An Inside View of the American Presidency: Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Nixon White House

The Nixon administration may be best known for its scandal, yet the pre-Watergate years are an integral part of President Nixon’s legacy. In his new book, The Professor and the President: Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Nixon White House (Brookings Institution Press, 2014), Stephen Hess gives an eye witness account of his time in the administration in 1969 when the conservative president surprisingly chose a liberal professor to be his Urban Affairs Advisor. Hess shares the inside story of how Senator Moynihan battled Arthur Burns, the conservative economist who served as counselor to the president, and persuaded Nixon to propose the Family Assistance Plan, one of the most progressive pieces of welfare legislation since the New Deal.

On January 28, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted a book event with White House correspondent Julie Hirschfeld Davis and author Stephen Hess to discuss how style and personality, ideology and reality, and loyalty and trust can ultimately produce good government and policymaking. What lessons in bipartisanship can be drawn from the mutual respect between the liberal Senator Moynihan and the conservative President Nixon?