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The Ungovernable City
Vincent Cannato takes us back to the time when John Lindsay stunned New York with his liberal Republican agenda, WASP sensibility, and movie-star good looks. With peerless authority, Cannato explores how Lindsay Liberalism failed to save New York, and, in the opinion of many, left it worse off than it was in the mid-1960's.
720 pages, Paperback
First published June 20, 2001
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January 16, 2018
Vote people into power and they'll send police to beat you when there's a disagreement.
Ever has it been, save for a unique time in New York City from 1965 to 1973 when a tall, handsome, patrician man -- a liberal Republican of all things -- succeeded in governing a different way.
He left the mayoralty exhausted, his political fortunes in ruin. He aged without the benefit of any commemoration or recognition of merit. His health was failing and, because his time in city government had been so short, he lacked a pensioner’s health care until then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cooked up a job for him.
In the end he could not afford to live in the city over which he once reigned glamorous and intellectually challenging, and moved to South Carolina where he died a mostly forgotten man.
But today we remember John Vliet Lindsay for the unique, almost odd, position he held in American politics, and the meritorious way he chose to look into the eyes of those he governed, rather than down on them.
The information gathered for this essay comes from a fantastic book by Vincent J. Cannato entitled, “The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York.”
The author himself seems conflicted about John Lindsay for he has dedicated a goodly portion of time and talent to study a man he considers a failure, which is okay. Life's purported "losers" have much to teach us and this he seems to know.
Cannato's analysis is that Lindsay stitched together a unique coalition of ritzy Manhattan liberals, poor blacks, poor Puerto Ricans, and ambivalent Jews to assume power, but failed miserably at understanding or governing to the benefit of ethnic Irish, Italian and German middle-class elements in the outer boroughs.
Lindsay felt the people of New York, minorities in particular, had a reasonable gripe where the issue of police violence was concerned. In response, he proposed a Civilian Complaint Review Board to weigh their protests, but it lost in a ballot referendum.
And so the police remained accountable to essentially no one but themselves.
They were uncommonly difficult years to be at loggerheads with the police. Years when people hit the streets and demonstrated over long-festering grievances.
American cities burned with the rage of American blacks and they, in turn, suffered death and injury by violent state reaction. In New York, Lindsay sought to limit the damage, to prevent the kind of riots that signaled the permanent downturn of cities such as Detroit.
When Martin Luther King was assassinated, Harlem went bonkers and the mayor decided upon wading into the maelstrom.
“[S]omebody has to go up there,” he told them. “Somebody white just has to face that emotion and say that we’re sorry.”
Columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote: "He looked straight at the people on the streets and he told them he was sick and he was sorry about Martin Luther King. And the poor he spoke to who are so much more real than the rest of us, understood the truth of John Lindsay. And there was no riot in New York.”
And then there was the anti-war/student left.
Here's Cannato again: “[Lindsay:] said youth of the time included a ‘prophetic minority,’ of activists and protesters who, ‘react to the world not by turning their backs upon it, but by facing it honestly and forthrightly -- as it is…Those who would rebel against the conventions of our society have sound grounds, in logic and in conscience, for doing so. I should remind you, however, that the rebel who overturns society’s conventions, must take on the corresponding obligation to construct new and better conventions in their place.’”
In 1971 the city’s police went on strike largely because hey had no respect for a boss that would cooperate with, say, Yippie rabble-rouser Abbie Hoffman whom Lindsay dispatched aide Ted Mastroiannni, head of the Lower East Side Task Force, to deal with.
Hoffman’s anarchic treatise, “F--k the System,” was funded by the Lindsay administration, however obliquely. Cannato describes the tome as, “a guide for young people to mooch their way through New York. It gave information on free food, clothes, money, rent, movies as well as on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases.”
The paragraph conveys the author’s bourgeois sensibility and is a proper reflection of many a New Yorker's inability to comprehend the great mayor's approach, to see that if something is free, one is not mooching, that where there is information about sexually transmitted diseases, less diseases are transmitted sexually.
The Lindsay gang's was an unusually open and, dare we say, democratic bent to governing seen, for example, in the administration's approach to the park system.
