Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes
Presidents cannot seem to be hesitating in any area that concerns their propriety.
Daniel P. Moynihan, U. S. Senator (Democrat, NY), Chief American Delegate to the United Nations, Interview, NBC Meet the Press, January 9, 1994
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
That is one view—the one tried the most frequently by Presidents who by their own estimates didn’t get a responsive civil service working to his priorities. Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson had great cooperation from their civil servants; they instead appointed very competent people with strong senses of fairness and leading personnel. Ronald Regan tried both techniques. He used Wilson’s technique in his Education and Justice Department where there was slow-rolling and dissonance when his appointees tended to be ideologues with little or no outstanding professional competence in the fields they supervised. However, his military and State Department bureaucracies was very responsive to his appointees who were excellent leaders.
See {626594} for Polk’s negative view of delegation of any authority or responsibility.
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician, sociologist, and diplomat. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York in the United States Senate and served as an adviser to Republican U.S. President Richard Nixon.
