What I learned about power from LBJ and Robert Moses

So I recently interviewed Robert Caro. He spent the last fifty years writing a four volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. And he spent another seven years before that writing the biography of Robert Moses, who was a master builder of New York. His books are widely regarded as the best explorations of political power that have ever been written. And they also happen to be literally my favorite books ever. Whenever I meet somebody new, one of the first questions that they often ask me is, who is the person you most wanna interview that you haven't yet? And for six years, I've answered that question in the same way. Robert Kira. And I've actually spent a lot of time trying to make this interview happen. I've chased down his agent. I've called this publisher. I've contacted the museums which are hosting his archives. I've even sent him handwritten letters. I finally got to sit down with them and I'm very happy with how it turned out. It'll be out tomorrow. In the meantime, as I was preparing for this interview and I was rereading all of these biographies, I was writing down all the lessons that they'd laid out about how to accumulate and use power, and this video essay is the result. Robert Moses was the master builder of New York. Our distinguished guest was Mr. Robert Moses, the nation's foremost city planner. He built more of the physical city than anybody before or since. He built the Triborough And Verzano Bridges, the Cross Bronx Expressway, Jones Beach, Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium, two giant power dams upstate, in addition to hundreds of parks and pools. Of the eight ninety nine miles of highways completed in New York State by 1964, Moses had built six seventy two of them. His projects collectively cost hundreds of billions of dollars in today's money. For more than thirty years, Robert Moses was the most powerful person in New York, more powerful than any elected mayor or governor despite the fact that he was not elected to anything. As I've heard it, ad nauseam, for the last thirty odd years. They say you don't have to be elected. My stock reply to them is you don't have to be either. How did he get that much power and how did he keep it? 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 that they were granting. The political genius of Robert Moses is perhaps best illustrated by his use of public authorities. These 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 …