0:01

This is the 99% Invisible Breakdown of

0:03

The Power Broker. I'm Roman Mars. And

0:06

I'm Elliot Kalin. On today's episode of

0:08

Recovering Part 3, The Rise to Power,

0:10

that's pages 91 through 177

0:13

in my copy with some nice glossy photos in

0:15

the middle there. And our guest

0:17

is esteemed historian New York Times opinion

0:20

columnist and TikTok superstar, Jamel Bui. And

0:22

when we first came up with this

0:24

series, I knew I wanted to have

0:26

Jamel on because he is

0:28

so great at contextualizing history and connecting the past

0:30

to the present. So thank you for being here.

0:33

It's my pleasure. Now, I should warn the

0:35

audience ahead of time. Jamel has not actually

0:37

read The Power Broker. That's okay. That's okay.

0:39

It's like a lot of you. You haven't

0:41

read it either. He hasn't read it. This

0:43

is his first true exposure to the book.

0:46

And I couldn't be prouder that Roman and

0:48

I get to deflower him

0:50

in this way. When it comes to

0:52

The Power Broker. But Jamel knows so

0:54

much about this time period that we're

0:56

covering. We're gonna bring him in periodically

0:59

just to help us get a sense of what was going on

1:01

at that time. What's the context that this

1:03

power is being broken in? That's

1:05

right. So let's just start where

1:07

we left off last time. At the end

1:09

of chapter five, it's November, it's 1918. Robert

1:11

Moses is about turn 30. His

1:14

career in public service has almost

1:16

ended at this point. Like he's complete failure.

1:18

All of his different programs he has proposed

1:21

have failed. But then he

1:23

gets a call from his

1:25

former boss's wife, Bel

1:27

Moskowitz. So tell me, Elliot, who

1:29

is Bel Moskowitz? Okay. Here's one

1:31

of the amazing things about The Power Broker. Jamel, now

1:33

my whole mission in this episode is

1:36

just to sell this book to you directly,

1:38

hardcore one-on-one. This is one of

1:40

the great things about this book is that it

1:42

is about Robert Moses. It's his face on the

1:44

cover. It's his name in the subtitle. But there's

1:46

so many things that Robert Carroll

1:48

can't help going into detail about. And that's

1:51

often the lives of the people who are

1:53

important to Moses' rise and Moses' career. And

1:56

in the case of Bel Moskowitz, this is someone who, if

1:58

we have a question, we can't answer it.

2:00

Without the power broker, their story may

2:02

have disappeared possibly. They may not have

2:04

ever gotten the treatment they deserve because

2:06

she is this unassuming kind

2:08

of behind-the-scenes operator. She's not a government

2:10

official, but she is an activist, and

2:12

she's a determined activist, but she's also

2:14

a very realistic activist in the reform

2:16

movement of the late 19th century, early

2:18

20th century. And she is going to

2:20

become the most trusted advisor

2:23

of New York Governor, Al Smith, who will

2:25

be a major person in the life of

2:27

Robert Moses. And she is

2:29

– Al Smith, he always refers to her as Mrs.

2:31

M, and he asks her opinion on

2:33

everything. Carrot depicts

2:35

her as literally the last person that he will

2:37

talk to before he makes a decision, and he'll

2:39

usually go with whatever she says in the decision-making.

2:43

And all the Irish political bosses, they

2:45

really resent her, and they call her

2:47

Mosky behind her back, very derisively as

2:49

a sort of anti-Semitic nickname that I

2:51

will say as someone who's willing to

2:53

find anti-Semitism just about anywhere, Mosky is

2:55

a pretty good nickname for someone named

2:57

Mosky. It's pretty natural. But

3:01

she's – I'll go very quickly through her life. She's

3:03

the daughter of a poor Eastern European watchmaker. She comes

3:05

from a different New York Jewish

3:08

background than Moses does. She gets involved with

3:10

the Settlement House movement, which was one of

3:12

the big reform progressive movements. Maybe Jamal, can you

3:14

tell me a little bit more about the Settlement

3:16

House movement because I only know vaguely what was

3:18

going on with it. I probably don't know any

3:20

more than you do. I know the term Settlement

3:22

House. My main understanding

3:25

is that there is

3:27

a major concern for sort of like crime

3:29

and poverty among urban youth. And so

3:31

this was like one of the ideas,

3:33

especially in slums basically. We

3:35

can have these homes that can kind of

3:38

offer programs, offer places for people

3:40

to live, like a space that

3:43

is conducive to

3:46

developing human talents. And

3:49

that's the extent of my

3:52

knowledge there. That is a great description. You started

3:54

out modest, became in strong at the end. So

3:56

I think that worked out great. She studies at

3:58

Columbia. Columbia University,

4:01

and her second husband is the social

4:03

worker Henry Moskowitz, who we met in

4:05

the last episode running the Bureau of

4:07

Municipal Research that Moses worked for. She's

4:09

real reform circle royalty. She's a major

4:11

figure in the New York reform circuit.

4:14

One of the reasons for that is because she succeeded

4:16

in cleaning up what they called the dancing academies, which

4:18

were essentially sex

4:20

trafficking spots, but were presented as dancing academies

4:22

for young ladies, but were places where young

4:24

ladies were then preyed upon. And

4:27

she cleans them up not the way that

4:29

other reformers might have with a big public

4:31

movement by bringing publicity to the problem. Instead,

4:33

she does what Robert Carroll loves whenever anybody

4:35

does. She does the research. She goes to

4:38

the titles and things for these buildings, the

4:40

owner's documents. She sees they're owned by people

4:42

in Tammany political circles. And she goes to

4:44

the people and says, if

4:46

you pass legislation and then enforce it that

4:48

regulates these things, I won't go to the

4:51

newspapers and publicize your name. She's willing to

4:53

kind of work with people to get things

4:55

done. And she has made an arbitrator in

4:57

the arguments between the garment workers union and

4:59

their bosses and she kind of wins over

5:01

both sides because she's able to play the

5:04

game. She knows how to work for a

5:06

common goal between them without alienating the people

5:08

in power. They come to really trust

5:10

her. They trust their blackmailer. Yes, yeah. Well,

5:13

I think there's a certain amount of life. Well,

5:15

you know, playing the game. This is

5:17

how we do it around here. This is, you

5:20

know, it's the early 20th century. We don't have

5:22

a lot of rules these days. She

5:24

offers Moses a job as the chief

5:27

of staff for a commission in the

5:29

governor's office to design a reorganization plan

5:31

for the state government and

5:34

a kind of general implementation plan

5:36

for social welfare reforms. And he's

5:38

like, yes, of course. I

5:40

think he cannot agree fast enough because again, he

5:42

thinks he has had no shot in government anymore

5:44

at this. And he opens an office. Instantly,

5:47

Carol makes the point of saying that he starts hiring

5:50

people from the Bureau of Municipal Research. He's a guy who

5:52

used to look down on him. Now he's going to be

5:54

their boss. And Robert Moses

5:57

never knows why. This

5:59

is Moskowitz. He never knows why Bel

6:01

Moskowitz chooses him of all people, but

6:03

it is the major turning

6:05

point you could say in his public

6:08

career because it puts

6:11

him into contact with Governor Al Smith who Carol goes

6:13

into it a little bit here, but there's going to

6:15

be more about him later. So don't worry. We're going

6:17

to get into more detail with Al Smith, but he

6:19

is essentially, as Carol puts it, perhaps

6:22

like the greatest pure politician in

6:24

the history of New York State.

6:27

And he is seen

6:29

by outsiders as a real Tammany

6:31

hack, but a few reformers are like, you know what?

