Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan has been right so often one wonders why he needed to write a book to tell us so. Moynihan is a precious national asset, a rare, if not simply unique, combination of legislator and intellectual, someone with the brain power to understand a problem and the political power to find a solution. On top of all that, he has a sense of humor, a tragic view of life, and an unusual grasp of reality. All of which makes me even more puzzled that he would take time from his busy schedule to toot his horn in ways that demean, rather than dignify, the stature he deserves.

This is not to suggest that readers should avoid Miles to Go. On the contrary, this is one of the most insightful accounts of contemporary politics available, stuffed with Moynihan's wit, passion, and prophecy. Although confusing to read - some of it is written as a book, some of it was previously published, some is page-filler - the long introduction alone makes the book worthwhile. Here Moynihan recounts his version of the two great battle's of President Bill Clinton's first term, health care and welfare. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and as an astute commentator on both subjects for three decades, one would have expected Moynihan to become a close ally of the president. Yet the senator wound up to the "right" of Bill Clinton on health care and to the "left" on welfare, in both cases offering advice which the White House chose to ignore.

Moynihan's analysis of the utter defeat of health-care reform will someday be treated as a case study of all that can go wrong in politics. Quoting from previously confidential documents, he shows how the president's task force, in its infinite wisdom, decided that America had too many specialists and that the number of residencies available at hospitals should be restricted to 110 percent of the graduates of American medical schools, thereby keeping out, not only immigrant doctors, but Americans who went abroad for their medical training. Whether these were good ideas is irrelevant - although Moynihan persuades me that they were bad ones. What is astonishing, and what really makes the senator's veins stand out, is the sheer contempt for democracy shown by Ira Magaziner and other policy planners. Had the administration been content with near-universal coverage, Moynihan concludes, we would now have a system of national health insurance. Instead, as he emphatically reminds his readers, no health-care reform bill was ever reported to the House floor.

One would love a similarly biting analysis of the debates over welfare reform, especially because, on that issue, Moynihan played the role of critic and policy advocate, not the role of legislator. (What changes one election can work). The senator's eloquence and passion in defense of the vulnerable will long be remembered, but at least this reader is troubled by Moynihan's failure to tell us why he took the path of prophet. As one of the many Americans who have ambivalent feelings about welfare - I believe that everyone deserves help when in need, financed by taxes and paid by government, but that long-term dependency is such a demeaning state that everything should be done to encourage people to get out of it - I could understand, if not necessarily agree with, President Clinton's decision to sign the bill. All the more reason to hear an argument against Clinton's decision, and who better to make the offer than Moynihan? But he does not do it, at least not in this book. It would have been an even better book if he had.

Miles to Go includes two of Moynihan's classic essays, which are not only reprinted, but which the senator revisits and brings up to date. "The Professionalization of Reform," first published in 1965, told the story of how reformers, who often speak in the language of altruism, came to have a self-interest in the expansion of government. "Defining Deviancy Down," presented to the American Sociological Association in 1993, argued that conduct which in previous times might have been considered deviant, was now considered normal; the paper, when published in the American Scholar, caused a furor of reaction, most of which Moynihan recounts.

It is this tendency of Moynihan to comment on Moynihan that seems so out of place. Parts of Miles to Go read like a compilation of press clippings, as if someone on the senator's staff plowed through Nexis only for the purpose of giving the reader a sense of how right the senator always is. And the senator himself, although stating modestly at one point that he is not a very good social scientist, cannot help noting how well his earlier pieces stand up and how wrong the other guy tends to be. How do you tell so successful a man that he need not be so insecure?

Moynihan's insecurity is not just a stylistic quirk, alas. One reason to admire the man, and to want to read everything he writes, is that when Moynihan speaks, ideology does not. It is so rare in this ideological age to find someone you can trust. But can you trust someone who puts not ideology, but himself, first? The effect of Moynihan's self-importance is to raise the question of whether he is self-serving. And once doubts begin to creep into the reader's mind about whether Moynihan is grinding an axe, the prodigious effort he has made to be trustworthy begins to crumble.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan has written many books, and surely we will be hearing from him again. I hope his next one contains all the wondrous gems of this one without the unnecessary coarseness.

Alan Wolfe teaches political science and sociology at Boston University and is the author of Marginalized in the Middle (University of Chicago Press).