The Professor and the 400-Lb. Gorilla

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, blue polka-dot bow tie flagging his considerable presence, walked into the Oval Office last week, a 6-ft. 4-in. "loose cannon," as the Clinton crew viewed him. Moynihan coolly surveyed the office paintings, indicating his reservations, checked to be sure the elegant desk used by John Kennedy (a Moynihan idol) was still there, settled on a couch and told the President of the United States, 20 years his junior, that the BTU energy tax was dead, moribund, finished.

That was yet another in a series of clipped pronouncements the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has made in public...