Lindsay's first appointee to the position of parks commissioner was Thomas P.F. Hoving, a thirty-five-year old curator of the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters, son of the president of Tiffany's, and possessor of an art history background
“He wanted to democratize the use of city parks and take the 'No' out of park signs…" writes Cannato. "Hoving was a whirl of activity. His most famous innovations were ‘Hoving Happenings.’ At one of these ‘happenings,’ on a Sunday afternoon in May, Hoving opened Central Park to adults and children alike to paint away on a 105-foot canvas with paint provided by the city…Hoving also held a kite party in Central Park, though kites had been banned there for sixty years. He organized a huge game of capture-the-flag for children…on the Lower East Side a mound of dirt brought into Tompkins Square Park to fill in tree pits had become a favorite play site for local children. When filling began and the mound shrunk, the community protested. Hoving proclaimed that the mount of dirt would remain, and ‘Hoving Hill’ was born.
This is called yielding to the wishes of those governed and engaging them with a flexible mindset.
But the new access, Cannato continues, "created conflicts over the vision of the park, however. It caused strain on the upkeep of the park’s grass, shrubs, and plants. It also caused political strain as the park became a center for antiwar protests and countercultural activity such as love-ins, drug taking, loud music, and other uncivil behavior. Though a patrician Republican, Hoving was sympathetic to the counterculture. Robert Moses called Hoving a ‘recreational leftist’."
Cannato claims that Lindsay himself thought the parks ought to be "a safety valve for all this protest, that they ought to be the area where these great dramas were acted out.”
A “New York Times” essayist, Marya Mannes drafted the darker side: "Litter overflows the baskets near the food stands, lies under benches, catches on twigs. Broken glass glints in the rocks where mica once glittered…"
Cannato discusses Lindsay’s, “inability to understand white, middle- and working-class homeowners living outside Manhattan. Secure enough not to rely on the city’s social welfare system but poor enough not to be able to indulge in the leisure style or political reforms of the upper class, these men and women possessed what appeared to Lindsay and his liberal supporters to be parochial concerns: lower taxes, more police protection, better city services, and protection of their neighborhoods.”
It is true, and he correctly points out that all ensuing coalitions pieced together by New York mayors catered to the needs of these groups.
And of course, as Cannato discusses in great detail, New York City was falling apart.
But the neighborhoods that came undone were well beyond the purview of any mayor to reverse at a time when international capital was on the move and the flow and more difficult to corral then a stream of demonstrators flowing down Broadway.
Nonetheless, this disintegration and disorder ended the American peoples' fling with liberalism.
But the city of filth was also the city of the Velvet Underground, the city of Andy Warhol's factory, Max's Kansas City, Fania Records, Tito Puente, SoHo, Edie Sedgewick, a metropolis that provided the world at large with artistic vision and direction for years afterward.
Cannato concludes with the lost opportunity of Lindsay's liberalism, but leans too heavily on finding fault with the man, when it was the larger picture that had distorted and rendered an ideology of cooperation and compassion something quaint and unrealizable.
That vital center has been pursued by American politicians for decades now. It would seem that, rather than a bad actor come late to the stage with outdated ideas, the liberal mayor was simultaneously behind and ahead of his times.
As such, John V. Lindsay's role was a difficult one, superhuman even, and still he delivered a rave performance as the "Marvelous Mayor."
Ever has it been, save for a unique time in New York City from 1965 to 1973 when a tall, handsome, patrician man -- a liberal Republican of all things -- succeeded in governing a different way.
He left the mayoralty exhausted, his political fortunes in ruin. He aged without the benefit of any commemoration or recognition of merit. His health was failing and, because his time in city government had been so short, he lacked a pensioner’s health care until then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cooked up a job for him.
In the end he could not afford to live in the city over which he once reigned glamorous and intellectually challenging, and moved to South Carolina where he died a mostly forgotten man.
But today we remember John Vliet Lindsay for the unique, almost odd, position he held in American politics, and the meritorious way he chose to look into the eyes of those he governed, rather than down on them.
The information gathered for this essay comes from a fantastic book by Vincent J. Cannato entitled, “The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York.”
The author himself seems conflicted about John Lindsay for he has dedicated a goodly portion of time and talent to study a man he considers a failure, which is okay. Life's purported "losers" have much to teach us and this he seems to know.
Cannato's analysis is that Lindsay stitched together a unique coalition of ritzy Manhattan liberals, poor blacks, poor Puerto Ricans, and ambivalent Jews to assume power, but failed miserably at understanding or governing to the benefit of ethnic Irish, Italian and German middle-class elements in the outer boroughs.
Lindsay felt the people of New York, minorities in particular, had a reasonable gripe where the issue of police violence was concerned. In response, he proposed a Civilian Complaint Review Board to weigh their protests, but it lost in a ballot referendum.
