The Power Broker
The Power Broker, boiled down to its most basic elements, is a biography of a New York public servant and commissioner, Robert Moses. However, as can be shown aptly by its length, it serves as so much more than that.
It is a case study on power, and on the nature of power. As my father might say, how “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Robert Moses begins the book as a young idealist, part of the New York Reform movement succeeding figures like Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt. Even when Moses gets his first taste of power, it is for goals that we may perceive as noble. The Jones Beach State Park was his first real challenge, and one that was passed with flying colours. [
Jones Beach State Park (VisitNY). See the water tower in the centre.
A beach built for the masses of manhattan to frolic, the creation of Jones Beach would have been a career-crowning acheivement for most others. For Moses it was his first. Caro details how the beach was sunken in areas, so it required tonnes of sand to be regularly transported. With his limited budget, he had to build a water tower - instead of being typically built - he decided on a design resembling St. Marks Bassilica in Venice. The two bathhouses were grand complexes, choosing a design made out of Ohio Sandstone, and Barbizon brick. Predictably, Moses quickly drained the budget given to him by the Board of Estimate to build the beach. But that needn’t deter him; the representatives would not dare halt the construction of a grand park for their constituents.
When building parkways to allow people to access the beach, he purposely placed low clearance bridges to prevent buses primarily used by minority communities to get around.
The park was the work of a man driven by the ends that power could achieve. Skip ahead 30 years (or about 800 pages), and you will be greeted by a much different man. Moses seems to barely care about what he is actually building. He is a great builder of highways - who doesn’t know how to drive.
Moses by this point lives a daily schedule that can only be described as ‘insane’. He is taken by chauffeur in a large black limo, with no vision out of the car. In the back, he is often dictating several press releases, memos, and letters simultaneously - four stenographers will often be with him, as he yaps command quickly transferred into text. He has a theatre that he will often invite people he is trying to influence, with every performance beginning with a dedication to Robert Moses. He would stand up for the dedication, lap up the praise from the theatre, and then promptly leave.
His life was an ‘orgy of work’, as described by Caro. His day would begin at the break of dawn, and would not end until around ten o’clock. Weekends with his family quickly became an afterthought. Throughout his schedule however, he also kept time for his one real hobby - swimming. Every non-winter day he would spend hours swimming in the waters surrounding New York, being watched by aides who feared for his life as he swam out deep into the horizon. An aide was instructed to stay with him in the water, and he would often tire out several in a single session. At his peak, Moses would hold 14 full time positions, and would effectively command a ‘shadow government’ within New York State.
Rather than being a man who wants to use power as a means to an end, he becomes lustful for the mere concept of power.
Reading the book allows you to see generations to pass by with a flick of a page. Robert Moses begins his career under ‘the Greatest Governor’, Al Smith, who would later become the 1928 Democratic nominee for President. He continues for an extended period of time under ‘the greatest mayor’, Fiorello La Guardia. In the post La Guardia period, Moses experiences a barrage of mayors - when mayor O’Dwyer flees to South America on suspicion of corruption, Vincent R. Impellitteri (or Impy), takes over. Finally, as Moses power reaches its crescendo, he tangos with Governor Rockefeller and Mayor Lindsay in the 60s.
As these figures come and pass, Moses stayed as a constant throughout. No governor would have the guts to take on Robert Moses - his prescience was so engrained in New York, in its legislation (he wrote most of his own laws), in its authorities, and in its media (Caro establishes early that Moses was a media darling due to his reputation as being a committed public servant incorruptible by any money). The only man with the means greater than Moses and hence able to unseat him was Rockefeller - a man so powerful, being the richest man in the America, a favourite for the presidency, and the governor of New York, he still had to fight to the nail to unseat Moses from only some of his positions in government.
The difficulty in removing Moses was immense. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had a personal feud with Moses, failed to remove him even after he signed a direct executive order attempting to remove him while President.
Hundreds of miles of highways. Tens of billions of dollars. Hundreds of playgrounds. Hundreds of thousands of acres for state parks. Over 30 bridges. And yet, Robert Moses is a name lost to history, the only memory kept of him being The Power Broker. It is here where the parable of RM often invites comparison to Ozymandias. Moses and Ramasses’ II names are both eclipsed by the writing decrying them.
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Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Examiner)
Moses’ story is almost comical. While the Power Broker is often compared to Ozymandias, it is more often compared to Shakespeare. An element of the book that can be mentioned here is Moses tendency to threat resignation - it is the very first thing in the book after all. When any governor, mayor, or whoever else threatens Moses’ power, he will simply offer to resign all his posts. Whoever tries to diminish his power therefore usually backs down after the realisation that Moses’ base of power is necessary for completing an agenda. Moses’ gambit eventually backfires, when Rockefeller accepts his resignation. A man brought down by his own gambit, in such a way, may illicit comparison to the Bard (I believe Caro partially played into this - there is a whole chapter dedicated to Moses’ treatment of a theatre production playing Shakespeare in poor neighbourhood).
The story is so vast, that to even describe the highlights in a single article (of increasing length) is very difficult. All the moments in his career, like the story of Moses’ plan to build a highway through the Empire State Building (actually true), how he forced his own brother into poverty, his plan to build a bridge through the battery in southern manhattan, as well as how he is almost solely responsible for the terrible traffic from JFK - would be enough to sustain… a 1000 page book.
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Brooklyn Battery Bridge Proposal (NYC Urbanism)
Remembering the lessons of the Power Broker I feel has never been more important than it is today. As we live in a time with a resurgence of semi-internal/semi-external public authorities, i.e. DOGE, the Power Broker teaches the lesson of what can arise from such arrangements. It is crucial that we do not allow Musk or any other unelected stooge create their own federal ‘Triborough’ in the name of ‘efficiency’ or ‘anti-wokeness’.
To conclude, I can recommend the Power Broker to almost anyone. It is an amazing book.
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Moses and Smith (Abbott)