New York: Incitement to Excellence

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More Than a Theory. Lindsay blamed New York's decline on retiring Mayor Robert Wagner, an upright but tired administrator who all too often governed by procrastination for twelve years. Certainly the city's bureaucracy was lethargic. Yet it was New Yorkers themselves who were fundamentally to blame, for it was only because of their shoulder-shrugging indifference to the city's problems that feckless politicians flourished. Lindsay's greatest single achievement during the campaign was to pierce that self-defensive wall. The words of one of John Lindsay's heroes, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., seemed curiously relevant as he set about reawakening the imaginations and consciences of the city's 7.5 million people. "It is said that this manifesto is more than a theory, that it was an incitement," wrote Holmes in a 1925 U.S. Supreme Court decision. "Every idea is an incitement." Until the campaign, there had been few enough ideas about rescuing the city. The wonder was that anyone of Lindsay's talents should want the chore. Lindsay had no illusions about the job. Often during the campaign he told an anecdote about boarding a train bound from Washington to New York and seating himself in a car full of stony-faced men with their arms folded across their chests. "Who are they?" Lindsay asked the conductor. "They're patients going to an insane asylum," said the trainman. "Where are you going?" "To New York to run for mayor," said Lindsay. "Then," replied the conductor, "you stay right here."

The Action. But Lindsay is an activist, a man who loves a rough-knuckled challenge. "I could stay in the security of the House," he mused as he began his mayoralty campaign. "But the action today is in the streets of the cities." To win his way into the thick of that action as mayor of New York, Lindsay had to thread through a maze of obstacles. Not least were the style and manner that the clubhouse politicians derided. He is perennially tanned from yachting and skiing, Episcopalian-reared, Ivy League-educated, and every inch of his frame is stamped with the mark of American aristocracy. On street corners, where politicians have immemorially paraded as common men, he seemed, to say the least, out of his element.

And there was the Republican label. Lindsay's congressional voting record was more liberal than that of many Democrats (Americans for Democratic Action gave him an 84% "right vote" rating in the House for 1963-64). But there was the inescapable fact that registered Democrats in New York City outnumber Republicans by an overwhelming ratio of 7 to 2. With an icy pragmatism that offended many G.O.P. members, Lindsay played down his party label. "I am a Republican," he declared, "but New York City must have an independent, nonpartisan government." So saying, he lined up a Democrat and a Liberal Party man for his fusion ticket. Both lost.