Robert Caro says Robert Moses started as a young idealist who hardened into someone who would evict tens of thousands for the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Caro says he watched Moses's influence fade during his last interview, when no calls came in, until Nelson Rockefeller accepted Moses's resignation.
Caro says he reduces each book to a single sentence before writing, a discipline he learned the hard way on The Power Broker, which ran 1.05m words before cuts.
Robert Caro at 91 on how power hardens idealists
Robert Caro has spent his career studying how power works and what it does to the people who hold it. Moses and Johnson both did anything to win, and both began with real idealism. Caro shows how power hardened Moses into someone who built regardless of the human cost, and how Johnson's leverage produced a domestic legacy that Vietnam then ruined.
Takeaways
Power gradually hardened Moses from idealist to ruthless. Young Moses wanted beaches and parks open to city people. He later evicted tens of thousands for the Cross Bronx Expressway and used opponent Henry Epstein's alleged affair against him. Caro would ask Moses whether he realized he was changing.
Moses also heard that government couldn't build. Asked why projects like the Second Avenue subway take decades and cost over $4bn, Caro notes the same objection existed in the 1920s. Moses built Jones Beach through political genius and will, helped by cheap Depression labor he could fire ruthlessly.
Johnson persuaded senators through leverage over them. Caro argues Johnson's famous persuasion rested on the power to reward or punish senators. In the 1948 Senate race told in Means of Ascent, Coke Stevenson was an idealist who never expected the tactics used against him.
Vietnam wrecked a genuine domestic vision. A year teaching poor children in Cotulla left Johnson determined to change education, a drive Caro says Kennedy lacked. Vietnam ruined the presidency, and Caro is still working out why Johnson kept escalating, writing about the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in unmatched detail.
Interlocking posts made Moses nearly unfireable. Moses chaired the State Power Authority and the Triborough Bridge Authority while serving as Parks Commissioner. Once cracks appeared, Rockefeller accepted his resignation threat around 1962. In Caro's last interview at Triborough, loyal aides still deferred to Moses, but no calls came in.
Every book starts as one sentence. Caro reduces each book to a sentence, or at most a paragraph, so everything hangs together. He learned this the hard way on The Power Broker, whose 1,050,000-word manuscript lost 350,000 words with editor Bob Gottlieb to fit one volume.
How Caro does the reporting
He pursues reluctant sources relentlessly, as with John Connally, who collected political money and handed it out at Johnson's instructions.
Moses's methods surfaced in notes in the LaGuardia papers, stored at the 79th Street Boat Basin.
Digital archives help little, because reading the material takes most of the time.
He gave his archive, including about 700 interviews for The Power Broker alone, to the New York Historical Society for far less than other institutions offered.
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On this episode 3
Show 1
He works largely alone with Ina Caro, turns off his phone, and returns calls only at the end of the day.