WASHINGTON – Toby Moffett’s days are busy. He’s the Chief Executive Officer for Livingston Moffett Global Consultants, a Washington lobbying and advisory firm, and until recently he played an advisory role in former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. But for the next three hours, his task is to keep the students at Boston University’s Washington Center awake and interested in American politics – from John Adams and Alexander Hamilton to John Kerry and Donald Rumsfeld.
This is not a particularly easy undertaking, as most of his 25 students have had equally long days working on Capitol Hill as political interns or in the center’s newsroom as Washington correspondents in the Journalism Program.
Moffett has the added hurdle of replacing renowned presidential scholar Robert Dallek as the professor of the “American Institutions” course. But the 59-year-old Massachusetts native has plenty of experience to bring to the classroom.
The “Nader Raider” activist (whose political beliefs were partially influenced in the early 1970s by Ralph Nader’s stances against corporate power and for environmental protection) was a congressman for Connecticut from 1975 to 1983. He narrowly lost a bid for the Senate after serving his self-imposed term limit of eight years in the House.
After his defeat, he worked as a news anchor and producer for a Connecticut television station and declined former President Bill Clinton’s nomination to be the ambassador to Argentina before forming Livingston Moffett with another former congressman, Robert Livingston. Teaching wasn’t on his agenda.
“The BU people called me – I don’t know how exactly they found me,” Moffett said in an interview before class Feb. 18. “The idea to move to teaching was mainly for variety’s sake. I wanted to move to theory from practitioner.”
The contrasts between government today and the founding fathers’ vision at the end of the 18th century is one of Moffett’s key subjects. Guest speakers, from former senators to current judges, discuss their roles in the federal government and, as Moffett puts it, “What would the founding fathers be happy about? What would they be most appalled about? What would they be most puzzled about?”
The guest for last week’s class was U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman, who recently gained notoriety for granting failed presidential assassin and Jodie Foster fanatic John Hinckley Jr. the right to unsupervised visits with his parents.
Moffett knows and in some cases has worked with his guest speakers, so conversations with students are often candid. Friedman discusses the Hinckley case and others and opines that the fathers would have been surprised by the judiciary’s powers today.
After he speaks and takes questions for about an hour, the ball bounces back to Moffett’s court.
And Moffett runs with it. He starts off with a discussion of the past week’s news, focusing on conflicts between Congress and President George W. Bush. Moffett has a specific instance in mind but allows the students to bring up other examples before he steers conversation to a congressional letter claiming the secretary of agriculture misled Congress on the dangers of mad cow disease.
“I guarantee in two weeks – maybe in two days – they’ll be holding hearings on this,” he says.
Moffett has the access to back up statements like these because he is constantly visiting congressional offices on Capitol Hill, either as a lobbyist or simply to catch up with current congressmen.
“As a former member, you have a certain stature, but you can’t abuse it,” Moffett said in the interview. “I’m allowed to go on the House floor when they’re in session, but because I’m in the consulting business, I would never do that.
“It’s sort of like a retired football player going back into the locker room,” he continued. “You’re highly respected, but not playing. I’m still called by members and asked my opinions on things, but I haven’t deluded myself into thinking I’m a member of Congress.”
But he’s close enough to those members to bring back interesting tidbits for his students. Moffett is discreet, rarely mentioning names, but provides a behind-the-scenes look at how people in government think about everything from current legislation to the Democratic primaries.
The primaries are usually a prime topic of discussion, but this week they’re bypassed for a longer debate on another weekly feature: the “memo from Karl Rove.” Every week, Moffett leads the class on a hypothetical walk through the Bush strategist’s brain, going over recent events to write a memo that evaluates how the president is faring in this election year. Moffett is “pretty confident” that the Rove memo the class puts together is similar to the one he is sure Rove actually produces.
Bush has not been doing well so far, Moffett says: “This guy’s been having a very bad series of weeks.”
Moffett makes no attempt to hide his political views – besides the Nader activism, he supported Democrat Al Gore in 2000.
“I’m never going to give a totally balanced view – that’s not what I’m there for,” he said.
But, as evidenced by the Republican guest speakers he invites, Moffett recognizes the virtues of being able to think outside one’s political beliefs. And while most of his students lean to the left politically, they still point out Bush’s pros of the past week even though they clearly relish the cons.
As Moffett points out, Bush has had plenty of cons. From continuing skepticism regarding Bush’s National Guard service to his own economic advisors contradicting his optimism about job creation to more deaths in Iraq, the president is a long way from his standings only a few months ago.
“This is freaking Karl Rove out!” Moffett says in a hoarse voice as the class laughs.
But Bush is fighting back. His appearance at the Daytona 500 was an enormously successful appeal to his base, Moffett says. “You take a hardcore NASCAR fan who’s lost his job, lost a brother in Iraq, he’ll vote Bush anyway. I want you guys to have some appreciation of the dance that is going on here.”
Moffett said this election will be crucial for the nation.
“The country’s unbelievably divided,” he said. “It’s one big gigantic war that’s sometimes upsetting and distressing but also interesting.”
And Nader’s entry into the presidential race on Sunday makes things even worse, he said.
“I haven’t spoken to Nader since my first term precisely because of this kind of crazy behavior,” Moffett said following Nader’s announcement. “He’s been in the process of undoing all the good he’s done over the last several decades, and this is the culmination. I used to worship the guy, but I think a lot of people have had the same realization.”
But Nader, who Moffett actively campaigned against during the 2000 election (independent of Gore’s campaign), has little chance to affect the race in the same way he did four years ago, Moffett said.
“Number one, he’s not on the Green Party line, and number two, people have wised up to his act and how destructive it is to those who want to beat Bush,” he said. “This is very serious business – we could see three more right-wing judges, more environmental relaxations, funds for cities drying up – and he says relax and rejoice?”
From the perspective of history, Moffett said today’s partisan divide is worse than in previous years.
“Parties back then obviously had stridency. They had duels,” he said. “However, all the arguments were taking place in a more confined space. There were no extremes. Government was all men, so culture was not really represented.”
Class ends early, and several students stay after to talk to Moffett. He is pleased with the students, he said earlier, for breaking out from a typical college experience.
“Anything that jolts people out of their routine at that age is good – as long as it’s not prison or anything,” he said. “I give people extra points for coming down during terrorist alerts.”
But he’s not certain he’ll be back next semester. His work at Livingston Moffett keeps him busy, and he’s still experimenting to find out the best way to run the class.
Students said he is doing a good job, though.
“He doesn’t lecture – it’s a lot of back and forth,” said College of Communication senior Susanna Vagman, who is in the Journalism Program. “He makes it interesting. A lot of poli sci professors just lecture for an hour, and then you take a test. His class is not about taking tests.”
Karen Whelan, a junior at Assumption College who is studying at the Washington Center, also said she thinks Moffet’s methods are sound.
“His approach to class seems casual, but you’re learning a lot at the same time,” she said. “It’s not about taking notes on X, Y and Z.”
Moffett said he does miss his days in Congress, but he’s enjoying his tenure as a teacher.
“It’s a little difficult, but also rewarding as well to be interacting with young people,” he said.
Moffett may be years removed from Congress, but he still knows how to appreciate his constituents.
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