And so the police remained accountable to essentially no one but themselves.
They were uncommonly difficult years to be at loggerheads with the police. Years when people hit the streets and demonstrated over long-festering grievances.
American cities burned with the rage of American blacks and they, in turn, suffered death and injury by violent state reaction. In New York, Lindsay sought to limit the damage, to prevent the kind of riots that signaled the permanent downturn of cities such as Detroit.
When Martin Luther King was assassinated, Harlem went bonkers and the mayor decided upon wading into the maelstrom.
“[S]omebody has to go up there,” he told them. “Somebody white just has to face that emotion and say that we’re sorry.”
Columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote: "He looked straight at the people on the streets and he told them he was sick and he was sorry about Martin Luther King. And the poor he spoke to who are so much more real than the rest of us, understood the truth of John Lindsay. And there was no riot in New York.”
And then there was the anti-war/student left.
Here's Cannato again: “[Lindsay:] said youth of the time included a ‘prophetic minority,’ of activists and protesters who, ‘react to the world not by turning their backs upon it, but by facing it honestly and forthrightly -- as it is…Those who would rebel against the conventions of our society have sound grounds, in logic and in conscience, for doing so. I should remind you, however, that the rebel who overturns society’s conventions, must take on the corresponding obligation to construct new and better conventions in their place.’”
In 1971 the city’s police went on strike largely because hey had no respect for a boss that would cooperate with, say, Yippie rabble-rouser Abbie Hoffman whom Lindsay dispatched aide Ted Mastroiannni, head of the Lower East Side Task Force, to deal with.
Hoffman’s anarchic treatise, “F--k the System,” was funded by the Lindsay administration, however obliquely. Cannato describes the tome as, “a guide for young people to mooch their way through New York. It gave information on free food, clothes, money, rent, movies as well as on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases.”
The paragraph conveys the author’s bourgeois sensibility and is a proper reflection of many a New Yorker's inability to comprehend the great mayor's approach, to see that if something is free, one is not mooching, that where there is information about sexually transmitted diseases, less diseases are transmitted sexually.
The Lindsay gang's was an unusually open and, dare we say, democratic bent to governing seen, for example, in the administration's approach to the park system.
Lindsay's first appointee to the position of parks commissioner was Thomas P.F. Hoving, a thirty-five-year old curator of the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters, son of the president of Tiffany's, and possessor of an art history background
“He wanted to democratize the use of city parks and take the 'No' out of park signs…" writes Cannato. "Hoving was a whirl of activity. His most famous innovations were ‘Hoving Happenings.’ At one of these ‘happenings,’ on a Sunday afternoon in May, Hoving opened Central Park to adults and children alike to paint away on a 105-foot canvas with paint provided by the city…Hoving also held a kite party in Central Park, though kites had been banned there for sixty years. He organized a huge game of capture-the-flag for children…on the Lower East Side a mound of dirt brought into Tompkins Square Park to fill in tree pits had become a favorite play site for local children. When filling began and the mound shrunk, the community protested. Hoving proclaimed that the mount of dirt would remain, and ‘Hoving Hill’ was born.
This is called yielding to the wishes of those governed and engaging them with a flexible mindset.
But the new access, Cannato continues, "created conflicts over the vision of the park, however. It caused strain on the upkeep of the park’s grass, shrubs, and plants. It also caused political strain as the park became a center for antiwar protests and countercultural activity such as love-ins, drug taking, loud music, and other uncivil behavior. Though a patrician Republican, Hoving was sympathetic to the counterculture. Robert Moses called Hoving a ‘recreational leftist’."
Cannato claims that Lindsay himself thought the parks ought to be "a safety valve for all this protest, that they ought to be the area where these great dramas were acted out.”
A “New York Times” essayist, Marya Mannes drafted the darker side: "Litter overflows the baskets near the food stands, lies under benches, catches on twigs. Broken glass glints in the rocks where mica once glittered…"
Cannato discusses Lindsay’s, “inability to understand white, middle- and working-class homeowners living outside Manhattan. Secure enough not to rely on the city’s social welfare system but poor enough not to be able to indulge in the leisure style or political reforms of the upper class, these men and women possessed what appeared to Lindsay and his liberal supporters to be parochial concerns: lower taxes, more police protection, better city services, and protection of their neighborhoods.”
