Reply #7: He was a friend to JFK & Nixon. His report on the decline of the black family... [View All]

[Bucky]

was a milestone in the American social work professions, identifying the way poverty and urban conditions were conspiring to attack the stability of our communities and dispelling the naive notion that simply throwing money at the problems of urban poverty would fix it.

He was a consistently middle of the road Democrat, standing up for liberal values but being very pragmatic and intellectually flexible in how to achieve his goals. He was a true successor to FDR's tradition of experimental social reform: try something, see if it works, then try something else if it doesn't. He was brilliant. He came off like a stuffy old prof, but I think he came from a working class neighborhood in NYC.

He was connected to all the right people. He was compassionate and rejected ideological reasons why government should do things a certain way.