It was thirty years ago, Mr. Buckley reminds us, that Theodore White wrote his famous essay "in which he concluded that New York was ungovernable." That was midway through John Lindsay's time in office, and Mr. Lindsay and his successor, Abe Beame, did their best to prove Mr. White correct. Then Ed Koch took over, followed by Rudy Giuliani (with one term of David Dinkins in between as a salutary warning), and things were looking up--in fiscal terms, in terms of crime, and in terms of esprit de corps. Mayor Giuliani begins, in his hard-edged way, with a provocative sidelight on why Republicans are doing so well as mayors (of Los Angeles and Indianapolis, among other cities): "You're free of all of those special-interest groups that [machine politicians] have to give a piece of [their] agenda away to. So that if you can get...elected, you can actually accomplish something that's different than what has been going on for the last forty or fifty years." Then on to marijuana, President Clinton, and much else.