It is true, and he correctly points out that all ensuing coalitions pieced together by New York mayors catered to the needs of these groups.
And of course, as Cannato discusses in great detail, New York City was falling apart.
But the neighborhoods that came undone were well beyond the purview of any mayor to reverse at a time when international capital was on the move and the flow and more difficult to corral then a stream of demonstrators flowing down Broadway.
Nonetheless, this disintegration and disorder ended the American peoples' fling with liberalism.
But the city of filth was also the city of the Velvet Underground, the city of Andy Warhol's factory, Max's Kansas City, Fania Records, Tito Puente, SoHo, Edie Sedgewick, a metropolis that provided the world at large with artistic vision and direction for years afterward.
Cannato concludes with the lost opportunity of Lindsay's liberalism, but leans too heavily on finding fault with the man, when it was the larger picture that had distorted and rendered an ideology of cooperation and compassion something quaint and unrealizable.
That vital center has been pursued by American politicians for decades now. It would seem that, rather than a bad actor come late to the stage with outdated ideas, the liberal mayor was simultaneously behind and ahead of his times.
As such, John V. Lindsay's role was a difficult one, superhuman even, and still he delivered a rave performance as the "Marvelous Mayor."
May 8, 2017
4.5 stars. 720 pages of 1960s New York. It took me over a month to get through it, but I liked it better the further I went. Basically it's a tragedy--the failure of liberalism, the destruction of what could have been a brilliant political career; the decline and fall of New York City, caused by crime, violence, extremism, fiscal irresponsibility, intransigence and naïveté. Now that New York is safe and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, it's interesting to read about the bad old days, and how low the city sank. Was it Lindsay's fault? Cannato doesn't offer a clear conclusion, but I suspect he is no great fan of Lindsay. You come away from the book with plenty of sympathy for him, but it's also easy to blame him for a lot of what went wrong.
Lindsay was a strange mayor for New York, a white Protestant liberal Republican (a dying breed even back then) from a well-off but not super-rich family, tall and athletic, a Yale graduate with "movie star good looks", he was an advocate for the Black and Puerto Rican residents of Harlem, Bed-Stuy and Brownsville, but had a troubled relationship with the Jews, Irish and Italians of the outer boroughs. Basically he was idealistic, not as pragmatic as he needed to be, and things went pretty badly for him and New York.
Well-written , well-researched, informative, and sad.
Lindsay was a strange mayor for New York, a white Protestant liberal Republican (a dying breed even back then) from a well-off but not super-rich family, tall and athletic, a Yale graduate with "movie star good looks", he was an advocate for the Black and Puerto Rican residents of Harlem, Bed-Stuy and Brownsville, but had a troubled relationship with the Jews, Irish and Italians of the outer boroughs. Basically he was idealistic, not as pragmatic as he needed to be, and things went pretty badly for him and New York.
Well-written , well-researched, informative, and sad.
October 19, 2015
Give it another half star. A reader needs to have a strong desire to learn about New York under John Lindsay to work your way through this book. What attracted me to it was that it covers the period of time when I came of age. I can vividly remember the history of those 8 years. Mr. Lindsay's mayorality got off to the worst imaginable start when the Transport Workers Union went out on strike on January 1. For the most part for the next eight years it was down hill from there. The city continued the long slide that began under Mayor Wagner and accelerated through the Lindsay years. Sanitation strikes, Police sick outs and the long and devastating teacher's strikes in 1968 are only the tip of the iceberg that eventually brought the city to the edge of collapse.
Today the city, my home town, has recovered much of its luster, rising from the ashes of the World Trade Center. Maybe as just a visitor now I only see the city in its best light. Still it is nice to have it to return to and more importantly feel welcome there. You can go home again.
Today the city, my home town, has recovered much of its luster, rising from the ashes of the World Trade Center. Maybe as just a visitor now I only see the city in its best light. Still it is nice to have it to return to and more importantly feel welcome there. You can go home again.
May 8, 2014
In most stories, when the main character finds himself in a hole he stops digging. This is the infuriating, predictable and then just plain heartbreaking story of John V. Lindsay, who was elected mayor of a very large hole, and used all his charm, intellect and blinding liberal faith to keep digging, day and night, for eight years.
July 31, 2023
A biography that is refreshing for not eliding its subjects many faults and self-inflicted political errors.
October 5, 2025
A masterpiece of political history, combining good prose, solid research well arranged, and good judgement. Cannato does well to give us telling anecdotes and good detail without making us feel inundated, and even though he isn't a fan of Lindsay takes care not to damn him for things out of the control of any mayor.
