Mr. Buckley reminds us that Mayor Koch was re-elected in 1981 with 75 per cent

of the vote, running on both his native Democratic ticket and the Republican ticket. He demonstrates here the qualities that make him so popular in the City--he's feisty and funny, he views the rest of the country as duty-bound to support New York, and he has a basic grasp of certain economic realities: "New York is an area that has a lot of very poor people. Now you can say, 'Why don't you tax the hell out of the very rich?' Then the very rich will leave. You have to have reasonable taxation. There was a time when New York City wanted to put a really socko tax on estates, thinking the people who are dead are not going to care. But the people who were living, who worried about that new estate tax, said they were moving out of the City if they imposed it, and started to move--this was under Beame, not under me--and New York City had to rescind that tax."