Lindsay: A Political Fantasy

"It 'was not an easy decision," John Lindsay told a press conference in the late summer of 1970. "Some of my best friends are Republicans. But the nation's cities have troubles to which the Republican Party has not been sufficiently responsive. I have therefore decided to join the Democratic Party in order to carry the message of the cities more effectively."

THE scene is not that difficult to imagine. For all of his political life, Lindsay has been afflicted by the delusion that he is a Republican. But the label grows more threadbare by the month. In fact, Lindsay has been a man without a party ever since last spring's New York mayoral primaries, when the Republicans denied him their nomination. Lindsay, the urbanist out of St. Paul's, Yale and Manhattan's silk-stocking district, ran for re-election as an Independent and a Liberal Party candidate. Now he presides over a city hall aswarm with Democrats, Kennedyites and peaceniks.

In a time of notably unglamorous national politicians, Lindsay, a prime and ambitious 48, is, as one New Jersey Democrat called him, "a beautiful piece of political property." But whose property? Unless he wishes to end up in that political boneyard where former mayors of New York City traditionally molder, Lindsay must create an identity and plan that will liberate him from city hall and place him in the ranks of national leaders.

Lindsay could remain a Republican, although for the moment his future in the G.O.P. looks rather forlorn. He and Nelson Rockefeller coexist with all the benign symbiosis of mongoose and cobra. Since Lindsay's own city G.O.P. organization would not back him last fall, he could hardly fare better with the state Republicans controlled by Rockefeller. If Lindsay cannot win the governorship or a place in the Senate--both seats are occupied by liberal Republicans --he has little hope of winning a future place on the Republican national ticket. Still, if he waits until 1974 to run for Governor, he might broaden his Republican constituency and succeed Rockefeller in Albany, a powerful base from which to campaign for the presidential nomination in 1976.

Alternatively, Lindsay might remain an independent, accumulating a fusion following of the young, the blacks and the liberal suburbanites increasingly turned off by both major parties. In 1972, with Nixon, George Wallace and someone like Hubert Humphrey or Edmund Muskie in the race, Lindsay might gamble on a fourth-party movement to try for the White House or at least establish a base for future attempts.

In some ways, the third course is most beguiling. A scenario for an apostate Lindsay might go like this:

Late this year he becomes a Democrat. The reaction is somewhat schizophrenic. Ted Kennedy issues a halfhearted welcoming statement, intending to support Lindsay for President in 1972, watch him lose to Nixon and then step forward himself in 1976. The Democratic National Chairman is delighted to have such a lustrous fund raiser join the ranks. Others are less pleased with the interloper, and they are not all Southern Democrats. Maine's Edmund Muskie rather archly welcomes Lindsay aboard, after passing the word to a press secretary to triple his own speaking engagements. Hubert Humphrey greets the news with a long and effusive speech in praise of party loyalty.

Throughout 1971, Lindsay travels the U.S. on whatever weekends he finds free to drum up funds for his new party and support for the urban cause. At first, he has virtually no clout with the party's entrenched powers. The charges of opportunism do not fade quickly. Yet through the year, his fund raising and obvious attraction for the young, the blacks and other minorities build his credit.

The gathering Lindsay movement produces a curious effect on the Administration. Before Lindsay's switch, Nixon guarded his right flank, fearing that Ronald Reagan or George Wallace might advance as the conservative leader if the President's policies began to look too liberal. Now Nixon moves a shade more toward left-center, emphasizing less Southern strategy and more urban programs, lest Lindsay build sufficient momentum to be a presidential threat.

In the Democratic primaries in 1972, Lindsay enlists a McCarthyesque volunteer army of the young. Edmund Muskie wins New Hampshire, though barely, and takes Indiana solidly. But Lindsay's organization runs up a startling string of victories in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Oregon and California. By convention time, some party strategists begin to think that Nixon may not be quite as invulnerable as he looks. Inflation is down, but 200,000 American troops remain in Viet Nam. The cleaner environment that Nixon envisioned proves more expensive, more elusive, more difficult to achieve than anticipated. His soothing policies of underplaying national problems worked well for a time, but now the nation is growing somewhat restive again. Although the President still seems unbeatable, the Democrats think they might magnify and capitalize on gathering discontent. Rather than rely on Muskie's safer and quieter persona, they gamble on Lindsay's glamour and appeal to the young . . .

The fantasy, of course, is improbable. If Lindsay did become a Democrat, he might be more likely to run behind. say, Muskie in the primaries. Lindsay might stay alive for a few ballots at the convention and then capitulate, or at best, be persuaded to take second spot on the ticket. And that slate might lose disastrously in November.

When the subject comes up now. Lindsay always insists that he will remain a Republican "at this time." But a man deluged by snowstorms and garbage strikes, the sooty malaise of New York winters, must sometimes dream. As President, after all, Lindsay could savor the sheer noblesse oblige of naming Rockefeller to be Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs.

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