Dwarkesh Podcast
00:12:57 · Robert Caro
[00:12:57] S1: Well, when people say to me everything was bad, then he did. What I say is you didn't read the book because certainly the first parts of the book, well, hundreds of pages are about a young idealist who sees this great need for recreation, for beaches on Long Island, for the city people, and is going to get away to make them accessible to the... To people in the city. You say, and it's an act of genius and willpower the way he does it. And that's great. Now, does it become, does it evolve into where Moses listens to nobody and the only thing that matters is what he wants to get built? It does evolve into that. He does change. But the young Moses, the idealist, who before he's building is an expert in civil service, technicalities of civil service, and devotes all his energies to trying to reform the civil service and make it, that people get promoted on merit instead of political pull. And he worked so hard in that. You see a real idealism. And you see an idealism in his early works, you know, when you say, I wanna make these beaches accessible to New York. Now does that evolve into where I think there ought to be a highway here no matter what anybody says, and no matter how many thousands of people are in the way, like the crossroads of choice by Ali Victim? It does. He changes. That to me is the story of the... A big part of the story of the power broker, how this guy who's in the beginning, a young idealistic guy who wants to build, to make lives better for people, to give them access to the ocean beaches and all, changes into someone who just wants to build because he thinks something should be built no matter whatever anyone else says, and is gonna do it no matter how many thousands, hundreds, thousands people have to evict, no matter how bad an idea it is, like the Cross Bronx Expressway. People are telling him not to do that before he does it. The minute this road opens, it's the world's longest traffic jam. Not thousands, but tens of thousands of people were evicted, thrown out of their homes by him without any relocation provisions. So you say, in a way, it's a story of how do you give somebody power without the power in a way hardened, I don't want to use the word corrupting him, but hardening him to anyone who opposes him, to any opposition.
00:16:27 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
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00:17:58 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
[00:17:58] S0: writing the book. You start writing it in '66, '67? [00:18:02] S1: Yes. [00:18:03] S0: You're writing it while Moses is losing power. His career is not over yet. [00:18:10] S1: Yes. [00:18:11] S0: And so the story changes Yes. While you're writing it. Yes. And I don't know if you've talked about that, but presumably the conclusion changes because Yes. You don't know whether he's gonna lose that power or [00:18:21] S1: not No, when when I watch, oh, that's a great question. And I watched that happen. And I'm a young, whenever I was young, and whatever my age was, I didn't really know what I was doing. And I watched him lose power and I learned enough about him to know how fair this was going to be. If I could think a moment, there's a moment that this happened. Yeah. His office was still up at the Triborough Bridge Authority. When he was in power, I interviewed him in that office several times. You felt his power, you felt outside, there were all these people waiting for his decisions, sitting around waiting for his decisions. As soon as I finished, the secretary would come in with a list of telephone calls of people who had called, asking for, you know, wanting something from him while I was talking to him, right? By the time I finished, I remember I realized I had one long interview with him. Maybe it was my last one. And I realized there had been no calls. The secretary had nothing to tell him. So whatever you thought of Moses, you felt the poignance of someone losing power. Yeah. [00:20:03] S0: That's fascinating. That's what I was wondering about.
00:20:03 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
[00:20:03] S0: That's fascinating. That's what I was wondering about. [00:20:06] S1: Yeah. You couldn't help feeling sales for him, no matter, even though you knew what he had done, you couldn't help feeling, oh, this is, in a way, tragic that no one's calling and asking him for a favor anymore. Yeah. [00:20:30] S0: Did he realize that was happening? [00:20:32] S1: I don't think he really... I don't think... In a way, I'm sure he did. But by that time, he was so... Remember, he was so insulated. He was so, whatever his age was, he was up in the eighties. He was deaf, you know? He still had in his office at the Triborough headquarters on Randall's Island, were all these Moses men who were loyal to him and treated him with the same deference they always had. He knew he wasn't getting his projects done, but he felt, I know he felt he was just gonna keep pushing like he always did, and he was gonna win again. So the answer to the question is no, I don't think he didn't ever realize that. [00:21:24] S0: That's fascinating. [00:21:25] S1: Yeah. [00:21:27] S0: In, I think, '62, as you say, he tries to pull a trick on Nelson Rockefeller that he had pulled on countless previous mayors and governors, which is to threaten to resign if he didn't get his way. Yes. And Rockefeller says, I regretfully accept, and nothing happens. And that made me wonder as I was reading it, could all those previous governors and mayors who were getting threatened have done the same thing?
00:22:00 · Robert Caro
[00:22:00] S1: Great, great question. Yeah, the answer is yes. Well, you say, could they have done the same thing? So the easy, the first part, the answer is yes, they had the power to fire him. He wasn't an elected official, but couldn't, there wasn't really a possibility. The answer to the question at the bottom is no, they couldn't because he was simply too popular. You know, you could fire Robert Moses, you know, that's like firing some idol, person who was the idol of New York. But in addition, he had, with his genius, he had created in all his different posts, a chairman of the State Power Authority, chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority, Parks Commissioner, Long Island Parks Commissioner, Jones Beach Commissioner. He had created such an interlocking, you couldn't fire him from everything because the terms ended in different ways, and in some you didn't have the power to fire him from, that he had really made it impossible, well, almost impossible, because at the end, if you wanted to do it, Rockefeller did it. But by that time, cracks had appeared in the armor. I think for decades, the answer to your question is you couldn't do it. But then as he got older, cracks appeared in the armor and you could, if you wanted to brave criticism in all the newspapers and public criticism and everything else, you probably could have done. Good question.
00:24:01 · Dwarkesh Patel, Robert Caro
[00:24:01] S0: Which leads into the next question I want to ask you. So you interviewed him seven times and the seventh time you mentioned your awareness of a donation that was made to his commission by a millionaire whose golf course was spared by the new route for his parkway. And after that, he didn't talk to you again. If you had gotten an eighth interview with Robert Moses, what is the one question you would most want to ask him? [00:24:35] S1: Oh god, what a great great question. Well, you know, off the top of my head, I think if I only had one question to ask him, I think I'd ask him, did you realize you were changing? That's a great question you asked. But that's the answer I'll give for now. That's something I always wanted, would like to have asked him, you know? [00:25:20] S0: Do you think he realized that he was changing?