6:33

I'm at this guy. He seems like he

6:36

could be useful. Maybe he'll be okay. I'm not going to

6:38

talk about it too much more because you know what? There's

6:40

a big section on it in the next chapter. We're going

6:42

to get to that chapter next. This is

6:45

one of the things that Robert Caro does in this book, which is

6:47

a little confusing sometimes is he kind of like plays

6:49

with the timeline in ways that give

6:52

you information when he thinks it is more necessary

6:54

for you. But sometimes it can make it hard

6:57

to keep things in your

6:59

mind. So at this moment, Governor

7:01

Al Smith is governor. In the

7:03

next chapter, we're going to jump back and tell you the

7:05

entire life story of Governor Al Smith. This is not

7:07

a totally chronological book. This is a real Christopher

7:10

Nolan's Dunkirk of a biography. I

7:13

guess I'd say Dunkirk as if his other movies are

7:15

purely linear. It's a little jarring, but

7:17

we'll get to that. So one of the

7:19

key things that Bel Moskowitz is doing for

7:22

Al Smith is she is helping him court

7:24

the women's vote. And this tells you

7:26

a little bit about the time that they're in. This is

7:28

the 1918 election. This is the first time

7:30

women can vote in New York State. And Bel Moskowitz

7:32

is his key advisor, and she tells him to win

7:35

over women, you should just talk to women the same

7:37

way that you would talk to a man voter and

7:39

just tell them the same things that you would tell

7:41

a man. And he does,

7:43

and he gets their vote. And this was revolutionary,

7:46

this brilliant idea that shows you really what politics

7:48

was like at the time or what even American

7:50

society was like at the time. So

7:53

the big crusade here is reorganizing

7:55

the state government. The state government is an example

7:57

of – we talked about it in the last

7:59

episode. The sloppiness of

8:01

early American governance, how kind

8:04

of not organized,

8:06

not put together, not governed the

8:08

government was. There's this mishmash of different agencies in

8:11

the state government. Taxes are collected by seven different

8:13

agencies who will all go to the same place

8:15

and demand taxes. They all report to different people

8:17

in the government. It's not really clear who is

8:19

responsible to anybody. The governor has no power to

8:22

do much of anything. He's

8:24

only in office for two years. The state

8:26

doesn't even have an accurate budget. Nobody knows

8:28

how much money the state spends each year.

8:30

It's impossible. No one knows about

8:32

it. And I feel like we hear so much budget

8:35

accounting in the news now, and there's something

8:37

kind of refreshing almost in the idea that

8:40

back then the news was just like money

8:43

spent. We don't know. No amount's necessary, not information

8:45

that we need. I want

8:47

to bring Jamel in here a little bit to talk about

8:49

this. I think people's

8:51

vision of politics and government is really

8:54

sort of predicated on where they are.

8:56

The solvatistic view of things are the

8:59

way they're supposed to be the moment I was born and made

9:01

aware of them. But this is

9:03

a very different style

9:05

of politics and government than it is

9:07

today. It's not very ideologically driven. It's

9:09

more about what you can get and

9:11

patronage and all that sort of stuff. Could

9:14

you set the stage for

9:17

what does it mean to be a political

9:19

reformer in the early 20th century? What are

9:21

they reforming against and what kind

9:23

of government are people arguing for? There

9:25

are a couple ways to get at this

9:27

question, and one way is to focus on

9:29

one of the defining features of politics in

9:31

the early 20th century, American politics in the

9:34

early 20th century and late 19th, which is

9:36

still very regional. We

9:38

live in an era right now of just

9:40

completely national politics. Almost all politics are national

9:42

in one way or another. My congressman

9:44

here in the 5th District of Virginia

9:48

is a guy who I'm more likely to

9:50

see doing a cable news hit

9:52

than I am to see around the district. Everything

9:56

is national, but 100 years

9:58

ago, 120 years ago, there was a war in the United States. Years ago,

10:01

there's no national media of that sort.

10:04

Local and state party organizations were much

10:06

stronger and more cohesive. They were really

10:09

the main way through which people engaged

10:11

in politics, which gave them a lot

10:13

of sway. Today, we speak of kind

10:15

of like the Democratic Party and the

10:18

Republican Party as like a singular national

10:20

thing with like a bunch of branches in

10:23

each state. But then it's probably

10:25

much more accurate to speak of the New York

10:27

Democratic Party as being its own

10:29

singular institution. And even within that right, sort

10:31

of in the context of New York City,

10:34

you have each bureau has its own democratic

10:36

club with its own, you know, set of

10:38

power brokers and power brokers.

10:44

And everyone else, Tammany and Manhattan being kind

10:46

of the most famous of them, but Brooklyn,

10:49

Queens, you know, the five boroughs. And

10:52

the rest. Yeah, and

10:55

the rest. So I

10:57

think I think it's really important to kind

10:59

of like understand that kind of like the

11:01

organization, the politics is just like way different

11:03

than it is now. Right. In the context

11:05

of New York politics, it's

11:08

very organization and very machine driven, the

11:10

machine just being kind of like a

11:12

a dedicated political organization

11:14

that doled out patronage, rounded

11:17

up votes, provided, you

11:19

know, like services to voters is

11:21

like an important part of an

11:24

important and perhaps like lost part of

11:26

modern day thinking about political machines that

11:28

they weren't just it wasn't just

11:30

a way to stuff a ballot box. It was also sort of

11:32

like, if you had

11:35

a problem with your landlord, you could go

11:37

to your world leader and be like, I

11:39

have a problem with my landlord. And like

11:41

the party machine would try to help you

11:43

out knowing that doing this would

11:45

probably cement your commitment to giving them

11:47

a vote and telling your friends and

11:49

family that, hey, vote for the

11:52

machine candidate. So reform

11:54

in this context often is reform of

11:56

like this machines because a lot of

11:58

middle class reform. around this time

12:01

saw this as being kind of like

12:03

messy and dirty, especially since machine politics

12:05

is very much associated with like mass

12:07

immigration, right? This is a period of

12:10

large scale immigration from Southern and Eastern

12:12

Europe. And one of the

12:14

things that political machines did was

12:17

quickly incorporate these people into sort

12:19

of like the political process. And

12:21

for many middle class, you know,

12:24

Protestant white reformers, this was sort

12:26

of like messy and

12:28

undesirable. So we're talking about New

12:30

York here, but this

12:33

similar kind of reform spirit

12:36

of trying to maybe

12:38

rationalize the political process

12:41

to make it

12:43

less messy is

12:46

going on throughout the country. And

12:49

one of the products

12:51

of it are various

12:53

types of suffrage restriction. And

12:56

so the emergence of the secret

12:58

ballot called the Australian ballot is

13:00

part of this process in

13:03

the South. This is part of

13:05

the process of Jim Crow. Part of the argument

13:07

for Jim Crow is like we're going

13:09

to clean up voting by getting

13:11

all of these people who

13:13

don't belong out of the process. So

13:17

you're saying there's kind of like a good side

13:19

to reform and a bad side to reform. It

13:21

is not entirely a wholly positive

13:24

endeavor, but

13:26

that past political world looks so alien to

13:28

us because it's so favor-based. It's

13:31

so transactional on a micro level

13:34

in a way that – it seems kind of slimy where it

13:36

is like, well, I'm having trouble with my landlord. Don't worry.

13:38

The party's going to step in and help you with that.

13:40

There's something a little mafia-ish about that. But

13:43

it's also very – there's something appealing about that

13:45

where I don't know. I

13:47

don't know who in the government I would turn

13:49

to in my elected areas of Los Angeles for

13:51

help with a permit or something like that or

13:53

with any kind of issue. You

13:56

wouldn't. I mean maybe the city, like different people

13:58

in the city. Nobody

14:01

who's like a legislator in any

14:03

real way. Yeah. I

14:05

mean, the unsavory parts of it

14:08

are real. There's a reason why

14:10

there pops up a reform movement in Chicago

14:13

and New York and all this in

14:15

St. Louis and Kansas City,

14:18

all the places where there are

14:20

powerful political machines. A reform movement

14:22

pop up specifically because all of

14:24

this can get very coercive and

14:26

corrupt very quickly. But at

14:28

the same time, and this is

14:30

just sort of my kind of

14:32

sympathy for machine politics arises from,

14:34

that kind of direct connection between

14:36

government and politics and everyday life

14:38

is really powerful and

14:41

cements a sort of level of

14:43

civic participation and civic

14:45

identity in people that is like, it

14:47

doesn't exist these days. One consequence

14:50

of the end of that kind

14:52

of top-down, highly organized political organization

14:54

in American politics is that people

14:56

don't have that kind of connection

14:58

to political life because there's no

15:01

mediating institutions to make it.

15:03

I actually think – I miss this too.

15:05

I think there's a huge problem with national

15:07

politics because there isn't enough earmarks and horse-trading

15:10

and all that sort of thing. It's

15:12

easy for us to say that now though because we're on

15:14

the other side of it. Very, yeah. At that time, they

15:16

were like, I don't like this. It turns out the

15:19

grass is always greener when it comes to politics.

