I remember Mayor Linseed of Gotham City.
-PJ
Posted on 12/09/2011 10:48:42 AM PST by Rummyfan
When John Lindsay died eleven years ago this month, hardly anyone apart from the obituary writers paid any attention. He had long been out of the public eye, and he is now almost entirely forgotten. But I remember, and we could all, I think, learn a little something from considering his trajectory – for it casts light on the path followed by our current President.
...
In the last three years, I have had frequent occasion to think of John Lindsay – for the political machine that he patched together was the forerunner of the coalition that elected Barack Obama President.
...
Like Lindsay’s supporters in the Silk Stocking District, they were for the most part a product of the Ivy League, the Seven Sisters, and other colleges and universities of similar stature, and, like them, they had embraced all of the fashionable causes. They supported abortion and endorsed gay rights. They had fallen prey to the most ridiculous forms of environmental alarmism, and they had come to regard religious Americans of all stripes, small businessmen, and white ethnic working stiffs with an almost undisguised contempt.
(Excerpt) Read more at ricochet.com ...
William F. Buckley ran for Mayor against Lindsay to prevent him from becoming mayor, then governor, then president. He became mayor but never got any further.
It is not John Lindsay, it is John Lindslay as the great Mike Quill (head of the NYC Transport Workers Union) used to say.
The shabby way with which the GOP establishment treated Reagan in 1976 was also one of the reasons I became a Democrat.
You must mean John Lindsay of the great Queens snowstorm back in the late 60’s. Fine example of a liberal incompetent and RINO of the first order.
John Lindsay, you will not be dead as long as Romney is alive.
The Republican Party leadership is full of these Democrat Party infiltrators, which is the reason that the Republican Party is not a conservative political party. This why the Republican Party doesn't represent or care for TEA Party conservative politics. Frankly, the Republican leadership hates conservatives and tolerates them only for the potential votes conservatives may be able to deliver for the Republican Party's crypto liberal/Democrat candidates it runs (e.g. McCain, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Huntsman, Romney, etc.).
“Mr. Buckley, what is the first thing you’ll do if elected?”
“Demand a recount.”
In New York Young Americans for Freedom, we had a song (to the tune of “Windy”):
Who’s walking down the streets of Fun City,
Smiling at every mugger he sees?
Who’s putting all the junkies on welfare?
Everyone knows it’s Lindsay.
He thought he would do well in the Florida primary, but Alabama governor George Wallace blew him away.
People in NYC have forgotten Lindsay; is there anything named after him? Didn’t he leave NYC in his later years. The NYC people though do wish Lindsay’s liberalism had worked. They are still trying to implement it.
Some of my fondest memories from YAF national conferences of yore were the late-night parties in which we would sing songs from the YAF Songbook.
I remember Mayor Linseed of Gotham City.
-PJ
Oh, people remember Lindsay but what’s to talk about? No one talks about Dinkins or Beame, either. Guiliani and Koch, though, yes!
Lindsay was a member of a club I still belong to. At the end he was in terrible health and I believe, had Alzheimers. His only strong points were that he was a nice-looking man and had a ready wit. Dreadful Mayor, though.
And of course the Florence Henderson story this year (you can google it) briefly brought his name back into notoriety (like Barbara Walters did to Ed Brooke, who really was forgotten, even though he's still alive).
Rahe is right about Obama and Lindsay so far as The New Yorker and its readers are concerned. Upper class Manhattan liberals had the same enthusiasm for both candidates and the same kind of blind spots.
Just how much of the country (or even how much of Obama's following) fits that description is harder to say, but Obama's approach this year looks a little like Lindsay's in his 1972 presidential run: go for the rich, minorities, and the young.
It didn't work for Lindsay at all.
At our 1981 convention in Boston, we actually got a story from the New York Times that quoted the songbook.
I recall the famous NY Post headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." I don't recall Ford bailing them out.
Sort of like George Bush I's no new taxes pledge.
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