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Nonetheless, the two mayors became ideograms frozen in the para–
tactic moments of urban rioting. The image of Lindsay that still endures
is of a caring man walking the streets of Harlem, courageously keeping
the city relatively calm as other cities went up in flames. The primary
author of the Kerner Commission report on urban riots, Lindsay saw
racism not only as a scourge but as virtually the sale explanation for
African-American poverty. The jowly Daley by contrast was as rough–
edged as Lindsay was smooth. His frustrated press secretary once
blurted, "Print what he means not what he says." One of his most
famous malapropisms was, "The policeman isn't there to create disor–
der; the policeman is there to preserve disorder." Daley's infamous
"shoot to kill" arsonists order during the 1968 riots as well as the police
riots that accompanied the Democratic Convention of that year are
often the first things his name brings to mind.
Daley's and Lindsay's names were taken as the pole stars of city pol–
itics. Here's how
The Boston Globe
described the once-promising career
of Mayor Kevin White when he left office: "Elected in 1967 as Boston's
answer to John Lindsay, New York's young reform mayor, White left in
1984 as Boston's Richard Daley, the aging and resented Chicago
machine boss." In the mid-196os, Lindsay, his picture on the cover of
all the newsweeklies, was seen as nothing less than the Second Coming
of JFK. His youth, vigor, and moral commitment to racial equality gave
him an extraordinary aura. There was even talk-talk that Lindsay
encouraged-that he was likely to be president some day. But if Lindsay
was once revered, this New York mayor who was supposed to represent
the future of urban America has since been largely forgotten, while
Daley, the man reviled as a dinosaur, is not only remembered but
extolled as forerunner of today's successful new-wave mayors.
While Lindsay has been ranked as one of the worst big city mayors,
the same poll of political scientists and historians selected Daley as the
single best mayor of the late twentieth century and one of the ten best
in American history. Today Daley's son, Richard M. Daley, reigns virtu–
ally unchallenged as his father's legatee. And at a time when mayors like
to think of themselves as efficient managers rather than the social con–
science of the country, the phrase "Boss Daley," popularized by Mike
Royko, has, says Alan Ehrenhalt, "lost the evil connotation for most
people that it seemed to have a quarter-century ago."
Why the reversal? In part, says political analyst Jim Chapin, it is a
matter both of exoticism and of subtly shifting standards. In the sixties,
jowly, aging, overweight machine politicians were old hat, a dime a
dozen; the blow-dried dynamic Lindsay seemed different and promising.