15:22

But it's true that there's this balance between

15:24

idealism and practical reality that has to be

15:26

struck, and this is what Robert Moses is

15:29

starting to learn from Bel Moskowitz. Thank you

15:31

guys for providing me with a great on-ramp

15:33

to this part of the Robert Moses story

15:35

highway where they

15:38

have this report from 1915 that the

15:40

Bureau of Municipal Research put together about

15:42

how to reorganize the government. It

15:44

didn't go anywhere because the bureau has no

15:46

power, but now in the late teens, Bel

15:48

Moskowitz has that power through the governor, and

15:50

she says to Moses, it's

15:52

time for you to put together a new report. Tell us

15:55

how the state government should be put together, and he

15:57

will come to her with ideas, and she will say

15:59

no. No, we can't do that. I

16:01

know you want to eliminate these positions because they're

16:04

redundant, but the legislature uses those as big patronage

16:06

positions, and we need that. They want that. This

16:08

stuff about civil service reform, you can't put that

16:10

in there. That's going to antagonize voters, workers or

16:12

voters. We can't do that. And this

16:15

starts to really annoy Moses, and they talk about how when

16:17

he is not in the room with Belle, he swears about

16:19

her a lot, and he's really mad about it. But when

16:21

he is in the room with her, he does not –

16:24

he holds his tongue. He doesn't say those things because he's

16:26

learning. And he's learning about how you balance idealism

16:28

with practical political concerns. He's learning about

16:30

where actual political power comes from and

16:32

how you need to accommodate it. Belle

16:35

is really his teacher in how to

16:38

get things done through a system, what the

16:40

real levers are. And

16:42

Governor Smith says to them, I don't

16:44

want a plan that says – just has a bunch

16:46

of airy ideas. I want actionable legislative policy. If you're

16:48

just going to give me a bunch of ideas, finish

16:51

the report right now, and I'll throw it away. That'll

16:53

be great. You can just finish your job. And

16:56

Moses takes this as a real challenge, it seems. He drives

16:58

his staff super hard. They love him for it, and this

17:00

is something that you see starting now

17:02

basically and going throughout Moses' career is

17:04

that he can get groups of almost

17:06

always men, but women sometimes also, to

17:08

work for him really, really

17:11

hard, often to the point of threatening

17:13

their own finances and health eventually because

17:15

he is working harder than everybody else.

17:19

And he has a personality that is both

17:21

volatile but also welcoming and impresses

17:23

his employees with just how dedicated and how

17:25

passionate he is in a way that at

17:27

times sounds kind of like codependency between him

17:29

and his staff. But that's me psychoanalyzing probably

17:31

more than Robert Caro would approve of me

17:34

doing. This aspect of Robert Moses' personality, I've

17:36

never – throughout the book, Caro

17:39

talks about him in different ways of him

17:42

being very likable, very good in a room,

17:44

very hard driving, and then also very cruel to his career. I

17:50

don't know if I ever get a real

17:52

bead on Robert Moses, what it would be like to be in a room

17:54

with him a lot of the time. It seems hard to square the circle of all

17:56

these – Different

18:00

personality traits into one human. It's

18:02

a real citizen Kane type scenario Yeah, where everyone

18:05

sees a little bit of this big character,

18:07

but it seems like He

18:09

just is such an overwhelming Figure

18:12

of energy. He has such an overwhelming personality that

18:14

he carries people along and I don't think it's

18:16

one of those things where he

18:20

Is kind of doing nice things for his employees throughout

18:22

the day like he's a tough guy But he was

18:24

there for me when I needed him It sounds like

18:26

it's more just the the sheer charisma of somebody who

18:28

is so passionate about what he's doing that you can't

18:31

help But get carried along with it even if after

18:33

the fact you're like, oh, well, he was a

18:35

mean man That was it. That was very mean of him to

18:38

do that thing but in the moment you get swept up in

18:40

it and this is the first

18:42

time we see a thing that will continue throughout the book

18:44

where Robert Moses is so full

18:46

of energy that at the end of the night He

18:48

will go out to this beach bungalow that his family

18:50

is renting at the time This is in 1919 and

18:52

we'll just swim in the dark by

18:54

himself and go way out farther than anyone else

18:57

feels safe going Because he's just so full of

18:59

energy He just got to go swimming and he

19:01

is like a night swimmer throughout the rest of

19:03

his life in a way that uh Just feels

19:05

like him burning off extra energy The

19:08

money for this commission runs out. Moses

19:10

has to finish this report himself and

19:13

when it's finished Caro

19:15

is really is really very Full

19:18

of praise about it that it is very

19:20

clear. It's full of confidence Moses

19:22

takes almost full credit for it Even though a

19:25

lot of people worked on it and there's a

19:27

funny story where he hires the historian Charles a

19:29

beard who wrote Was it the

19:31

economic interpretation of the American Revolution? That's

19:33

right. Thank you. I'm so glad I got the title

19:35

right and the end He

19:38

hires him to write part of it And then Charles

19:40

Beard takes that part of it that he wrote and repurpose

19:42

it for an article and Moses gets mad and threatens to

19:45

Sue him for plagiarism and beard is apoplectic. He's like, but

19:47

I wrote this wait It was but I you hired me

19:49

to write it. I wrote it. You didn't write it We're

19:53

seeing that Ramos not like to share credit with

19:55

people But he's also starting

19:57

to build his name among the right people as the

19:59

only guy who can get things done.

20:01

So under the guidance of Moses they formed

20:04

this Citizens Committee on the reorganization of state

20:06

government and Al Smith is dumping across the

20:08

state and he's giving speeches and support of

20:10

the reports recommendation which is all new like

20:13

for Moses like you know he is like

20:16

being supported for the first time and he's

20:18

also kind of learning the political game like

20:20

he's showing tact that sort of in the

20:22

way that Bel Moskowitz has sort of trained

20:24

him to kind of like defer to other

20:27

people give them his ideas

20:30

he know he just is smarter about all this

20:32

stuff. He's trying his best not to be visibly

20:35

arrogant and hateful towards the people who have immediate power

20:37

over him which is new for him which is very

20:39

new for him he doesn't like it. And

20:41

so with Al Smith's support and with Moses's

20:44

like deep knowledge of how all these laws

20:46

work and how these reforms would work within

20:48

them they're able to get a

20:50

lot of stuff done. They managed to pass a lot

20:53

of this reform package they don't get the biggest

20:55

things they don't get the four-year term for the

20:57

governor yet they don't get to consolidate the state

20:59

bureaucracy yet they don't get the executive

21:02

budget the idea the governor would prepare a

21:04

budget for the whole state but Al Smith

21:06

says to Moses don't worry I'm gonna do

21:08

that in my next term as governor but

21:11

there's a problem. Yeah

21:14

the term is only two years as we

21:16

said and Al Smith does

21:18

not get reelected. No unfortunately his reelection

21:20

is during the election of 1920 when

21:23

the Democrats his party put up as President Cox

21:26

and of course our

21:28

audience I don't have to remind you about President

21:30

Cox we all remember the amazing things that happened

21:32

under his term his ten-year him and his vice

21:34

president Franklin Roosevelt I'm sorry

21:36

if you're like I don't remember a President

21:39

Cox it's because they didn't happen he lost

21:41

it really badly and took Al Smith down

21:43

with him not the last time that Franklin

21:45

Roosevelt will get in the way of Robert

21:47

Moses but certainly

21:49

the first time and so those major reforms

21:51

they just don't happen and

21:53

suddenly once again Robert Moses is

21:55

not in the realm of power anymore.

21:58

Right right the committee gets this all

22:01

that stuff, you know, just sort of goes away when Al

22:03

Smith is no longer the governor. Except

22:06

that Robert Moses takes his job at the

22:08

New York State Association, which is, you know, something we'll

22:10

hear a little bit more about in the next chapter.

22:13

But one of the real key things

22:15

is he has become friends

22:17

with Al Smith. Like, Al Smith has

22:19

really taken a shine to Robert Moses. And

22:21

now that they're both sort of like, you

22:24

know, esteemed private citizens, they begin

22:26

to hang out like his friends.

22:28

Yes, there's a passage that I'd

22:30

love to read here where

22:32

Robert Carroll becomes kind of

22:35

Charles Dickens-y in describing these

22:37

two seemingly mismatched but surprisingly

22:41

deeply bonded figures. And this is

22:43

where it says it here. The

22:46

two men made an odd pair as they walked

22:48

through the winding, narrow streets of the Lower East

22:50

Side in the twilight, one of

22:52

them tall, slim, handsome, and aristocratic

22:54

and bearing. The other short, pot-bellied,

22:56

florid, the taller man striding out

22:58

with long, springing steps continually had to shorten

23:01

his stride to let the other, who walked

23:03

with a slow, extremely pigeon-toed gait, catch up.