April 15, 2022
A wonderful follow up to The Power Broker. I really liked this book, but it doesn't delve much into Lindsay's struggles of the extracurricular variety in regards to his marriage. Florence Henderson only gets a small mention ;)
November 9, 2022
Not enough analysis on the politics. Clearly a conservative take on Lindsay. Wish there was a book this size on Mayor Wagner.
April 29, 2024
Really detailed overview of 60s nyc politics and Lindsey. Think Robert Caro
June 15, 2009
Excellent writing... lively and provocative, but not overly so. Absent a weak second half, it'd be five stars.
Now to a side note: I've noticed that conservative historians are class obsessed... they're obsessed with demonstrating that there's like 2 rich people in America, and that everyone else is middle class.
Paul Johnson did it in his History of the U.S. And Cannato does it here, weirdly insisting that Lindsay was just middle class, not the patrician money we all think he was
On page 2 we get "In New York he was, in monetary terms, only middle class"). But in the next 2 paragraphs, we find out that Lindsay's father was an investment banker who became president of an international banking firm affiliated with Credit Suisse... the family lived on the upper west side and then Park Avenue. Maybe he meant Park Avenue in Harlem or something.
It's a weird tick they've got. It's like a commie insisting they came from the peasants, but with a American pro-capital ideological twist.
Finally, I do have a nagging sense he makes up a lot of shit. I don't know tho, so I'm assuming it's on the level. Anyway, a lively read and well-written. If it didn't bog down mid-way through, it'd be top rating.
Now to a side note: I've noticed that conservative historians are class obsessed... they're obsessed with demonstrating that there's like 2 rich people in America, and that everyone else is middle class.
Paul Johnson did it in his History of the U.S. And Cannato does it here, weirdly insisting that Lindsay was just middle class, not the patrician money we all think he was
On page 2 we get "In New York he was, in monetary terms, only middle class"). But in the next 2 paragraphs, we find out that Lindsay's father was an investment banker who became president of an international banking firm affiliated with Credit Suisse... the family lived on the upper west side and then Park Avenue. Maybe he meant Park Avenue in Harlem or something.
It's a weird tick they've got. It's like a commie insisting they came from the peasants, but with a American pro-capital ideological twist.
Finally, I do have a nagging sense he makes up a lot of shit. I don't know tho, so I'm assuming it's on the level. Anyway, a lively read and well-written. If it didn't bog down mid-way through, it'd be top rating.
November 1, 2016
Fascinating account of the political career of John Lindsay, who served two terms as mayor of New York City between 1965 and 1973.
We watch as he moves from being one of a breed we scarcely know today – a liberal Republican with high ideals and ambitions for office at national level. It ends with New York swamped in crime and corruption and Lindsay, by now a Democrat, exhausted and politically ruined.
I’m afraid the account is at its most interesting as we watch Lindsay’s career fall apart, but the whole book is absorbing, mostly well written, and amazingly detailed.
We watch as he moves from being one of a breed we scarcely know today – a liberal Republican with high ideals and ambitions for office at national level. It ends with New York swamped in crime and corruption and Lindsay, by now a Democrat, exhausted and politically ruined.
I’m afraid the account is at its most interesting as we watch Lindsay’s career fall apart, but the whole book is absorbing, mostly well written, and amazingly detailed.
January 22, 2008
Great urban history. If you're interested in what went wrong in New York in the late sixties and early seventies, this is a great book. Also a good story about upper class noblesse oblige and the havoc it can wreak.
October 24, 2007
Great book, easy read for such a tough subject. Really gives a picture of the utter turmoil that was New York City during the Lindsay administration. Imagine if you will, a transit strike, a garbage strike and three teacher's strikes, all in your first two years in office.
October 26, 2007
John Lindsay was a handsome, liberal Republican that everyone was sure would be the best thing to happen to New York since LaGuardia. And pretty much nothing went right once he took office.
July 22, 2009
Reminds us that the problems this country faces now, esp at the state government level, have been a long time in the making.
August 15, 2008
Enjoyed this, though the section on Lindsay's early years as mayor was far more compelling than the later years, where the narrative was a bit more scattershot.
November 2, 2009
Essential reading on NYC history. Each episode in Lindsay's stormy tenure sheds light on / has implications for today's conflicts.
