NOTE:  This is a dip into the political history of the 1960's and 1970's. If it does not hold your attention, don't worry.  You can always find it on our home page, www.nycivic.org.  We have now written 187 columns, not counting the 36 Q's.  I hope we have kept your interest most of the time.  And thank you for your gifts and the kind words you have sent us.

A Column for Political Junkies:
We Recall the Last Generation.

By Henry J. Stern
January 4, 2005

In our first column of the year sent to you yestreen, we surveyed the mayoral election just ten months away, and forecast a decline in reasoning and civility in the public statements of candidates.   The best way to demonstrate this is to collect for you choice examples of politicians' words as they appear in the press.   This may or may not be effective in improving the quality of public discourse, but hopefully the samples we show will encourage clarity and courtesy in expression.  We start tomorrow.
 
In an unexplainable slip yesterday, I accidentally called Mayor Lindsay the successor to Mayor Beame.   In fact, Lindsay preceded Beame. I know that real well, because the election was in 1973, the year I was elected Councilman-at-Large from Manhattan on the Liberal Party line.  I had served eight years in the Lindsay administration, and did not believe Mayor Beame would tolerate me.  By getting elected to the Council, I was beyond his reach for four years.  When our terms ended, in 1977, I was re-elected but he was not.  To be fair, he had much stronger opposition, Koch and Cuomo, while my rival for second place was Arch Gillies.  For the Council, I could win by coming in second to the Democrat.  Beame, however, came in third in his primary, and did not make the runoff.
 
We thank Sid Davidoff for being the first to e-mail us on the error, less than an hour after the article appeared.  He was followed by Daniel Leaf, Bob Steingut, Jason Gettinger, Seth Kaye, Woody Ryder and Gerald Conroy.  We welcome corrections when they are required.
 
Another oversight yesterday was the omission of one of New York's great mayors, Robert F. Wagner, who served twelve years (1954-65).  His era saw the transformation of the city's political culture in 1961, when, denied re-nomination by Carmine DeSapio and the Democratic bosses, he and his running mates, Abe Beame and Paul Screvane, defeated the machine to win re-election.  Four years later, Beame and Screvane ran against each other for mayor.  Beame won the nomination, but Lindsay won the election.  (The candidate for City Council president on Screvane's ticket was Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  He lost.)
 
A reader, John Donahue, has sent us an inspiring letter about Mayor Wagner, which I am proud to link to here.  Wagner was not at all flashy, but his persona was one of calmness and strength.  He very rarely said anything bad about anyone else.  The best line about him was written by the late wonderful columnist for the old Post, Murray Kempton.  He wrote, "The political graveyards of New York City are littered with the bones of those who underestimated Robert F. Wagner."

We hearken back to the confusion between predecessors and successors.  The first modern commissioner who succeeded his own successor was this columnist.  By appointment of Mayor Koch as parks commissioner, I was the predecessor of Betsy Gotbaum, who was Mayor Dinkins' choice.  Four years later, I succeeded her when Mayor Giuliani brought me back as commissioner.
 
This achievement was duplicated by Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty, who resigned from Team Giuliani in 1999 to go to California.  He was succeeded by Kevin Farrell, a high police official.   When Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, he restored Commissioner Doherty, a career Sanitation Department officer.  There is a small difference between the Doherty and Stern cases: he quit and I was fired.  No problem.

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