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What I learned about power from LBJ and Robert Moses
Thanks to Max Farrens, who paired with me in writing the script for this video essay.
I recently interviewed Robert Caro. He’s spent the last 50 years writing a four volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, and he spent another 7 years before that writing the biography of Robert Moses, the master builder of New York. His books are widely regarded as the best explorations of political power that have ever been written.
They also happen to be literally my favorite books ever. Whenever I meet somebody new, one of the first questions they ask me is, “Who is it that you most want to interview that you haven’t yet?” And for six years, I’ve answered the question the same way: Robert Caro.
I’ve spent so much time trying to make this interview happen: chasing his agent, calling his publisher, contacting the museums that have his archives, and even sending him handwritten letters.
I finally got to sit down with him, and I’m very happy with how it turned out. It’ll be out this Friday.
In the meantime, as I was preparing for the interview, and rereading these biographies, I wrote down the lessons they laid out about how to accumulate and use power.
Robert Moses
Robert Moses was the master builder of New York. He built more of the physical city than anyone before or since: the Triborough and Verrazano bridges, the Cross Bronx Expressway, Jones Beach, Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium, two giant power dams upstate, in addition to hundreds of parks and dozens of pools. Of the 899 miles of highways completed in New York State by 1964, Moses had built 672 of them. His projects collectively cost hundreds of billions of dollars in today’s money.
For more than 30 years, Robert Moses was the most powerful person in New York (more powerful than any elected mayor or governor, despite not being elected to anything). How did he get and keep that much power?
Exploits in law
Part of the answer is that Moses wrote the laws that governed him. He was called ‘the best bill drafter in Albany,’ and he used that skill to write himself powers that the legislators voting on his bills didn’t know they were granting.
The political genius of Robert Moses is perhaps best illustrated by his use of public authorities, which are government-created corporations that build city infrastructure. Public authorities sell bonds to pay for a specific project, say a new bridge. Once the bridge is built, the authority would charge drivers a toll until it had collected enough money to pay off its bonds. Then the authority would tear down the tollbooths, hand the bridge over to the city, and go out of existence.
At least, that was the idea. And that’s what Albany assumed would happen when the New York State Legislature approved the Triborough Bridge Authority Act of 1933, whose final version included - buried within pages and pages of legalese - a few seemingly minor alterations drafted by Robert Moses.
Section 1 clearly stated that the authority would dissolve once the bonds were paid off. And since the bonds could run at most 40 years (and the revenues from the bridge would pay back the initial cost far sooner), it seemed like the authority had a clear, built-in expiration date. However, in a subsection of Section 9, Moses added a single sentence that said the Authority could “from time to time” pay off its old bonds by issuing new ones. And those new ones could be “for any other corporate purpose.” So just before the original bonds were about to expire, the authority now had the right to issue a totally fresh 40 year note, for a potentially totally different use.
And what could the Authority build with all that money? The original act let it build two bridges and their “approaches.” Moses’ amendments also gave this authority the right to build “connecting” roads and “facilities not inconsistent with the use of the project”. These rights, when interpreted as creatively as Moses intended to, would allow Moses to alter most of the roads, parks, and housing