23:06

Their progress was further slowed by Smith's

23:08

popularity. He seemed to know almost every

23:10

man and woman who passed, and when one of them

23:12

stopped to chat, he would stop, too, and talk with

23:14

him without appearance of impatience, but

23:17

his companion would stride restlessly in

23:19

little circles, or, trying desperately to

23:21

stand still and listen politely, would

23:23

nervously clench and unclench his fists.

23:26

And the chapter ends with Robert Moses

23:28

amazingly reporting to the people he knows

23:30

that Al Smith listens to him. And

23:34

just to give full context of this, if

23:36

you were to sort of encapsulate all of

23:39

what Robert Moses did as this intern

23:41

of a think tank when it comes

23:43

to political reform, if

23:45

it all sort of came down to one point, it is

23:48

people like Al Smith shouldn't govern. That

23:53

is basically his conclusion at

23:55

the end of his time

23:58

at the think tank. This

24:00

is his master's thesis, right, is

24:02

that only people with college educations should be

24:04

in government positions. And Al Smith is the

24:07

antithesis of that as we get through –

24:09

go into chapter 7. But yeah,

24:11

this is something that I wanted to get your

24:13

guys thought on before we get into Al Smith's

24:15

amazing rise to the height of New York politics

24:18

is that Al Smith to

24:20

the outsider, he's a Tammany man. He's kind

24:22

of emblematic of that kind of machine politics.

24:25

And as you're saying, Roman, Moses' reforms

24:27

in theory are all about we shouldn't

24:29

have guys like that in power.

24:32

Only the college-educated should. The democratic,

24:34

clean way of doing things is

24:37

to not have this kind of machine

24:39

corruption. But it's only in

24:42

the world of that machine corruption that

24:44

a guy as from the

24:46

bottom as Al Smith can rise to the top,

24:48

this idea that which is

24:50

a truly more democratic system? Because if

24:52

Moses has a way, like you're saying, you wouldn't see any Al

24:54

Smiths in government. But it is only Al

24:56

Smith who is able to get through the kinds of reforms that

24:59

Moses is trying to do. And Jamel, I guess

25:01

this maybe dovetails with what you were saying earlier

25:03

about reform movements also being about

25:05

removing certain types of voters or certain types

25:08

of members of the populace. What is the

25:10

– is that – I don't have

25:12

a way to phrase this as a question, but can you talk about it? I

25:14

guess that's a question. Yeah,

25:16

sure. I mean, this is the

25:18

macro picture of American

25:21

politics in kind of

25:23

this period is that

25:25

it's really fractitious, right? So in

25:27

these 1880s and 1890s, you have

25:29

the Farmers Alliance and

25:32

the Populist Party, which is hugely disruptive.

25:34

I think today, to the extent that

25:36

anyone learns about the Populists. So

25:39

yeah, the farmers got angry and they had a party and it contested

25:41

some elections. But like the Populist Party

25:43

at its height, more or less like

25:45

unsettled American politics across the country. And

25:47

so you have this, you

25:49

have like labor unrest, like really serious

25:51

and violent labor unrest throughout the country.

25:54

There is multiple economic crises

25:56

happening. I think there's a

25:58

panic in 1890s. 1993,

26:01

there's maybe a little recession

26:03

in the beginning of the 20th century. So

26:06

kind of the context for

26:08

the progressive reform era, which

26:11

is what this is all kind of

26:13

a part of, like, progressivism exists in

26:15

both parties as a reform movement. They're

26:18

Republican progressives, they're Democratic progressives. They

26:21

exist within, you know, the

26:23

Tammany machine has people who

26:26

would identify as progressives. And

26:29

this is, I think to a large

26:31

extent, like Robert Moses, and it's a group of people

26:33

are in that milieu. A guy who I'm sure will

26:35

get mentioned in the book, Robert

26:37

F. Wagner, because he's sort of like

26:39

a very important figure in national politics

26:42

in the 1930s. We'll hear

26:44

about Robert Wagner, and we'll hear about his son, the

26:46

other Robert Wagner. Yes. Not

26:48

the actor. Yeah. If you're

26:50

googling this, you gotta remember there's an actor named

26:52

Robert Wagner, too. Robert

26:55

F. Wagner is

26:57

the politician. His son is

26:59

also Robert Wagner, Jr. And

27:03

then there's Robert Wagner from

27:05

heart to heart. Yeah.

27:10

No, but it's the fractitiousness, and

27:12

in some cases, the violence of

27:14

American politics, like a lot of

27:16

reformers want to get a

27:18

handle on. It's the

27:20

very real corruption. All

27:22

of this is also happening. I

27:25

mentioned there's mass immigration during all of this,

27:28

and what's also happening is sort of like

27:30

a growing kind of like nativistic attitude

27:33

within American politics. So

27:36

the progressive reformers, whether they're

27:38

operating in New York or

27:40

other northern and middle-Atlantic cities, whether they're

27:43

out west in California, whether they're down

27:45

south, the progressive reformers are

27:47

trying to do like a bunch of things.

27:49

And one of them is this attempt to

27:53

rationalize politics, Reduce

27:55

the level of fractitiousness and

27:58

like violence and conflict. I'm

28:01

to promote people who

28:03

are interested in science.

28:05

Credible scientific Government government

28:07

by experts, Government by

28:09

people with some a

28:11

base of of knowledge.

28:14

And this is like be ugly side.

28:16

It's like. The. More

28:18

ordinary immigrant voters, wavering voters like, what are

28:20

they So what are they know about ministry?

28:23

the government? Maybe they should have as much

28:25

of a say? Maybe maybe we should be

28:27

finding ways to have them be less of

28:30

a part of the political process. And

28:32

because you're saying what they would be

28:34

thinking, we suggest that they are on

28:36

Texas and included into a political a

28:39

year times columnist and elbow he deserves

28:41

again. we're going to be involved in

28:43

such lovely settle that I think that

28:45

as a separate but I think it's

28:47

were missing in in that moment was

28:49

actually like how overt was the anti

28:51

immigrant of for bigoted nature of this

28:53

reform movements? Was it was it all

28:55

on subtext or or would they talk

28:57

about openly. I wasn't subtext

28:59

at all. It's

29:02

super tax levy li pull

29:04

off something real quick. There's.

29:07

A wonderful book. From. The

29:09

Nineteen Seventies by a. Political

29:13

science is still living. In. J.

29:15

Morgan Qu Ser called the Shaping

29:17

of Southern politics suffered restriction and

29:19

be serviceable party south. It it's

29:22

mostly about right the south by

29:24

a deal's it. Because it takes

29:26

place during this time it deals

29:29

with similar kinds of movements happening.

29:31

Throughout. The country. Year

29:34

ago. This. Is from the books.

29:36

Between a T V and I'm eighteen

29:38

thirty nine states outside the South me

29:40

the ability to read English, a qualification

29:43

for voting in Rhode Island, required boaters

29:45

appear least one dollar and taxes. Reading

29:47

the prestigious North American Review, a prominent

29:49

University of Michigan geologist denounced both the

29:52

communists sick principle of universal equal suffrage.

29:55

Poet. It is not an injustice to those is

29:57

for under control. it is just as to those who

29:59

have the right. The best government. It

30:01

is just as to those who nature an

30:03

indication of fitted to administer best government is

30:05

is that oppression of the masses by slug

30:08

good few. It is the best protection of

30:10

the masses, all political evils, the best guidance

30:12

of the masses towards the blessings of higher

30:14

national individual prosperity. Other Northerner

30:16

supported state or national literacy tests, reduce

30:19

the influence of immigrants, were negroes or

30:21

spell the pope, bosses and cook demigods

30:23

who allegedly benefited from the votes of

30:26

these groups. Staff. Similarly,

30:28

the tenor of of of conversation.

30:33

So. Let's take a good break and will

30:35

come backs. Were going to get to one

30:38

of our favorite such as The Bucks. a

30:40

little micro biography of Ausmus. The Great Ausmus.

30:42

After this. So.

30:51

This for the book we talk about Ausmus

30:53

and right year carol don't back in time

30:55

and you've not paying close attention is pretty

30:57

confusing said many of us because you suddenly

30:59

like wait he's a child now as I

31:02

got the governor, the governor and then he

31:04

was that the governor not elected and nineteen

31:06

eighteen and then he goes back. In all

31:08

my life I wanted to be the governor

31:10

of and we face a suspicious. Of

31:14

see set the that yeah we the movie

31:16

version of it. Ah so we're in chapter

31:18

seven hours com change of major and it

31:20

opens. With. A long section that

31:22

I will try to do. Quickly.

