Robert Caro

A lot of what Robert Caro researched never made it into his books. He had to cut so much from The Power Broker that he still thinks should have stayed. He gave his editor, Bob Gottlieb, a manuscript of 1,050,000 words. Caro was determined the book would be only one volume. The most that would fit, after Gottlieb worked at it, was about 700 pages, or about 700,000 words, so 350,000 words had to come out. Gottlieb has said he cut a lot of the best stuff he ever read. People still ask Caro about things he wrote, and then learn that no one ever read them.

He keeps writing what he thinks belongs even while he knows much of it will be cut. The same loss sits in the file cabinets. He has only a br

Robert Caro says no. If John Kennedy had won in '60 and Lyndon Johnson had turned down the vice presidency and stayed majority leader, the laws Johnson later passed as president would not simply have arrived sooner. Kennedy did not have the overriding desire to change America.

John Kennedy was utterly charming. He was a good president, and he was good in foreign policy, where Johnson was not. What he lacked was Johnson's vision and the desire to change the country. Johnson came back from his year teaching poor kids determined to change the education system and to do more for poor people. The determination is what made him, at home, such a great president: the civil rights laws and the anti-

Robert Caro says the Great Depression played a big role in what Robert Moses was able to build. When Moses needed architects, thousands of out-of-work architects lined up on Fifth Avenue, and he could hire them at very low wages. More than the pay, they were available because they had nothing else to do. He does not remember which project it was. It is in The Power Broker.

He could hire a great many people, and he could hire and fire them in a ruthless way that made the workmen work hard. If they did not keep up, he could fire them. It was the Depression, and they had no other jobs to go to. He used that. Dwarkesh Patel had asked whether those early achievements came from the government bei

Robert Caro says no. He does not want another Robert Moses, a builder who is ruthless and who disregards public opinion. A city still needs someone who will find a way to get things built when many people do not want them built.

Such a person appears only every once in a while. Decades can pass when everything is stalled and it looks as if nothing big will ever be built again. Then someone comes along, and things get built. He calls that political genius. The two he is writing about are Lyndon Johnson on civil rights and Robert Moses on public works. People said those things could not be done, and they did them.

Dwarkesh Patel heard this as a case for a little Moses today. Caro sometimes w

Robert Caro gets people to talk by refusing a no when that person is the only one who knows the story. Lyndon Johnson's first secretary rode in the car with him on the campaigns. No other person knows what Johnson was doing during those hours driving back and forth across Texas, so Caro had to get him to tell it honestly.

The same pressure applies when someone knows the interview will hurt them. John Connally collected the money and gave it out on Johnson's instructions, so he was the only one who could explain how Johnson judged who received it. On a request for money, Johnson would write okay and the amount asked, such as $1,500, or a smaller figure such as $500, or no, or "no, never." Co

Robert Caro reduces a new book to one sentence, or at most a paragraph, before he starts writing, so he still knows what he is trying to do years later. He is never sure a book is on the right track. The sentence is the device he uses to try to stay there.

He learned the habit the hard way with The Power Broker, because he skipped it on that book. Before he starts, he thinks the whole book through to the end. He can spend a long time just asking what the book is about. He tells himself that he had better fit the answer into one sentence, or three years from now he will be writing and asking what he is trying to do.

Before the writing begins, he tries to get the book down to a sentence or a

Robert Caro says the source of Lyndon Johnson's power was the power behind his persuasion. When Johnson asked a senator for something, the senator knew Johnson could give or deny the things the senator wanted.

If Johnson asked for a vote on a specific issue, the senator might not agree and might not want to give him the vote. The senator still wanted a committee assignment, and Johnson had the power to give that assignment or not. The senator might want a specific law, and Johnson had the power to get that law passed or not. When Johnson put his arm around someone and leaned in, it was not just the force of his personality. Behind that personality, the senator knew Johnson had the power to

Robert Caro says Robert Moses did not realize he was changing. From the beginning, Moses felt he had a vision for roads and parks, believed it was the best thing to do, and believed it should get done.

No matter how many hardships he had to inflict on people, and no matter how many thousands he had to evict, Moses was going to get the roads built. If someone stood in his way, he was going to remove that person. Henry Epstein, a politician in the Bronx, opposed the Cross Bronx Expressway because the route ran through a neighborhood where tens of thousands of people would have to be evicted. Moving it two blocks to the south would evict only a couple of hundred people. Moses set out to destro

Robert Caro knew Robert Moses had lost power when a long interview ended and the secretary brought no telephone calls. He had begun the book in 66 and 67, writing while Moses was losing power and his career was not yet over.

