Essay: On Running New York

John Lindsay is not a man to let his troubles get him down. Although a million pupils are out of school, firemen are on a “slowdown,” and other public strikes threaten, New York’s Mayor seemed as exuberant as ever last week. Returning from a television appearance, he met TIME Correspondent Lansing Lamont for an interview at Grade Mansion. Reported Lamont:

LINDSAY looked elegantly dashing in a dark blue suit and blue tie. We met in his basement office, where the walls are decorated with drawings by his children, a “Shirley Temple for President” poster, and a selection of gilt-framed old prints. There is also a fine Siamese silk-screen of a night-black heron.

Lindsay was in a chatty mood, laughing over an Art Buchwald column on “pseudo intellectuals,” scanning the morning’s New York Times to see what Scotty Reston said. The Mayor paraphrased Dickens’ opening lines in A Tale of Two Cities: “These are the worst of times and the best of times.”

“I think New York is governable,” said Lindsay. “But we’ve got to go through sound barriers. No one should be surprised at some of the things going on. In the Kerner Commission Report [on civil disorders] we pointed out that this polarization of extreme forces would occur. The centrists and the moderates have to keep fighting to keep the extremist elements from colliding head on and killing each other. That’s what democracy is all about—trying to steer a middle peaceful course between chaos at one end and tyranny at the other.”

New York’s current troubles, said Lindsay, do not reflect just a breakdown in labor and race relations. “It’s a transition from the old to the new. The school dispute is not just a labor dispute. It has to do with social change.” But some groups and individuals are unable to face the change, and react with violence. “These are the tempers of the time. They killed Martin Luther King with bullets. They killed Robert Kennedy with bullets. They’ll kill more of the other moderates before they’re through.”

Then the Mayor quoted the familiar lines from Yeats’ The Second Coming:

Things fall apart; the center cannothold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,

and everywhere the ceremony of

innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while

the worst are full of passionate

intensity.

“It’s never easy,” he went on. “Sure, we’ve got a tough problem. What we’ve got to do is hold to reason. For every progressive soul there are one thousand self-appointed guardians who will fight against any change at all. Nobody likes change. We must do what the British did and guide this revolution into peaceful channels. They did it for several centuries, and they did it brilliantly by and large. They used the skills of their great moderate leaders who stayed ahead of the tides and didn’t allow the waves to drown them.”

Lindsay sees himself as one of these moderate leaders. “I do what is right, and I’ll continue to. I think the people will support that.” Ultimately, Lindsay would clearly like to be President, New York’s Governor or a U.S.’Senator. Meanwhile, to retain a power base he will most likely have to face a bruising race for a second term as Mayor in 1969. Has he reconsidered previous avowals that he would not run again for the city’s top job? He said that he won’t decide before next year. “But the pressures I’ve been under the last few weeks would militate, if anything, in favor of my running again. I’ve seen how much there is to be done. Hell, yes. Everything else by comparison is dull.”

Mary Lindsay peeked around the door. She was dressed in flaming pink pants and an informal striped jersey. “Voulez-vous manger?” she asked. “Sure, Babe,” said Lindsay. “Let’s have a glass of sherry and lunch. But first I’ve gotta call Johnny Carson.”