31:24

And not to detail, I love it. This is a

31:27

seventeen page section. It's half the chapters which is just

31:29

telling the life story L. Smith and every time I

31:31

I think about this book I know it's seventeen pages.

31:33

It's second the from the first time I read it

31:35

and I'll be like there's no way that section seventy

31:37

pages I must be exaggerating and then I'll go back

31:39

and read through it again and like. Now.

31:42

It is the tough but L smith for a long

31:44

time to the point where when Robert Moses comes back

31:46

in I'm of the first summer read this book I

31:48

was really enjoying else miss life and then it rubber

31:50

hoses came back and I was like oh yes books

31:53

about Robert Moses of it likes he felt like and

31:55

to superheroes we're finally teaming up that I've been reading

31:57

their books that the separately for a long time but

31:59

I. He is. The

32:01

exact opposite in many ways of

32:04

Moses upbringing and carol. It. Compares

32:06

them Specifically says at this age that most

32:08

was doing this. L. Smith is doing this.

32:10

He's growing up in the Irish tenements of

32:13

New York's Fourth Ward, the right at the

32:15

foot of a of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's

32:17

all tenements is kind of your classic, easy

32:19

to romanticize that actually very terrible to live

32:21

in tenements and his father dies when he's

32:24

young, his mother's little. They worry that if

32:26

she cannot financially support children still be taken

32:28

away from her and put institution. And.

32:30

Finally he drops out of school up there t

32:32

and and goes to work ah for much that

32:34

time is working at Fulton Fish Market or were

32:36

cow notes he works from for am to five

32:39

pm every day except Friday. When. He

32:41

said forget three I am. It's not that he

32:43

has friday off it as he has one extra

32:45

hour of work. ah but he officers getting into

32:47

the kind of low level political work that smell

32:49

you were telling us about which they describe as

32:52

executing contracts or which is kind of favors you

32:54

note that he'd they talk about like tipping off

32:56

a brothel owner that mitt that are going to

32:58

be a raid so maybe get ready for it

33:00

or this a poor constituents who needs little bit

33:03

to help because they lost their jobs and each

33:05

of these things is a favor that you're doing.

33:07

And. They know that the pressure to the

33:09

fiverr knows this is the democratic party this

33:11

doing this me this favor and specifically the

33:14

local democratic. Word. Boss who in this

33:16

case is a guy named Big Tom Foley which

33:18

is a great if you want to be a

33:20

machine politician. he should have Big if in in

33:22

the front of your name. That's that should be

33:24

your nickname. it's it's own. He can only sound

33:26

kind of corrupt. ah it never sat It's it's

33:29

not like to add up serving measure positions with

33:31

Big at the front of his name who is

33:33

above board and sister just known for his honesty

33:35

Like big a blanket or something like that. And.

33:39

He catches. The Temple is I because Al

33:42

Smith is someone everyone seems to like. He goes

33:44

out of his weight it to do as much

33:46

as he can for people. He works hard. People

33:48

does seem to like him. And. he

33:50

says hey i'm gonna put you up as a

33:52

state assemblyman and l smith is like oh okay

33:55

sure yet that they'll be rights and he gets

33:57

elected he goes to see legislation albany and he

33:59

finds it The

34:01

speeches are impenetrable. The wording of the bill is impenetrable.

34:03

Again, this is a guy who dropped his school at

34:05

13. And this is a New

34:08

York school in the late 19th century. This is

34:10

not an amazing school probably. And

34:12

each night, after kind of carousing with

34:14

his fellow legislators, because a lot of the job

34:16

of being in the state legislature seems to be

34:18

to go drinking with the other legislators, he'd go

34:21

back to the room he was staying in and

34:23

read through every single bill that was

34:25

brought up that day and the older bills they

34:27

referred to. And it's his way

34:29

of just trying to figure out what

34:31

do these things mean? Like what do they mean? Why

34:33

are they written this way? What are the people who

34:35

introduced this bill? What are they thinking? Why are they

34:37

thinking this way that has to be done? And

34:40

he needs money. He has a

34:42

family by this point. And he goes to Big Tom

34:44

Foley. And Tom Foley says, I'll give you this big

34:46

patronage job, this plum job. It's not a lot of

34:48

work. It's good money. But if you take it,

34:51

you'll never be a big man in New York. But

34:54

hey, maybe Albany is too tough for you. Maybe you're just

34:56

not ready for it. And Smith decides to

34:58

turn down that job, and he goes back to Albany.

35:01

And while he's a state legislator, he

35:03

is entirely a tamany man. Whatever Big Tom Foley

35:05

tells him to do, he does it. And he

35:07

spends his days voting, whatever his order to vote,

35:10

winning over his colleagues with kind of jokes and things. But

35:13

then at night, when nobody knows what he's doing, he's

35:15

just researching and reading and studying and

35:17

researching and learning. And as we know,

35:19

there's nothing Robert Caro admires more than

35:22

deep research that involves reading papers long

35:24

into the night. Anytime a

35:26

character does interviews or researching papers in

35:29

this book, they are – instantly there's

35:31

a shine that glows for them. And

35:35

we'll talk about this more later actually

35:37

because we'll get into the deeper weeds

35:39

of bill writing. But

35:42

as a dilettante when it comes to politics,

35:44

read about it, but I'm not a New

35:46

York Times columnist or anything like that. Jamil,

35:50

can you enlighten us? Why are laws written

35:52

so complicatedly? Why are they so complicated? Why

35:55

do we need a whole court whose job seems to be just

35:57

to tell us what words that are so complicated?

36:00

are in the dictionary, like what they mean. Why

36:02

should he have to study so hard to understand what these laws

36:04

are saying? A lot

36:06

of reasons. So first, a piece of

36:09

legislation may effectively just be an amendment

36:11

of an older piece of legislation. So

36:13

you need to know the language of the

36:15

older piece of legislation, A, to understand what

36:17

this new one is doing and B, to

36:19

even write it. You have to have knowledge

36:21

of this previous piece of legislation. And then

36:23

these things are written in like a kind

36:25

of very technical, legalistic

36:28

language. And that explains like 90%

36:30

of it. And so where a

36:33

court comes in, right, is like

36:35

it's first of all, I

36:37

mean, most often, it's the bill is written,

36:40

it's passed into law, it's being

36:43

implemented, and the people tasked with

36:45

implementing it, they're reading it, they're cross checking it

36:47

based on what they know, and they begin to

36:49

take action. And then someone else may be as

36:51

affected by that action as, hey, I don't think

36:53

you're reading that correctly. This is what I think

36:55

this means, that the law says. And

36:58

now the legislature

37:01

doesn't really, it's doing other stuff now, it's not going

37:03

to go back and like clarify. So

37:06

the job of the court is they looked at

37:08

the text, they looked at the legislative history, they

37:10

look at, you

37:12

know, similar laws, maybe, and how those are

37:14

implemented, how they look at everything. And they

37:17

say, well, we think that this

37:19

understanding of the law makes the most

37:21

sense. And that's kind of most

37:23

of the deal, right? Just sort of law

37:26

writing is a technical process. It's

37:29

an interpretive process. And

37:31

the people who write

37:33

laws are often trying to do it in such

37:36

a way as to make

37:38

sure that what they want to happen

37:41

actually happens. This

37:43

is sort of like the big thing. You gotta

37:46

write it in a way that like, we want

37:48

x to happen specifically, and you need to make

37:50

sure that it does actually happen. Because

37:52

there's someone else who can come along and say, oh, but that law

37:54

kind of says y. I

37:56

know you maybe you wanted x, but y

37:58

works also. Yeah, yeah, right.

38:01

You wanted X, but what you wrote

38:03

is more akin to Y. You're

38:06

doing X, but you can't do X because

38:08

actually it means Y. You want to avoid

38:10

that situation as much as possible. Well, now

38:13

that I know how complicated it is, it is

38:15

less surprising to me that it takes Al Smith

38:17

until his fifth term in the state legislature to

38:19

finally understand how laws work and what's going on.

38:21

I mean, this is a bit of my own

38:23

little, you know, listeners, this is my own hobby

38:26

horse. So if you disagree with me, whatever, just

38:28

ignore it. Like, you know, fast forward through. But

38:32

this is actually the basic problem with

38:34

like term limits as a concept that

38:36

like when you get elected to a legislature,

38:39

your first term, 90% of

38:42

it is learning who the people

38:44

are, what the basic rules

38:46

are, and like, that's

38:48

it. And if you get elected to

38:51

a second term, then you can learn a little more.

