to do big things right. Moynihan's skepticism, Hodgson writes, "is not because of any ideological objection to government." It is, rather, "part of a pessimism, almost a melancholy, about the workings of the universe and its human inhabitants which is culturally, if not theologically, religious in nature, and is quite compatible with cheerfulness, even ebullience, about the actual workings of government."

Interestingly, during the campaign, I heard many people complain that Jim Webb didn't smile enough, or seem to be enjoying himself on the stump.  Perhaps the word "melancholy" might even spring to peoples' minds in thinking about Jim Webb.  Personally, I would argue that Jim Webb IS melancholy, in the sense that he understands the complexities of human life - the good, the bad, and the ugly - much of which he has personally experienced and written about in those famous "fiction novels" that George Allen so absurdly and boorishly attacked during the campaign. 

In the end, if we are lucky, perhaps Jim Webb will live up to the following description, by Hodgson, of Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

...the man who -- in the face of a generation that thought it had abolished the need for government -- had the lucidity and the courage to restate the enduring propositions of the American political creed."

We could certainly do far worse.  In fact, if Jim Webb turns out to be even half the Senator that Daniel Patrick Moynihan was, I believe we will all be counting our blessings.

Lowell Feld is Netroots Coordinator for the Jim Webb for US Senate Campaign.  The ideas expressed here belong to Lowell Feld alone, and do not represent those of Jim Webb, his advisors, staff, or supporters.

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