WHEN Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol were discussing founding a new journal, The Public Interest, I was teaching at the University of California in Berkeley, after having worked for a year in the Kennedy administration in the Housing and Home Finance Agency. Very likely I would have been involved in these discussions had I been in New York: I had written for Dan Bell at the New Leader years before, when he was managing editor, and he had written for Commentary when I was on the staff. Irving had joined Commentary as an editor while I was an editor there, and I had written for him when he edited Encounter and the Reporter. Dan Bell told me about the new magazine on a visit to Berkeley.