In the Black With White?

As the icy Boston rain and wind grew more intense, fewer and fewer people were coming to the polling place. This gave the writer-turned-poll worker more cause to worry about his candidate's chances but also more time to talk. "Right now, the two most exciting cities in North America are Toronto and Montreal. Both are vibrant; they're filled with young creative and intelligent people. They're stimulating cities in which to live--ideas get tossed around; ideas get tried out.

"And I think with White as Mayor, the great creative resources around Boston will get tapped and Boston could again become an exciting city. But if Mrs. Hicks gets elected, Boston will continue to decay until it becomes as stolid and as provincial as one of those Irish county seats that most of our people walked out of 150 years ago." The mustachioed poll worker's analysis of Boston's fate under Mrs. Hicks seems essentially accurate; but the idea that the Honorable Kevin H. White, Secretary of State for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could turn Boston into the swinging Athens of America does seem open to question.

"Bland" is the word usually used to describe Boston's Mayor-elect. He looks like most any other well-to-do State Street lawyer. The people in the Ritz-Carlton Dining Room don't turn their heads when he walks in. (It must be admitted that the people in the Ritz-Carlton Dining Room turn their heads for very few people.) He hardly attracted any attention last summer when he would hop into the Clarendon Street Brigham's for coffee before spending the morning at his Back Bay headquarters. And his voice lacked the resonance or depth that one expects from a man whose advertising thundered "Who will do the things that must be done...NOW?" White's personal style seems to be that of a holder of ceremonial office, not that of a charismatic leader who will rejuvenate the city.

Many of White's speeches and much of his advertising, while calculated to inspire confidence, really don't. At his victory party White told the throng "I have said that the problems which face the city are multiple and complex. The important thing to remember is that we can solve them." There's nothing wrong with that sentiment, of course, but White's reliance on the usual cliches of the politician (a reliance that became more pronounced as the campaign drew to a close) suggested that he lacked the vigorous imagination or heightened perception which distinguishes the man of affairs from the politician.

Many of those close to White insist that he is anything but bland and that he is as imaginative and perceptive a politician as exists in the United States today.

Says one Harvard faculty member who took an active role in White's campaign, "Sure, before I started to do some work for him I thought he was just bland and craggy but he's a smart man--and a good man--with lots of very good ideas." Berkeley Rice, who did a long story on the campaign for the New York Times Magazine, commented "White suffers from a seemingly incurable and largely undeserved case of blandness."

As both the Harvard faculty member and Rice point out, White is enormously good-natured. Tuesday night, after he had delivered his victory speech to the packed Sheraton-Plaza ballroom, a cordon of Boston police tried to move White and his family through the mob and to an elevator taking him to his private suite. The chain of police finally pushed and shoved through the cheering crowd of celebrators and got the official party into the elevator. The crowd began to move away from the elevator when suddenly the elevator door opened and the Boston police--red-faced--moved out and into the crowd again. Broken elevator. White slinked out of the elevator, smiled, and yelled "OK, boys, let's try it again." The police chain moved across the lobby, White shook hands with the Faithful, and the little group made its way to a staircase.

A willingness to listen to new ideas is one of White's greatest attributes according to Harvard people who have worked on the campaign. Proposals for neighborhood city halls, police department reform, administrative technique reform, and proposals for new approaches to welfare have all arisen out of brainstorming sessions and position papers prepared by people on this side of the river. Yesterday White began to set up committees to oversee the feasibility of instituting some of the proposed reforms.

Under White, however, Boston will not become a laboratory for academics. White may be part of the Boston Establishment but he still has a tremendous concern for "the little people" that Louise Day Hicks constantly calls her own. His own personal traditions and the traditions of Boston would prevent him from allowing the city to be used for social experiments that have only a heuristic value. It's also politically unwise to allow academics to have a more or less unconfined role in the city administration. "Professors," says one old Boston observer, "just don't have political savvy."

They may not have savvy but at least they will be welcome, which wouldn't be the case if Mrs. Hicks were to move into Boston's handsome old City Hall. (The elaborately expensive but heroically handsome new City Hall in Scollay Square won't be ready for the January, 1968, inaugural.) Aside from the ramifications of her stand on de facto segregation, the opening of old Boston wounds and divisions--just now healing--would have been one of the saddest aspects of Mrs. Hicks' election as Mayor. Under Mayors John B. Hynes (1950-1959) and John F. Collins (1960-1968) the split between the city government and Boston's Establishment healed. A Harvard diploma ceased to be a liability for a man dealing with the city government. With Mrs. Hicks in office a Harvard, or for that matter a Boston College, diuplom awdould have beenO Pugru diploma would have been a liability.

Kevin White's election as mayor does not guarantee four years of booming growth and econ Now is the timing growth and revolutionary change, but it does mean that Boston will be receptive to new ideas and new programs