Buckley v. Moynihan

One candidate looks like a smalltown professor, vintage 1956: the haircut is modified crew, the clothes drab and slightly ill-fitting, the rhetoric sparing and precise. The other candidate actually is a professor, but with his practiced flamboyance, a wardrobe of elegant mismatches and a manner that oscillates from pixie to pedagogue and back within a 60-second monologue, he comes across more like a ripe character actor in search of his next role. The contrast is appropriate because rarely do voters get a chance to choose between candidates for the Senate--or any other office--who differ so clearly in persona and policy as New York Senator James Buckley and his Democratic challenger, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Buckley, 53, grew up a rich man's woodsy son who preferred bird watching to baseball. As a youngster he considered ornithology as a career and as a Yale undergraduate he kept a boa constrictor for company. But after Yale Law School he ended up a vice president of his family's oil-exploration business, where he indulged his love of travel (visiting both polar regions) and his interest in environmental problems.

Like his famous younger brother, polymath Polemicist William F. Buckley Jr., Jim always stood far to the right politically. But he did not get into politics until the late '60s, when the New York Conservative Party--a predominantly Catholic faction that had sprouted from right-wing disgust with the liberal leanings of both major parties in the state--began to make waves. In 1968, without having given a formal public speech in 17 years, he took his castle-Irish dignity and shy grin into the Senate campaign. To everyone's surprise, he rolled up 17% of the vote.

Two years later, when both Democrats and Republicans again nominated liberals, Buckley won 39% and a ticket to Washington. The Republicans took him back, but on his own independent terms. Whether being ahead of the pack in calling for Richard Nixon's resignation or as a stubborn opponent of federal aid sought by Northeastern Republicans, Buckley went his own way.

Moynihan, 49, came out of a bro ken home and Irish poverty in Hell's Kitchen. Thanks to City College, Tufts and the London School of Economics, Moynihan propelled himself into an episodic academic career (Syracuse University, Harvard) that he constantly interrupts by sprints down the corridors of power. No subject--traffic safety, crime, black mores, welfare reform, the future of democracy--is beyond his ken or pen. Always a Democrat, he has fraternized with the party's reform and regular factions in New York just as he has served with equal panache each President--Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford--who offered to employ him.

Whether at a small dinner party or a formal campaign appearance, Moynihan is always on. Inflection and voice register change like a barometer in the monsoon season. Two long index fingers simultaneously punch holes in the issue of the moment. Or he puts on his leprechaun's phiz to explain pragmatism with a parable from Gulliver's Travels, recalling the Lilliputians who signified political faction by the height of heels and others who fought over opening the big end or the little end of a boiled egg. "Happy is the political society," he concludes with obvious delight, "whose issues are in fact adjustable, as is the height of a heel."

That Moynihan himself may appear too adjustable, depending on the prevailing breeze, has provided Buckley with some ammunition. The Senator only hints at the point, but Campaign Manager Len Saffir calls Moynihan a "phony and an opportunist," and says that last year he "clearly used the United Nations as a forum" for personal political motives.

Moynihan certainly turned himself into something of a national hero (and did wonders with the Jewish vote) by his spectacular stands in defense of Israel and in defiance of left-wing totalitarian assaults on the West. But he argues that he told President Ford he planned to stay on, and that he would have remained had he not fallen afoul of Henry Kissinger, who disapproved of his too independent line. After resigning from his U.N. post, Moynihan returned to Harvard, where for four months he pondered a political run. Centrist party leaders courted Moynihan for two reasons: they thought he was best able to retire Buckley and enrich New York's anemic influence in Congress. The strategy seems sound. For one thing, Moynihan, as a Catholic who attends Mass regularly at Manhattan's St. Ignatius Loyola Church and who understands how middle-income families feel about social issues, could lure back white ethnics who helped elect Buckley in 1970.

Abortion provides a significant contrast between the candidates. Both oppose abortion on demand. But Buckley is a champion of the Right to Life movement and author of a proposed constitutional amendment that would severely restrict abortion. Moynihan is against any such amendment, arguing that it would be "coercion" of one group by another. "We are in a post-Constantinian church," he says. "We really cannot expect our moral code to be translated into the legal code."

The clearest clash, however, is over bread and butter. Unlike Buckley, Moynihan favors a federal takeover of welfare, passage of a national health-insurance bill and enactment of other measures necessary to help the economically distressed Northeast. He accuses Buckley of abandoning New York State's economic interests for the sake of antiquated conservative principle.

Buckley argues that Moynihan "believes in a federal solution for every problem," and that "for the past 25 years we have been witnessing an almost reckless movement of authority away from local communities, where voters and taxpayers have some degree of control over what happens, to Washington." The economy will improve, he says, when federal spending and taxes are brought under sufficient control to encourage private investment. Meanwhile, he favors a number of innovative ideas--like factoring inflation into the income tax code--to protect families of modest means. Says Buckley. "I'm the person looking out for the interests of the taxpayer and the wage earner. If people want a change, they should vote for me."

Going into the campaign's final weeks, it appeared that New Yorkers did not quite see the choice in Buckley's terms. Moynihan seemed to be holding on to a modest lead that would allow him to add a new entry to his lengthy resume.

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