Politics: The Look of 72?

As Republican Mayor John Lindsay and Democratic Senator Robert Kennedy chatted together last week in front of New York City’s Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, it took only a flicker of fantasy to imagine that they were standing in the White House portico, circa 1972. It was almost a case of take-your-pick. Dressed alike in dark suits and rep ties—only the breastpocket handkerchief set Harvardman Kennedy apart from Yaleman Lindsay—both exuded all the youth, intelligence and patrician good looks a voter could hope for. Though mere commoners in their respective parties, the mayor and the Senator each had about him a certain look of political inevitability.

For all their surface similarities, the two men are markedly different. Kennedy is coldly pragmatic, Lindsay stubbornly principled. Where Kennedy has a sharper wit, the mayor has an easier humor. While Lindsay is taller and undeniably handsomer, Bobby has The Name. Though both wear an affluent air and came into family money—an immense advantage for a man with political ambitions—neither is hurt by the aura of wealth. Indeed, it is a peculiarity of American political reporting that only self-made men are generally labeled “rich.” (Actually, Lindsay’s total $140,000 inheritance is exceeded by the annual return alone on Bobby’s fortune of perhaps $15 million.) What brought them together, after they patched up an unseemly fracas over whether Lindsay had been rude to Kennedy, is a proposition on the November ballot for voter approval of Lindsay’s new civilian-dominated police-review board, which has come under heavy attack by conservatives who consider it a crimp in police efficiency. Lindsay and Kennedy, together with New York’s elder statesman, G.O.P. Senator Jacob Javits, have joined forces to support the board. It is the kind of impeccable cause that neither of the look-alike liberals can afford to pass up —in 1966 or 1972.