Robert Moses

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 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

Dwarkesh Patel says Lyndon Johnson passed a civil rights law by spending seven months on a deal that gave unrelated factions something each of them wanted. He needed a bill that year, even a weak one, because he wanted to become president, and no Southerner with his record of voting against civil rights could hope to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960.

Southern states require jurors to be registered voters, and an all-white Southern jury would never convict a white registrar for turning away Black voters. Any version one side could accept, the other would reject, and a less creative legislator would have backed down. Western senators got a vote on a federal dam they had want

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.