December 20, 2012
Great bit of writing on NYC, the urban crises of the 60s and the 70s, and the politics of the era. Not a short read by any stretch, but contains great details and moves quickly.
April 22, 2017
I find NYC’s decline throughout the 60s and 70s endlessly fascinating, a metropolis hollowing out, and incredible innovations in art and music issuing forth. I tend to associate this time with the kind of 2nd & 3rd generation humor found in plays and TV shows of this era dominated by Italian, Jewish and Puerto Rican characters, like when people walk into Rhoda’s apartment with wisecracks about what just happened to them on the subway. What really happened was no laughing matter; an angry mob of construction workers marching to City Hall singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and bullying NYPD to show respect and take their helmets off sounds like an amusing anecdote, but like the rest of America during Vietnam, it indicates a breakdown of order and a society on the brink. This book outlines a cautionary political tale and describes the beginning of the decline of America’s postwar greatness.
The 1960s were a time of change for how labor conducted itself, how schools were run, and how demographic changes were dealt with. There was a realignment of party affiliations and Lindsay did not fit in with the post-1964 Republicans and especially the Nixon administration. In Manhattan, many groups affiliated with the labor movement (the white working class) shifted to the right in reaction to feeling neglected in political discourse. Meanwhile, the lower middle class, characterized by tradition and patriotism, felt a great dissonance with the ‘limousine leftists’ who invited militants into their homes in a seeming pursuit of ‘radical chic’. And all across America, cities were dealing with integration of schools. Most mayors knew how to build schools or deal with teachers’ unions, but Lindsay fumbled here. He understood the needs of black and Puerto Rican families, but he was unable to get the point across to the white working class who resented that they had never been able to agitate their way into better schools when they had first come to the city. As with so many social issues, Lindsay felt that his liberal, enlightened beliefs had been proven factual and that these issues should be treated accordingly; he did not understand that a huge percentage of his constituents did not view his beliefs as facts. He could not understand why his presence, walking the streets among distressed peoples and sometimes angry mobs, could provide some kind of reassurance to non-white residents but did nothing to placate the Italians, Jews, and Irish. The white flight that occurred in this area sped the decline in real estate values and living conditions, with some neighborhoods becoming burned out and crime ridden in a matter of 10 years. New York was not alone, however. Cities across America were on the verge of being abandoned by the people who made them work. In 1969 the nation underwent a recession that New York City did not bounce back from. Spending increased, much of it due to union pensions, the city hospital system and the city university system, and federal mandates like Medicaid and welfare. But the city’s income did not increase, as it no longer attracted people who held good jobs.
This was also a period of great police corruption in New York, exemplified by the Serpico case. But policing in general was beginning to change. With Lindsay’s instituting of ‘911’ emergency calls, there was less need for police to be regularly on the beat, as they could respond to calls where needed. This was helpful in reducing the number of police officers, as NYPD lost 6,000 between 1970 and 1972 because labor costs had become so high, particularly in regards to pensions and back pay following a 6-day strike in January 1971. Crime rates did rise in New York City during Lindsay’s administration, but they rose in almost all American cities during this period. Crime increased at a higher percentage than elsewhere, but New York continued to have considerably lower per capita crime than other cities, despite its reputation.
Lindsay wanted a fresh start with his administration, and he successfully wrested public works away from Robert Moses, who had been around since the 1930s, and eschewed consulting with power brokers like Cardinal Spellman when forming his cabinet. But Lindsay and his staff were unequipped to deal with unions, and within days of becoming mayor, he had a major mess with the Transit Authority over pensions. His (and his aide’s) handling of the strike signaled to other unions that an illegal strike could be enacted with few repercussions and possibly to their great benefit. As with white residents fleeing the city, the workers in the police and fire departments, both heavily Irish, felt disgusted at the mayor’s sympathy for the people (minorities, college students) who showed no respect for the men whose jobs were to keep the city safe. Sanitation workers, who were heavily Italian-American, also became alienated and seemingly went on strike for catharsis as much as for money or improved working conditions. Governor Rockefeller almost sent in the National Guard to break the strike, but felt it would have sparked mass rioting. Lindsay, however, was always great at quelling a riot or minimizing a riot’s damage by cleaning it up quickly and was proud to have not had the race riots that affected other cities such as nearby Newark.