38:53

And in practice, especially for

38:57

when you win the terms of two years

38:59

or three years, in practice, your first five

39:01

terms might simply be equivalent to orientation, right?

39:03

Sort of like, okay, I've been here for

39:06

10 years. Now I know enough to do

39:08

something that I want to do. And

39:10

the term limit basically like short

39:13

circuits that process. So the

39:15

term limit doesn't say, okay, you're now at

39:17

the point where you have enough knowledge, and

39:20

you have you built enough relationships, and you've

39:22

developed an area of expertise or an area

39:24

of interest, you're at the point where you

39:26

can write a law and build a coalition

39:28

and get it passed. Well, now you can't

39:30

be in the legislature anymore. Goodbye. You can't

39:32

be here. But even

39:34

a term limit, like a single term being so

39:36

short is an impediment to all

39:39

this. And it's pretty fascinating. I

39:41

think one thing you have to sort of think

39:43

about that's different today as back

39:45

then is like, you

39:47

know, essentially, campaigns

39:50

are so long that two years, you're

39:52

basically, you get elected, you have to

39:54

like basically, you're focused on being reelected,

39:56

it's like immediate. Whereas I think these

39:58

campaigns, when we Talk about

40:00

different campaigns later on. the like A monthlong

40:02

may be like on the outside. pretty sure

40:04

your assistance and when when you're running for

40:07

the state legislature knew that big Tom Foley

40:09

in a corner? yeah, really can't really have

40:11

you hard as I ever have a sister

40:13

Is that the bully boys standing on beer

40:15

barrels giving speeches on street corners and that's

40:18

an ass and you know ever knows favors

40:20

and guys of bats you know I can

40:22

offer? Oh yeah of course. Ah the good

40:24

old days. Yeah yeah course for the after

40:26

that in by Nineteen Eleven he is the

40:29

majority leader for his party. He's still doing

40:31

family business. There's a kind of a loaded

40:33

of turning moment as a result the Triangle

40:35

Shirtwaist Factory Fire when the one of the

40:37

great labor tragedies in the United States and

40:40

he adds himself to the committee that investigating

40:42

at for the state and he starts to

40:44

make relationships with the reformers. We're also working

40:46

on that committee and working in the cause

40:48

of safer ah, labor situations for especially for.

40:51

New. York on Workers, The For Workers in

40:53

General and. He starts to make

40:55

this relationship with a few reformers to see that

40:57

he's an educated. He seems have

41:00

no political ideology. Really? Whatsoever.

41:02

But he cares in a broader sense of

41:04

the idea of taking care of the people

41:06

of little people. He is. What Jamal you're

41:08

saying about it's about populism. He is that

41:10

kind of populist in the. To zip

41:12

sense of the word, you know. and

41:14

he becomes very powerful speaker for the

41:16

rights of workers, the rights of the

41:18

poor. While he's still at the same

41:20

time doing family business and ah, he

41:22

becomes the assembly speaker, he gets reputation

41:25

for working efficiently. He's bullies laws through

41:27

it. He might stand up for. A

41:29

progressive bill that a family says don't do

41:31

this he will switch on a dime so

41:33

that Nineteen sixteen reorganization reports that sales the

41:36

one before of most as reports he was

41:38

in support of it and then his bosses

41:40

like don't do this and he says them

41:42

sorry boys. Got. The word can't do

41:44

it Like is very open about how he was told

41:46

he can't vote support. it's not supporting it. Ah, but

41:48

behind the scenes he's starting to kind of lobby the

41:51

team, the people. to change their thinking

41:53

a little bit and he's getting traction

41:55

because they have a goal they think

41:57

he might be able to achieve with

42:00

is to be the first Irish-American governor of

42:02

the state. It's something they've never been able

42:04

to establish and it means a lot to

42:06

this very Irish political machine in a city

42:09

with a lot of Irish voters who are

42:11

looked down on. And so in 1918, as

42:13

we know, she's elected governor. He's associated in

42:15

that campaign and then for the rest of

42:18

his life with the then new song, The

42:20

Sidewalks of New York, a song that I

42:22

feel like I only know from old cartoons

42:24

and things like that, that's one that goes

42:26

east, side, west, side, all

42:29

around the town. You

43:01

kind of feel like when Robert Caro is writing this,

43:03

there are still old-timers who when they hear that song

43:05

they go, ah yes, Al Smith, you know, the same

43:07

way that I'll always think of Bill

43:10

Clinton when I hear that don't stop thinking about

43:12

tomorrow song when it comes on the oldies radio.

43:14

And Governor Smith, he will work with

43:16

reformers, but he works on reforms that are

43:18

good politics. He has no time for the

43:20

kind of uncompromising idealists that Moses used to

43:22

traffic with and he has some great names

43:25

for them that I want to highlight

43:27

that he calls them mush brains, double

43:30

domes, crackpots that's still around. And

43:32

my favorite which is Googoos. Oh

43:35

yeah, I love Googoos. You

43:37

just won't deal

43:40

with Googoos. Doesn't want them. And at

43:42

this point, the book has brought us back

43:44

to where we left off before. Moses is

43:46

part of the Smith's kind of coterie of

43:48

people. He likes him. He likes singing barbershop

43:50

quartet songs with him. Nobody really knows why.

43:52

He just seems to like Robert Moses. And

43:56

that's when we go Back

43:58

to the end of the last chapter. Smith of

44:00

the election. Most accept this job with

44:03

the New York State Association. It's a

44:05

new Statewide Good Government organizations, The first

44:07

statewide good government reform organization in New

44:09

York, and that instantly makes him a

44:12

more important figure in that reform circle.

44:14

He catches the eyes of the old

44:16

reformers. The young Lawyers is the embodiment,

44:18

everything that they think is possible in

44:21

the Form movement. This brilliant young hardworking

44:23

guy who is with who has strong

44:25

principles, won't compromise. and he edits the

44:27

organizations monthly magazine, which is very straightforward.

44:30

Reform principal boost ring except when it comes

44:32

to talking about Al Smith in which case

44:34

it is a super pro else I'm in

44:36

Madison and and the other former so like

44:38

what. Is the deal like? I don't

44:40

understand why? Why? Why is that the

44:42

one guy and. In Eighteen Twenty Two,

44:44

Smith runs for Governor again. Therefore, magazine is

44:47

so solidly pro Smith that it is making

44:49

factual errors about Smith's opponent. and Moses doesn't

44:51

seem to care like it's just it's so

44:53

in the tank for Smith and the other

44:55

members of the Zebra group of saw this

44:57

as a nonpartisan organization. Their dismay: they start

45:00

to resign the organization. Somewhat. Falls

45:02

apart. And. Robert Sound notes

45:04

that fifty years later when the book

45:06

was written, ah, the League of Women

45:09

Voters was still the only statewide political

45:11

reform organization in New York. Ah, that

45:13

that this organization which had such potential

45:15

moses effectively turned it into an Al

45:17

Smith Pack your Super Pacs and. I.

45:20

Has have doesn't that since by now. but

45:22

I did not do the research for it

45:24

that there must be a statewide reform legislation

45:26

in New York now and. Robert.

45:28

Moses. He. Has made the ultimate

45:30

change which is that. These. Other

45:32

farmers they come from they say L. Smith said this

45:34

in a speech and it's not true. This. Thing

45:37

that he said about his opponents and Moses

45:39

goes. Yeah. But it sounds

45:41

better. We. gotta win this election right

45:43

guys and he has come to scorn

45:45

anyone who prioritizes truth over results and

45:47

as carol says bob moses was scornful

45:49

in short of what he had been

45:51

and l smith wins the election ah

45:53

and rock how and the tapper saying

45:55

and when on january second nineteen twenty

45:57

three l smith went back to Albany,

45:59

he took Bob Moses with him and

46:01

he took him back big. I love

46:05

that. He knows how to end chapter so

46:07

well. He's a super chapter-enter. Yeah. So

46:10

now we're into chapter eight. It's called A Taste of Power,

46:13

and Al Smith is the governor

46:15

again, and Robert Moses is up

46:18

in Albany with him. But in what is

46:20

a very, for me, was confusing the first

46:22

time I read it, seeing he's not sitting

46:24

next to Al Smith in

46:27

the beginning of this chapter. He's sitting next

46:29

to a young Democrat named Jimmy Walker. Who

46:32

is Jimmy Walker? At the time, Jimmy Walker

46:34

is the Democratic floor leader in the

46:36

legislature, in the state Senate, and

46:38

you're right, it is super confusing that

46:40

this guy is just brought in, and Jimmy Walker

46:43

will eventually be mayor of

46:45

New York. He is famous as

46:47

the mayor who is, well, hear about him

46:49

more, but he's a man about town. He's

46:51

a songwriter. He is kind of the epitome

46:53

of gentlemanly, slimy corruption

46:56

in New York City. He is

46:58

a guy who dresses well. He

47:00

takes his mistress to official public

47:02

events. Everybody loves him, and he

47:04

is super crooked. But here, he's

47:06

just kind of mentioned, and

47:08

he's mentioned in the way that I have to

47:10

assume, what Robert Caro is doing here is equivalent

47:12

to when a Marvel movie ends and a character

47:14

suddenly shows up and half the audience goes, oh,

47:17

and the other half is like, I don't know who

47:20

this is. Am I supposed to know who this is?

