Welcome to the Words Matter Library. I'm Katie Barlow.

Stephen Weissman is the Vice President for Publications and Communications at the Peterson Institute

for International Economics. He previously served as a correspondent, editor, and editorial

board member at the New York Times. Mr. Weissman won awards for, among other work, his reporting

on the run-up to the Iraq War and has served as a New York Times Bureau Chief in Japan

and India, as well as a senior diplomatic and senior White House correspondent. He is also

the author and editor of several award-winning books, including Our Focus Today. Daniel

Patrick Moynihan, a portrait in letters of an American visionary. Stephen Weissman,

welcome to Words Matter. I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.

Also joining us today is our executive producer, Adam Levine.

In the interest of full disclosure, I started my career as an intern for Daniel Patrick Moynihan

in 1989 and served him until 1998 when I left for the world of journalism. As you well

know, one of the things Moynihan was most proud of was when the Almanac of American politics

described him famously as the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and

its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson. After you went through and edited his

papers, do you think that the Almanac got it right? Oh, I do. He was a delight to listen

to, but his voice comes out, I think, in those letters more powerfully and eloquently than

in anything he wrote. His public speeches, of course, were full of insensitive insights

and witticisms, but in so many of his letters, and also even in his diaries from when he was

in his 20s, he speaks from the heart. And in many cases, introspectively, which was not

something that he did as a public figure, words just came naturally from Pat Moynihan.

And it was a pleasure, but also a challenge to edit the letters. As you remember, Adam,

...