Conservative Flexibility
COSTIKYAN, EDWARD
Conservative Flexibility THE UNMAKING OF A MAYOR By William F. Buckley Jr. Viking. 341 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by EDWARD COSTIKYAN Former Chairman, New York County Democratic Committee; campaign...
...Politicians are not supposed to have anything to do with the educational system, lest they ruin it...
...Although a resident of Connecticut, he decided to run for Mayor of New York...
...Other problems, too, such as traffic and the quality of city schools, are carefully avoided...
...Lindsay (unless he favors validating the fears of the people), criticize this...
...And Governor Rockefeller ran successfully on the weakness of Frank O'Connor...
...I don't know why he is so hostile to Connecticut...
...In 1965 Abe Beame, the Democratic candidate for Mayor, relied largely on the doctrine of party loyalty (and there wasn't much of that around...
...Lindsay accused me of seeking 'to downgrade and vitiate, to divide, to negate, and to prey upon the tensions and fears among our people.' Now (a) I would be very happy, indeed, to 'vitiate' the tensions and fears of our people????that, in fact, is why I am running for office...
...It was reported that he received his greatest ovations when he contrasted his origins and wealth with Governor Rockefeller's...
...Consequently, candidates for public office, being politicians, can pretend the issue does not even exist...
...A second reason for the Conservatives growing political strength is their candidates' new flexibility...
...John Lindsay, the Republican candidate, relied on charm, youth, and the appearance of vigor...
...The traditional liberal remedies of spending more money and hiring more government employes do not really solve the growing problems of welfare, traffic, schools and crime...
...While most of the points were serious, I suspect the last one was either a joke or Buckley's tribute to the Conservative philosophy, which insists from time to time upon inserting antediluvian notions into contemporary dialogue...
...How can an orderly mind maintain that Mr...
...As for the schools, the tradition in New York is one of independence...
...He was essentially a polemicist, whose program changes reflect not only the Conservative's new flexibility but his own role as an articulate political gadfly...
...Nor, can the old rhetoric any longer maintain the loyalty to the liberal movement created by the New Deal of the 1930s...
...The book is especially devastating in its analysis of the editorial criticism to which Buckley was subjected while engaged in his quixotic non-search for public office (or was it a search for non-public office...
...For years, political leaders in New York City have known that their constituents are deeply troubled by safety and crime...
...The candidates of the major parties, meanwhile, have not been changing their old ways...
...he not only contributed mightily to the merriment of the battle, but probably to the election of John V. Lindsay...
...He writes: "Mr...
...Buckley continues: "As for your servant, Mr...
...It may very well be that the radical Right is losing its radicalism as it matures, just as every radical movement tends to become more moderate as its members age...
...In 1966 Frank O'Connor, the Democratic candidate for Governor, ran a campaign notably deficient in programmatic content...
...If Buckley were a serious political figure, his capacity to announce programs solemnly and then abandon them within five months might be regarded as evidence of immaturity and improvidence...
...Lindsay is constantly criticizing me as the candidate from Connecticut...
...Beame 'promises procrastination...
...Beame that he 'promises not progress but procrastination, not ideas but indifference, not energy but evasiveness, not advancement but apathy.' "What is wrong with that sentence????other than its suicidal search for alliteration...
...But Buckley had a serious purpose in running for office and in writing his book...
...So why should Mr...
...Lindsay [I had written], says of Mr...
...The liberals will not be able to defeat the trend toward conservatism simply by treating Conservatives such as Buckley with fear, contempt, and old slogans...
...And, (b) How on earth does one 'divide' a 'tension,' let along a 'fear...
...While three of his points (applicability of the minimum-wage laws to children, the need for more taxis, and the desirability of legalizing gambling) can be regarded as relatively minor, and one (the attack upon labor unions) appears to be a tip of the hat to traditional Conservative attitudes, the remaining issues (crime, narcotics, race, traffic and schools) are the major problems facing our cities...
...Most liberals might not like the answers, but they should recognize that the Conservatives are at least providing answers that are attracting more political support...
...On the rare occasions when they do so, it is usually circumstances beyond their control that force them to say something about a particular emergency...
...campaign manager for Abraham Beame L'Enfant Terrible of Yale, the Conservative movement and the National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr., after spending years in greener fields, in 1965 gave New Yorkers his almost undivided attention for some five months...
...A careful review of current Conservative positions, however, reveals that these antiquated notions have either been discarded or soft-pedaled, and the emphasis is increasingly on the contemporary...
...Buckley, though, was not a serious candidate for public office...
...Perhaps he went there to be educated and, for manifest reasons, is displeased with the results...
...The fact that it is as costly, inefficient and unsatisfactory an educational system as anyone could conceivably create does not matter...
...They have generally been unwilling to confront the significant problems of wide concern...
...What is wrong with it is that it is unintelligible...
...And how can one simultaneously 'vitiate a tension,' and 'prey upon it?' Is Mr...
...This has been done repeatedly in New York, where there are probably more cops per capita than in any other major city in the United States, yet the crime rate continues to go up instead of down...
...Thus, Buckley began his campaign by setting forth a 10-point program dealing with crime, narcotics, race, traffic, labor unions, gambling, taxis, welfare, schools, and the applicability of the minimum wage law to children...
...In typical Buckley style, its self-deflating title is The Unmaking of a Mayor...
...Examples of this reluctance are legion...
...Probably the reason the Conservatives have made substantial progress in developing political power is that they are not afraid to cope with the major problems...
...The book is a compendium of campaign witticisms, reflective speculations on issues and programs, contemptuous remarks about politicians, delightful dissections of the other candidates and their rhetoric, and well-selected excerpts from everybody's campaign statements...
...He remained satisfied only with his position on schools...
...Buckley's contributions to the campaign were so varied that they are almost impossible to catalog...
...How would he know if they were inadequate...
...And between June 1965 and the writing of his book, Buckley changed his mind about his solutions for narcotics and race, modified his approach to the traffic, and dropped half his crime program...
...He has a case to make????for having parties and candidates deal straightforwardly with the issues that bother people, without regard to the supposed political consequences of the truth...
...Buckley's discussion of his 10-point program illustrates the flexibility I am talking about...
...Traffic is considered "non-political," and the Commissioner of Traffic is supposed to be free from any kind of "political" pressure...
...And now he has added a spriteiy, amusing, acerbic memoir of the campaign...
...The Unmaking of a Mayor is perhaps a glimpse into our future politics...
...The liberal community's image of the Conservatives is badly outdated????essentially 19th-century men yearning for the 18th century, seeking to repeal the income tax, etc...
...But they do not like to talk about these subjects because they have no better solutions to offer than increasing the size of the police force...
...For after all, Buckley did have charm, audacity, debating skill...
...and he did talk about what is bothering the voters...
...And in what sense is 'evasiveness' the opposite of 'energy...
...Lindsay seriously concerned about the educational standards of New York City...
...And, indeed, he has succeeded in pointing up a major failure of the two principal political parties in recent years...
...in fact, they attack them with gusto...
...Buckley's concern for the English language and his analyses of his opponents' banalities should be required reading for all political speech writers...
...and he did run a strong race...
Vol. 50 • January 1967 • No. 3