47:22

Like this character shows his face for a moment, because

47:24

Robert Caro just assumes when he's writing for a New

47:26

York audience in the 1970s, they know who Jimmy Walker

47:28

is. Come on, he's famous. How could

47:30

you forget about this? This indelible New York political

47:32

character. And all I can think about is good

47:36

times. That all comes to mind when

47:38

I hear Jimmy Walker. Once again, a

47:40

New York political figure having the same

47:42

name as a television actor is tripping

47:45

us up again. Thanks a lot, reality,

47:48

for giving us so many of these. That's two in one

47:50

episode. I'll say I just looked up a picture of Jimmy

47:52

Walker. This guy does not look like you should trust him.

47:56

Well, and that's in some

47:58

ways, he was kind of the way. That Trump,

48:00

part of the thing that people like about Trump when they

48:03

like him is that he's kind of a slime ball. They

48:05

kind of admire that about him. With Jimmy Walker, it was

48:07

kind of the same thing where it was like, oh,

48:10

Jimmy, oh, this guy, come on.

48:12

Oh, that's Jimmy. He

48:15

was very much the

48:17

arch nemesis of a lot of reformers at the time, but

48:19

this is before he's become mayor. This is when he is

48:21

still a Democratic senator.

48:24

But Robert Moses is doing the job in

48:26

the scene of being the guy who stands

48:28

next to the politician and tells him all

48:30

the things that he needs to know so

48:32

that he can then go out and give

48:35

the speeches or make the legislative moves that

48:37

are going to be – that are going to get the policies in

48:39

place. Moses at this point, he has no

48:42

official position in the state government. His only

48:44

official job, his only salary is as Secretary

48:46

of the New York State Association. But

48:49

effectively, his role is as Al Smith's

48:51

legislative researcher, messenger, all-around companion, like right-hand man

48:53

in a lot of ways. He's in the

48:55

building when Al Smith's at work. He goes

48:58

with Al Smith to visit Al Smith's grandkids.

49:00

He goes with Al Smith at night to

49:02

visit the animals in the executive mansion Menagerie,

49:04

which apparently was something that they had at

49:06

the time of the executive mansion. And

49:09

it's possibly the least relevant piece of information, but I feel

49:11

like I have to highlight the

49:13

animals that were living outside the executive

49:15

mansion in Albany at the time, which

49:17

was – let's see

49:19

– tiger and bear cubs, goats, a fox,

49:22

and an elk, and as permanent resident, six

49:24

dogs, a mother raccoon with three baby raccoons,

49:26

and three monkeys. So

49:29

at this point, the governor of New York has a private

49:31

zoo, and Al Smith loves it. This will come up later.

49:33

He's the love of zoos. But

49:35

Moses is in the political inner circle. It's

49:37

him. It's Mrs. Moskowitz. It's a few other

49:39

people, Tammany bosses and reformers. He is in

49:41

the mix of power. Jamel, is

49:43

this how things still work, that there's like just

49:45

unpaid people wandering around with politicians?

49:48

I mean I feel like when I watch cable

49:50

news, which I try not to because

49:52

it depresses me, there's always people who are

49:54

credited as political consultants or advisors. I

49:57

think that Robert Moses was just kind

49:59

of like a – free-floating, kind of unpaid,

50:01

but very necessary advisor. Do we still have

50:03

that? We still,

50:05

I mean, often the people who fill

50:08

that role are paid these days,

50:12

mostly because a politician, right,

50:14

like your top campaign advisor,

50:16

you may bring on a staff, right, like

50:18

maybe you'll be your chief of staff, maybe

50:22

you'll serve some other like staff position

50:24

that they can be paid. The kind

50:26

of just sort of like guy who's around,

50:28

who doesn't really have a job, but like

50:30

it's close to the close to

50:33

the governor or to the mayor

50:35

or to whomever. That's, I

50:37

feel like it's a little less common these

50:39

days, like that kind of close advisor is

50:41

still around, but they are often given some

50:43

kind of official role just to put them

50:45

in proximity and you give them like a

50:47

paycheck. Patrick is just still a thing.

50:49

But now it's good white collar, kind of like

50:52

like expert patronage as opposed

50:54

to the bad old fashioned regular people

50:56

get jobs patronage. Right, right, right. Oh,

50:59

thank goodness. I'll just say even white

51:02

collar, people still feel

51:04

like someone needs to have qualifications.

51:06

I don't know if you remember George

51:08

W. Bush's first pick for Supreme

51:11

Court after Sandra Day

51:13

O'Connor, yeah, Harry Meyers, who was

51:15

like a personal lawyer. And

51:18

it was like, yeah, I'll put my personal lawyer

51:20

on the court. Why not? Right? Like, that's like

51:22

classic patronage. It's like, it's classic patronage. And I

51:24

don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's

51:27

like, I think, I mean, I

51:29

think we probably would have all been better off if

51:31

it was Justice Harry Meyers, but not

51:33

Justice San Milito. Yeah. That's, well, that's the amazing thing

51:35

is just like, in theory, that's bonkers. For the president,

51:37

put his personal lawyer, someone who does, did not seem

51:39

to have the experience. Nobody knew really what her ideas

51:41

were to put on it. But looking at it back

51:43

on it out, I'm like, you know what, it probably

51:46

would have been better to have just like a

51:48

personal attorney who is not beholden to the federalist

51:50

society or some didn't clerk for a Supreme Court

51:53

justice, like to have them on the court. Maybe

51:55

we need more of that stuff. I don't know.

51:57

This is actually the point I was going to

51:59

make. that sort of what we

52:01

gained stuff, the legacy

52:03

of this reform movement is the professionalization

52:05

of government service. And we gain a

52:08

lot from that. That is important. But

52:10

these are political jobs at the end of

52:12

the day. And political considerations do have a

52:15

place in political jobs. And

52:17

I think we lose something in

52:19

trying to get rid of political

52:21

considerations in political jobs. There's a

52:23

balance to strike. And

52:25

sometimes I think, with certain kinds

52:28

of positions, we've moved way too far in

52:30

the direction of everyone has to be

52:32

a certain kind of professional versus

52:34

in the case of a Supreme Court seat

52:36

or the federal judiciary in general, hey,

52:39

maybe it's not a bad idea

52:42

to appoint someone who was a

52:45

longtime legislator to this

52:47

job. They can figure out the technical parts,

52:49

but we're not hiring them for their judgment.

52:52

And maybe that's what we're looking for. Well,

52:56

that's the way they were doing things in the old

52:58

days. And Robert Caro talks about

53:00

the excitement for Moses of working in

53:02

Smith's office. He's in the center

53:04

of power in the state. And

53:06

he's seeing how real decisions are being made.

