Portrait of an Imperial Governorship

...Reviewed by Steven R. Weisman Former Albany bureau chief, the New York "Times" On first consideration, the appearance now of a book the authors themselves describe as a "sympathetic yet critical look" at the governorship of Nelson A. Rockefeller seems almost pointless...

...It is unlikely that any future work about the Rockefeller years will succeed without building on this book...

...At the state level, no governor in the United States is ever again likely to wield the influence that Nelson Rockefeller commanded...

...Rockefeller's success was rooted in his ability to master this process...

...But on the other side of the ledger was the mountainous debt, much of it precariously financed, that began to collapse in the fiscal crisis of 1975-76...

...But immediately after the legislation setting up the MTA passed, TBTA bondholders sued to block the siphoning off of funds...

...So there is not even the sense of examining the entrails of his long-forgotten bond issues, tax proposals, legislative initiatives, and squabbles with former New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay for clues to what might have been—to how he might have performed as president...

...Ultimately, it was the conservative, not the liberal, critique of Rockefeller that was most compelling...

...One story related in this book provides a striking example of just how influential he was...

...How well this mastery would have carried over into a Rockefeller presidency—had the Governor ever realized his greatest ambition—is open to question...

...Other books have looked at the Rockefeller era in New York with a more jaundiced eye...

...The New York Legislature is wholly dominated by its leaders—the Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader...

...The bare facts of the Rockefeller record are well known: a budget that grew from $2 billion to $8.85 billion during his years in office...

...The fierceness of their 1971 fight over Rockefeller's tax proposals, and Dur-yea's subsequent indictment (for violation of an election law later declared unconstitutional), left such a bitter taste that Rockefeller ended up virtually endorsing Carey, a Democrat, over Duryea in last year's gubernatorial contest...

...Indeed, were he alive today and still bidding for the nation's top political post, he would be among the aspiring candidates who are once more calling for strong "leadership" and beckoning the United States to return to the road of "decisiveness and courage...

...For the pendulum has begun to swing back toward acceptance of the "imperial presidency"—a notion many political scientists thought had been shot down by the Vietnam War and Watergate?and Rockefeller was very much cast in that mold...

...a university system whose enrollment exploded from 38,000 to 246,000 students...

...In 1967, the state created the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a superagency designed to run the commuter railroad and the New York City subway and bus system...

...Drily told, this anecdote is nevertheless revealing...

...They offer an excellent description of Albany politics, taking thetrou-ble to look behind the cliches about power in that much-maligned institution, the New York State Legislature...

...Nor did Rockefeller handle himself well in his one instance of "crisis" management—the bloody Attica revolt of 1971 that left nine hostages and 31 prisoners dead, and a governor stubbornly defending his unwillingness to negotiate...

...Along with the rest of us, the authors can only speculate whether or not Rockefeller arranged to have Duryea indicted...

...This meant that Rockefeller's battles—and he had many—were with people like Perry B. Duryea, the Republican Speaker who was perhaps his greatest at-home nemesis...

...The new body's hopes for success lay in its ability to tap surplus income from the old Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA), which it had subsumed...

...But my point is that the battles Rockefeller had in Albany were of a different character than those he would have faced in Washington?where power is so splintered that Congress has become an amalgam of free-floating antagonisms and alliances, preventing much from getting done...

...It was "settled out of court" following a private meeting between the Governor and his brother David, the chairman of Chase, in a deal that gave the bondholders slightly higher interest...

...Connery and Benjamin, by contrast, believe he "suffered the defects of his virtues" and erred most often in the excess with which he pursued his goals...

...Robert H. Connery is professor emeritus of public law and government at Columbia University, and Gerald Benjamin is associate professor of political science and chairman of the department at the State University of New York at New Paltz...

...And when one looks closely, as they have, one sees that the Governor ruled as much by accommodation as anything else...

...In general," they write, "an analysis of the legislative process in New York during the Rockefeller years reveals a pattern of bargaining rather than one of dominance...

...Rockefeller of New York is a readable, meticulously researched, carefully documented account of one of the most remarkable public careers of our time...

...and untold construction projects, including the $1.5 billion Albany mall that Governor Hugh L. Carey has named after its progenitor...

...He achieved mightily, but tried to do too much too fast...

...His mightiest achievement, in their view, was the creation of a first-rate state university system...

...We are told, for instance, that one motive for Rockefeller's decision to build the Albany mall was a 1960 visit of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands...

...On a broader level, though, this study of Rockefeller's 15 years in the statehouse is very relevant...

...What they give us is no David Halberstam goulash of anecdotes and orotundities, no Theodore H. White catalogue of lonely, powerful men standing at the nexus of their loneliness and power...

...There are occasional references to such theories, but on the whole the authors stick to the facts and use the abstractions to give them dimension, rather than the other way round...

...When he left office in 1973, many of the Governor's most acerbic critics regarded his legacy as one of reaction and conservatism...

...They attempt, rather, to place the events in context, and they see his dilemmas from his perspective...

...Connery and Benjamin also avoid the mistake of making their narrative into a compendium of abstract theories of government...

...Connery and Benjamin do not let Rockefeller off the hook in either of these areas, yet neither do they vilify him...

...Connery and Benjamin caution, however, against seeing Rockefeller's governorship as a display of one-man rule...

...The student of contemporary politics, Federal-state relations, and the shifting attitudes toward executive leadership will find it genuinely illuminating...

...Rockefeller's failures, the authors conclude, "resulted from his inability to accept the limits of his circumstances, and thus to anticipate the cumulative consequences of his decisions...

...After all, years before his death last January, Rockefeller stopped being a potential presidential candidate...

...Having invited her to attend the ceremonies marking the founding of the state capital, the Governor had to repeatedly change her route from the airport to avoid the city's worst slums...

...Although the authors are well aware of the grey areas in Rockefeller's character—the outsized ego, the lengths he traveled to get his way, the sheer ruth-lessness—these qualities sometimes emerge only by implication...

...Also present mostly by implication, given the authors' effectively low-key analysis, is a timely reminder of the dangers and limitations of the zealous, totally-in-control chief executive...

...a tax levy that went from $94 to $460 for every person in the state...

...For example, Michael Kramer and Sam Roberts, two investigative reporters, scrutinized the record with a good deal of cynicism in their biography, / Never Wanted to be Vice President of Anything/ But the two academics take the business of government seriously—as the final measure of the mixture of personality and politics that journalists have tended to focus on...

...Their suit was brought by Chase Manhattan Bank...

...As a source and a history, Rockefeller of New York offers an excellent chronology, although mercifully it is not organized chronologically...

...It is hard to imagine anyone executing this sort of maneuver today...