The only person in American history to serve in four successive presidential administrations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan served as US Senator from New York from 1977-2001. Prior to that, he was Special Assistant to President Richard Nixon, Ambassador to India (1973-1975), and Ambassador to the United Nations (1975-1976).
Born in Tulsa, OK, in 1927, Moynihan was raised in a poor neighborhood in New York City, where he attended parochial, private, and public schools, graduating from Harlem High School. After wartime service in the U.S. Navy, he returned to college, earning a Fulbright Scholarship, and became active in New York Democratic party politics in the 1950s. A life-long academic, Moynihan taught at Harvard, MIT, and Syracuse University, and has written or edited nineteen books, many of which helped to influence social policy in America, including Beyond the Melting Pot (which he wrote with Nathan Glazer), The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Family and Nation, and Secrecy.
Considered one of the last true intellectuals in public life by pundits as diverse as George Will and Nat Hentoff, Moynihan died in 2003, shortly after retiring from the Senate, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetary. These comments come from his 1978 address to the NAIS Annual Conference in New York.