In the beginning of this year, I started reading Robert A. Caro’s book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. The book is great. It’s definitely a classic for a reason.
Admittedly, four months later, I’m only a hundred and fifty pages in, but that’s besides the point. Here are some absolutely mind-blowing things I’ve learned from reading The Power Broker.
For one, in the early 1900s, most of New York City was farmland. That’s a crazy thing to think about while driving through this dirty, polluted, overpopulated city on the highways that Robert Moses built. Manhattan was developed, of course, but only a hundred or so years ago, most of Queens and the Bronx and parts of Brooklyn were just green. Unbelievable.
Not only that, but Long Island was basically a country club for rich aristocrats (if you can, check out the Vanderbilt mansion in Centerport—unbelievable!) who really, really didn’t want their beautiful summer getaways marred by travelers from the city.
Robert Moses, apparently, decided that all of these idyllic little oases could go to Hell.
It’s incredible to see just how much of New York was built by Robert Moses. His name and legacy is all over the place, but the scope of his impact is still shocking. He’s responsible for just about every major highway in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester (and a great chunk of the public parks, too).
It’s unbelievable. For better or for worse (and it could be argued that it was certainly for worse), New York City would not be what it is today without Robert Moses. It’s almost hard not to admire the guy (even though, from what I’ve heard, I probably shouldn’t).
The reason why Robert Moses was able to do all that he did (and why no one else was) was because he understood politics. In a political system that could only be described as gridlock, he got stuff done, and short of dismantling the system entirely and starting fresh, he did so in the only way he could.
Admittedly, I don’t know the specifics (I haven’t read the whole book yet). But it seems like, in the corrupt political climate of New York City in which everyone is competing for the public vote and there’s so many conflicting interests that proposing anything the ‘traditional’ way is just yelling into an echo chamber, Robert Moses succeeded by making illicit ‘under the table’ deals and scheming to get what he wanted. In fact, he got so good at playing the game of politics, politicians around the country who also wanted to build roads came to Moses for tips on how to weasel their way around their clunky, inefficient governments.
Again, I’m far from an expert. I’ll check back later (maybe) for an in-depth analysis of the inefficiencies and back-door dealings of twentieth-century NYC politics. The main takeaway right now is that, in government, it’s basically impossible to do anything the ‘right’ way, and that the only way to get your way in politics is by conniving. Shocker, I know.
Almost as much of a shocker as finding out that, at the beginning of his political career, Robert Moses was a bleeding-heart liberal. Seriously. He was a righteous, moral guy who grew up rich and entered politics in the hopes of making the world a better place.
He kept this moral superiority for years (even, at times, at the expense of political efficacy) until he started working for Governor Al Smith. Admittedly, this part of the book kind of bored me, so I can’t tell you too much about what changed, but I take it he learned that a politician’s number-one aim is to secure votes, and that an outstanding moral fiber generally harms a political career.
Thus, he morphed into the famous Robert Moses that we know today, and the rest is history (or, rather, the next thousand or so pages of this book).
It’s an interesting take on the idea that ‘power corrupts.’ You always hear two sides of this—either that being in a position of power is what makes you corrupt, or that positions of power attract corrupt people. Perhaps the more accurate conception of the problem is this: in order to obtain power you must be corrupt, whether you like it or not.
There’s an idea that I was introduced to in Plato’s Republic that people who want power don’t deserve it—a righteous leader is terrified of the job, and only does it because he knows that it is better for him to be in power than someone else. In other words, it’s a duty, not a privilege.
Perhaps a benevolent, level-headed ‘philosopher-king’ who knows how to play the game is an overly optimistic dream. However, from looking at history, if there’s anything I’ve gathered, it’s that the political system hardly matters—what matters is who runs that system. In the cesspool that is politics, this just may be the only hope.