The Unmaking of a Mayor

(Paperback, 50th Anniversary Edition)

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John V. Lindsay was elected mayor of New York City in 1965. But that years mayoral campaign will forever be known as the Buckley campaign. As a candidate, Joseph Alsop conceded, Buckley was cleverer and livelier than either of his rivals. And Murray Kempton concluded that The process which coarsens every other man who enters it has only refined Mr. Buckley.
The Unmaking of a Mayor is a time capsule of the political atmosphere of America in the spring of 1965, diagnosing the multitude of ills that plagued New York and other major cities: crime, narcotics, transportation, racial bias, mismanagement, taxes, and the problems of housing, police, and education. Buckleys nimble dissection of these issues constitutes an excellent primer of conservative thought.
A good pathologist, Buckley shows that the diseases afflicting New York City in 1965 were by no means of a unique strain, and compared them with issues that beset the country at large. Buckley offers a prescient vision of the Republican Party and Americas two-party system that will be of particular interest to todays conservatives. The Unmaking of a Mayor ends with a wistful glance at what might have been in 1965and what might yet be.

Author Bio

William F. Buckley, Jr., was the author of fifty previous works of fiction and nonfiction. The founder and former editor-in-chief of National Review and former host of Firing Line, he was one of the intellectual leaders of the right since the 1950s. His syndicated column, "On the Right," began in 1962 and appeared in newspapers around the country. He served as a CIA agent in the early 1950s, helped found the Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H.W. Bush in 1991.