The Week

• Riddle: How can you tell a Great Society man from an old fogey? Answer: Ask him to identify “U.S. Grant.” If the answer is “a Civil War general” he’s a certified of.; if he says “a federal subsidy,” he’s G.S. for sure.

• Paul O’Dwyer’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York was, to put it mildly, a dismal affair. He operated out of a fifth-floor loft on Manhattan’s gamy West Side and drew most of his support from friends, family and name (his older brother having once been mayor). His showing primary night (28,000 votes of 738,000 cast, far back, fourth in a field of four) was so bad as to suggest he would have done better not to campaign at all. Imagine the general surprise election night, then, when who should walk into O’Dwyer headquarters, unannounced and unexpected, but Senator Robert F. Kennedy. After uttering a few amiable banalities (“Paul O’Dwyer has a lot to offer this city”) and attracting every television hookup in town, the Senator proceeded (in a precisely ascending order of vote totals) to the Ryan (113,000), Screvane (269,-000), and Beame (328,000: The Winner!) camps—the television cameras chugging every step of the way. It was a magnificent grandstand play, reminiscent not so much of the Senator’s late brother. as of LBJ in Atlantic City. More important, it served notice on all concerned that, with the defeat of Screvane, Mayor Wagner’s man, the New York Democratic Party is Bobby Kennedy’s party.

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• Riddle: How can you tell a Great Society man from an old fogey? Answer: Ask him to identify “U.S. Grant.” If the answer is “a Civil War general” he’s a certified of.; if he says “a federal subsidy,” he’s G.S. for sure.

• Paul O’Dwyer’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York was, to put it mildly, a dismal affair. He operated out of a fifth-floor loft on Manhattan’s gamy West Side and drew most of his support from friends, family and name (his older brother having once been mayor). His showing primary night (28,000 votes of 738,000 cast, far back, fourth in a field of four) was so bad as to suggest he would have done better not to campaign at all. Imagine the general surprise election night, then, when who should walk into O’Dwyer headquarters, unannounced and unexpected, but Senator Robert F. Kennedy. After uttering a few amiable banalities (“Paul O’Dwyer has a lot to offer this city”) and attracting every television hookup in town, the Senator proceeded (in a precisely ascending order of vote totals) to the Ryan (113,000), Screvane (269,-000), and Beame (328,000: The Winner!) camps—the television cameras chugging every step of the way. It was a magnificent grandstand play, reminiscent not so much of the Senator’s late brother. as of LBJ in Atlantic City. More important, it served notice on all concerned that, with the defeat of Screvane, Mayor Wagner’s man, the New York Democratic Party is Bobby Kennedy’s party.