While Lindsay was able to frequently minimize the damage caused by identity politics, the issue of ethnic identity, equal opportunity, and community control were all too heated when it came to the school system. There were problems with radicals at Columbia University and controversy over a proposed Morningside Park gym to be shared with Harlemites. There was great conflict over the ethnic makeup of newly built schools, teachers’ sensitivity to integration issues, and parents’ ability to affect change at their neighborhood schools. There was constant struggle over allocation of funds and a movement to decentralize the school district. And again, Lindsay could not deal with the teachers’ union. More than any other issue, community control vs. the teachers’ union drove a wedge between the black and Jewish communities. Many Jews perceived anti-white sentiment as anti-Semitic, and many black radicals were able to capitalize on anti-Semitic undertones in service of their anti-white crusade. Lindsay frequently stumbled with the Jewish community who felt that he was putting their needs at the bottom of his list of priorities, and it caused resentment toward blacks and Hispanics.
One of Lindsay’s other great failings was in not securing federal money for projects in New York. The greatest New York mayors, LaGuardia in particular, knew how to do this well. In addition, he was locked in constant struggle with Gov. Nelson Rockefeller who seemed to also want to be NYC mayor as well. It was Rockefeller who conceived two of the city’s most important public works projects of that era, Battery Park City and Roosevelt Island. Rockefeller got along well with unions and was able to cut deals and create jobs through public works. Rockefeller would often wait for Lindsay to falter so he could take over key departments (such as the MTA), and Lindsay’s administration was characterized by a constant battle between city and state governments that was really the men’s competition for power and prestige. What they could not control, however, was the rapid decline of urban neighborhoods due to longtime residents reacting to demographic changes. (I would argue, however, that it was the 1930s redlining of neighborhoods which created the more stringently segregated neighborhoods in the first place.)
Lindsay is a complicated man. He had the allure of someone who came from the smart set, but his beginnings are a bit more humble than that. He could have lived comfortably as a Wall Street lawyer, but he wanted to be defined by his ideals rather than the material world, aligning him (along with his looks and youth) more with the Camelot era than what he actually received as mayor, which was the country going through one of its greatest times of social upheaval, and New York City the most of all. Perhaps if he had become a senator he might have been able to focus on the issues he cared about, like poverty and inequality, without getting so much negative feedback. He presented as a supremely confident man, both those closest to him reported his extreme dismay or disdain for anyone who questioned him. He took one hit after another and his ego couldn’t stand it.
This is a long book and I wanted to read it for four years, but kept hoping that it would come out in an audio version. Finally, I had jury duty and read a library copy, getting halfway through in 3 days (this required not going out to lunch or leaving the building). But then it took another three months to get through the other half. My husband saw the book in the back of my car and asked, “When do you have time to read that?” and I replied, “Next time I have jury duty?” But I finally got through it, and I’m very glad I did.
The 1960s were a time of change for how labor conducted itself, how schools were run, and how demographic changes were dealt with. There was a realignment of party affiliations and Lindsay did not fit in with the post-1964 Republicans and especially the Nixon administration. In Manhattan, many groups affiliated with the labor movement (the white working class) shifted to the right in reaction to feeling neglected in political discourse. Meanwhile, the lower middle class, characterized by tradition and patriotism, felt a great dissonance with the ‘limousine leftists’ who invited militants into their homes in a seeming pursuit of ‘radical chic’. And all across America, cities were dealing with integration of schools. Most mayors knew how to build schools or deal with teachers’ unions, but Lindsay fumbled here. He understood the needs of black and Puerto Rican families, but he was unable to get the point across to the white working class who resented that they had never been able to agitate their way into better schools when they had first come to the city. As with so many social issues, Lindsay felt that his liberal, enlightened beliefs had been proven factual and that these issues should be treated accordingly; he did not understand that a huge percentage of his constituents did not view his beliefs as facts. He could not understand why his presence, walking the streets among distressed peoples and sometimes angry mobs, could provide some kind of reassurance to non-white residents but did nothing to placate the Italians, Jews, and Irish. The white flight that occurred in this area sped the decline in real estate values and living conditions, with some neighborhoods becoming burned out and crime ridden in a matter of 10 years. New York was not alone, however. Cities across America were on the verge of being abandoned by the people who made them work. In 1969 the nation underwent a recession that New York City did not bounce back from. Spending increased, much of it due to union pensions, the city hospital system and the city university system, and federal mandates like Medicaid and welfare. But the city’s income did not increase, as it no longer attracted people who held good jobs.