Moses's office was still at the Triborough Bridge Authority. While Moses held power, Caro interviewed him there several times. The power was obvious: people waited outside for his decisions. As soon as an interview finished, the secretary came in with a list of calls from people who wanted something from him. On one long interview, maybe the last, there had been no calls. The secretary had nothing to tell him. Thinking of Moses then brought the poignance of someone losi

Robert Caro says Robert Moses did change from a young idealist into a builder who would not listen. Before the building years, Moses was an expert in the technicalities of civil service and put his energy into reform so people would be promoted on merit instead of political pull. Early work showed real idealism: he wanted beaches and the ocean made accessible to New York.

Moses later wanted to build because he thought something should be built, no matter what anyone else said and no matter how many people stood in the way. People told him not to build the Cross Bronx Expressway before he did it. The minute the road opened, it was the world's longest traffic jam. Not thousands, but tens of t

Dwarkesh Patel argues, drawing on Robert Caro's Master of the Senate, that Lyndon Johnson took control of the Senate by turning a job almost nobody wanted into a hold on favors, the floor, and the deals.

The Senate had been set up not to be led. The Library of Congress told Johnson the majority leader had one formal power, the right to be recognized first. The two leaders before him both lost their own seats. He got the job at 44, in a body whose average age was around 60, because others did not want it.

He then collected what senators needed. He could schedule a bill, move it out of committee, call Speaker Sam Rayburn about the House, and mention a colleague to a Texas oilman who gave cam

Dwarkesh Patel says no. Drawing on Robert Caro's biographies, he argues that Lyndon Johnson showed little coherent political ideology for most of his career and fitted himself to the conservative Southern Democrats who held power in the Senate.

When Johnson entered the Senate, the most powerful men there were the Southern Dixiecrats, and the new senator molded himself to them. While writing Master of the Senate, volume three of the Johnson biographies, Caro asked former Georgia senator Herman Talmadge what impression freshman senator Lyndon Johnson gave of the proper relationship between white people and black people. Talmadge answered, master and servant. Caro asked whether Johnson had any

Dwarkesh Patel says, drawing on Robert Caro's The Power Broker, that mayors and governors could not fire Robert Moses. The statute, a stack of separate jobs, and his popularity all stood in the way.

The Triborough Act allowed removal midterm only on stated charges after a formal hearing. Caro writes that Moses was money honest, so there were never charges to bring. Terms ran six years, and he held 12 posts at once, some filled by the mayor and some by the governor. Nobody could strip every post at once, and removing one still left the most powerful man in New York as an enemy. He was popular for most of his career too. In the 1930s and 1940s, New York high schools voted him the most admired

Dwarkesh Patel argues, drawing on Robert Caro's The Power Broker, that Robert Moses got power without winning an election by writing the laws that governed him and hiding new powers inside them.

Moses was known as the best bill drafter in Albany. The Triborough Bridge Authority Act of 1933 was supposed to build two bridges, collect tolls until the bonds were paid, and then shut down. Bonds could run at most 40 years. In a subsection of Section 9 he added one sentence: the authority could, from time to time, pay off old bonds by issuing new ones for any other corporate purpose. A fresh 40-year note could fund a different project. Connecting roads, and facilities not inconsistent with the pro

David Senra, reading Kevin Kelly's Excellent Advice for Living, says find smart people who will disagree with you, because a short disagreement can move you off an easy route and onto the harder one you should have taken. One of his smartest friends has a habit of repeating advice from founders straight back to him. The other day the friend called after noticing Senra was trying to take an easy route on something important. All the friend did was quote Napoleon and Lyndon Johnson from Robert Caro's biographies: if you do everything, you will win.

The conversation lasted maybe 60 seconds, maybe 90 seconds. Senra got it, hung up the phone, and took the harder, better route, the route he shoul

He was a man of incredibly power in New York City. While was never an elected official, he built 600+ miles of highways, Verrazano and Triboro bridges, apartments and parks and more. You can find out more in the book called "The Power Broker," written by Robert Caro.

Robert Allan Caro is an American journalist and author who figured out how to write historical biographies in a way that reads like a novel, while maintaining all of the facts.