This was also a period of great police corruption in New York, exemplified by the Serpico case. But policing in general was beginning to change. With Lindsay’s instituting of ‘911’ emergency calls, there was less need for police to be regularly on the beat, as they could respond to calls where needed. This was helpful in reducing the number of police officers, as NYPD lost 6,000 between 1970 and 1972 because labor costs had become so high, particularly in regards to pensions and back pay following a 6-day strike in January 1971. Crime rates did rise in New York City during Lindsay’s administration, but they rose in almost all American cities during this period. Crime increased at a higher percentage than elsewhere, but New York continued to have considerably lower per capita crime than other cities, despite its reputation.
Lindsay wanted a fresh start with his administration, and he successfully wrested public works away from Robert Moses, who had been around since the 1930s, and eschewed consulting with power brokers like Cardinal Spellman when forming his cabinet. But Lindsay and his staff were unequipped to deal with unions, and within days of becoming mayor, he had a major mess with the Transit Authority over pensions. His (and his aide’s) handling of the strike signaled to other unions that an illegal strike could be enacted with few repercussions and possibly to their great benefit. As with white residents fleeing the city, the workers in the police and fire departments, both heavily Irish, felt disgusted at the mayor’s sympathy for the people (minorities, college students) who showed no respect for the men whose jobs were to keep the city safe. Sanitation workers, who were heavily Italian-American, also became alienated and seemingly went on strike for catharsis as much as for money or improved working conditions. Governor Rockefeller almost sent in the National Guard to break the strike, but felt it would have sparked mass rioting. Lindsay, however, was always great at quelling a riot or minimizing a riot’s damage by cleaning it up quickly and was proud to have not had the race riots that affected other cities such as nearby Newark.
While Lindsay was able to frequently minimize the damage caused by identity politics, the issue of ethnic identity, equal opportunity, and community control were all too heated when it came to the school system. There were problems with radicals at Columbia University and controversy over a proposed Morningside Park gym to be shared with Harlemites. There was great conflict over the ethnic makeup of newly built schools, teachers’ sensitivity to integration issues, and parents’ ability to affect change at their neighborhood schools. There was constant struggle over allocation of funds and a movement to decentralize the school district. And again, Lindsay could not deal with the teachers’ union. More than any other issue, community control vs. the teachers’ union drove a wedge between the black and Jewish communities. Many Jews perceived anti-white sentiment as anti-Semitic, and many black radicals were able to capitalize on anti-Semitic undertones in service of their anti-white crusade. Lindsay frequently stumbled with the Jewish community who felt that he was putting their needs at the bottom of his list of priorities, and it caused resentment toward blacks and Hispanics.
One of Lindsay’s other great failings was in not securing federal money for projects in New York. The greatest New York mayors, LaGuardia in particular, knew how to do this well. In addition, he was locked in constant struggle with Gov. Nelson Rockefeller who seemed to also want to be NYC mayor as well. It was Rockefeller who conceived two of the city’s most important public works projects of that era, Battery Park City and Roosevelt Island. Rockefeller got along well with unions and was able to cut deals and create jobs through public works. Rockefeller would often wait for Lindsay to falter so he could take over key departments (such as the MTA), and Lindsay’s administration was characterized by a constant battle between city and state governments that was really the men’s competition for power and prestige. What they could not control, however, was the rapid decline of urban neighborhoods due to longtime residents reacting to demographic changes. (I would argue, however, that it was the 1930s redlining of neighborhoods which created the more stringently segregated neighborhoods in the first place.)
Lindsay is a complicated man. He had the allure of someone who came from the smart set, but his beginnings are a bit more humble than that. He could have lived comfortably as a Wall Street lawyer, but he wanted to be defined by his ideals rather than the material world, aligning him (along with his looks and youth) more with the Camelot era than what he actually received as mayor, which was the country going through one of its greatest times of social upheaval, and New York City the most of all. Perhaps if he had become a senator he might have been able to focus on the issues he cared about, like poverty and inequality, without getting so much negative feedback. He presented as a supremely confident man, both those closest to him reported his extreme dismay or disdain for anyone who questioned him. He took one hit after another and his ego couldn’t stand it.
This is a long book and I wanted to read it for four years, but kept hoping that it would come out in an audio version. Finally, I had jury duty and read a library copy, getting halfway through in 3 days (this required not going out to lunch or leaving the building). But then it took another three months to get through the other half. My husband saw the book in the back of my car and asked, “When do you have time to read that?” and I replied, “Next time I have jury duty?” But I finally got through it, and I’m very glad I did.
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