53:08

He's seeing the practical considerations that go into

53:11

these bills like you're talking about, into these

53:13

decisions. And it's exciting for him because he

53:15

knows now that none of his ideas matter

53:17

if he doesn't have executive support. When he

53:20

was pushing that civil service reform and the

53:22

boy mayor, John Pree Mitchell, just

53:24

wouldn't back it up. It died. But

53:26

now he knows if he has a

53:29

good idea that can get Al Smith

53:32

political benefit and also will help people, Al Smith

53:34

will put his support behind it. And he starts

53:36

getting things done. And the things are not the

53:38

things that we associate Robert Moses with yet. There's

53:40

prison reform and especially juvenile detention reform. And

53:43

a lot of elimination of ground

53:45

level railroad track crossings, which were

53:47

incredibly deadly and yet all over

53:49

the place, that the trains

53:51

were constantly hitting people, but it took a lot of

53:53

effort to get those removed. And they

53:56

eventually win that government reorganization fight that started

53:58

as Smith's first term. And

54:02

Moses is doing a lot of the

54:04

bill drafting here. And

54:07

there's a second here that describes

54:10

what we were talking about earlier that kind of

54:12

like specialized knowledge of how bills go that I

54:14

would love to read to you guys. And then

54:17

we can cut it later, but you'll know that I read it

54:19

to you and it'll live with you forever until

54:21

your dying day where it

54:24

says bill drafting

54:26

was called by Albany insiders, the black art of

54:28

politics. An expert

54:30

bill drafter had to know thousands of precedents so

54:32

that he could call out the one embodying it

54:34

in the bill he was working on that would

54:36

make the bill legal or so that he could

54:38

by careful wording avoid bringing the new act within

54:40

the purview of an old one that might make

54:43

it illegal. He had to

54:45

know a myriad ways of conferring or denying

54:47

power by written words. He had to know how

54:49

to lull the opposition by concealing a bill's

54:51

real content. For

54:54

years, everyone had known the identity of the

54:56

best bill drafter in Albany, Alfred

54:58

E. Smith, and Smith had never

55:00

been shy about accepting that accolade. But

55:02

now when someone brought up the subject, Smith said,

55:04

the best bill drafter I

55:06

know is Bob Moses. So

55:09

he is making a name for himself as the

55:11

guy who can write laws that get

55:13

things done and that work the

55:15

right way. And Al Smith wants to repay

55:18

Moses the way that he's used to repaying

55:20

people in these positions, which is with a

55:22

high-paying, low-work job. He's like, hey,

55:24

do you want to be director of the board that

55:26

supervises the work projects in the state prisons? You don't

55:28

have to do anything, and you'll get paid money for

55:31

it. And Moses says, no, I don't want that. And

55:33

Al Smith keeps asking Moses, what do you want? What

55:35

do you want? What do you want? What can I

55:37

get you? What can I reward you with? Moses keeps

55:39

saying nothing. And then the chapter

55:41

ends with one of these lines. Robert

55:43

Carroll, he writes it. This is one of these things where

55:46

it's like, it's a real like, oh, what moment? But only

55:48

in this context, says, and then

55:50

one day there was something. The

55:52

something was Parks. We're 143 pages into the book.

55:56

We're finally talking about Parks, the thing that

55:58

he does. It's amazing. We're here. Finally. Finally,

56:00

with chapter 9, a dream. Okay,

56:15

so now we're starting with chapter 9. This

56:18

is not the longest chapter in the book,

56:20

but it's the longest one we've encountered so

56:22

far. And it really sets up this idea

56:24

that as New York was growing, there

56:27

was always more land to be considered and

56:29

there was open land and natural areas for

56:31

people to potentially go to. But

56:34

New York is growing so fast, all that stuff is filling

56:36

in and all of a sudden people are like, whoa, we

56:38

need to get to some parks. We need to take care

56:41

of parks here. You know what I used to see around

56:43

here? Trees. I don't see them so much anymore.

56:45

I'd like to see some. We've got to figure

56:47

out a place to have some. I mean, it's hard

56:49

to imagine it now, but New York wasn't always this

56:52

densely packed with all these buildings and streets. When

56:54

I lived in New York, I would walk around

56:56

a lot and think about what part of

56:58

what I'm standing on is natural geography,

57:00

what hills and what dips are natural

57:02

geography and what things were added by

57:05

human beings. Because once this was all

57:07

forest land, once this was all forests

57:09

and marsh, and now it is entirely

57:11

covered in paving. And

57:13

this is the period when those final bits

57:15

of paving are starting to be done, that open

57:17

space that the city used to have is being

57:20

filled in with housing developments. And at the same

57:22

time, there's all this new technology that means people

57:24

finally have a little bit of leisure time. The

57:26

days of working at the Fulton Fish

57:28

Market seven days a week, 4 a.m.

57:30

to 5 p.m. at 3 a.m. on Fridays,

57:33

that's starting to come to an end. People

57:35

have cars for the first time. They can actually leave

57:37

the city if they want to to go places. This

57:40

is amazing. They need something to

57:42

do with their leisure. Only problem is most

57:44

of the good land right outside of the city is

57:47

in private hands. And the public land

57:49

that you could use as recreation, it's

57:52

too hard to get to. There's literally

57:54

very little actual road work to get

57:56

there. The roads are poor. The

57:59

bridges across the rivers are... The only way to

58:01

get west across the Hudson River is to take

58:03

your car on a ferry, which has

58:05

to be the least efficient way to do that other

58:07

than to put, I

58:09

guess, balloons under your car and float it

58:11

across the river with an oar and

58:13

make it its own ferry. And to

58:16

the east is Long Island, and Robert Carr talks

58:18

about this kind of open

58:20

potential in Long Island. Long Island is

58:22

this place that still has space. First,

58:24

he talks about how the Ice Age created Long

58:26

Island geography, and I gotta

58:28

say, that's the one, maybe the two pages of

58:30

this book I find my eyes really glazing over

58:33

where I'm like, oh, I just can't visualize it.

58:35

I love that part, and I'll tell you why.

58:38

Because this is

58:41

the first instance of Robert

58:43

Caro, the author, using geography as

58:46

a piece, a key piece of

58:49

biographical text because in the opening

58:51

few – like, opening piece, chapter

58:54

of the first LBJ book, it's

58:58

all about the Texas Hill

59:00

Country's soil composition and potential

59:02

fecundity, which creates

59:05

a Johnson as a person. And so

59:07

when I see this echo of

59:11

Caro's style, I get pretty excited,

59:13

even if I don't – like, if the

59:15

details of the Ice Age forming the Long

59:18

Island Sound does not stick

59:20

in my head. Well, he's

59:22

talking about this. I'm like, all right, Mr. Caro,

59:24

I respect so much that you put this effort

59:26

in and you understood how the rock formations came

59:28

across, but I'll just move on to the next

59:31

place. The point is, Long Island looks like it

59:33

would be a great place to spend your one

59:35

day off from work with your family, right? Right,

59:37

but you can't. No, you can't, unfortunately, because Long

59:40

Island is taken. Who's it taken

59:42

by? There's the South Shore where you have the

59:44

beaches. They're in the hands of the Baymen, these

59:46

kind of fishermen who have lived in that area

59:48

for generations, and they do not want outsiders there.

59:51

They don't like people from New York City. Robert

59:53

Caro presents them as

59:55

especially careful to keep sacred

59:57

the Bay bottoms, the actual

59:59

– fishing area that they see

1:00:01

as their birthright. He presents

1:00:03

them as fairly racist

1:00:06

and also talks about the clan's popularity

1:00:08

there. And I sometimes wonder if Robert Caro is

1:00:10

going really far to demonize these fishermen, but I

1:00:13

can't tell for sure because this is 100 years

1:00:15

ago. I can't talk to them. They're not there

1:00:17

anymore. That's the South Shore. You've got

1:00:19

your, for lack of a better word, your kind of

1:00:21

provincials. And up in the North Shore, it's

1:00:25

even worse. That's where the land

1:00:27

is locked up by the private estates of

1:00:29

the wealthy robber barons. J.P. Morgan's family and

1:00:31

his partners are there. We've got Standard Oil

1:00:33

millionaires. Andrew Carnegie's partner, there's a lot of

1:00:36

them. Robert Caro, he loves to list things.

1:00:38

He goes through all of these rich people

1:00:40

and what they own. He talks a lot

1:00:42

about the size of their castles, how they

1:00:44

would go fox hunting there. They build a

1:00:46

private golf course that's surprisingly full of mosquitoes.

1:00:49

They own vast amounts of land, and then

1:00:51

they own more land around that land

1:00:53

that is guarded by private guards to

1:00:55

keep regular people away from them. And

1:00:57

they especially seem to enjoy blocking access

1:00:59

to the beaches. And Robert Caro

1:01:01

points out that there's one area of Long

1:01:03

Island where there was 48 miles of shoreline and

1:01:06

1,250 feet were open to the public, and

1:01:08

the rest was all in private, wealthy hands.

1:01:11

And the barons in the North Shore, they want

1:01:13

to keep things this way, and they do that

1:01:15

by essentially bankrolling the state GOP. The

1:01:18

Republican Party, specifically the Nassau County Republican

1:01:20

Party, is very much a machine that

1:01:22

works with the behest of the barons

1:01:24

to keep them in control of all

1:01:26

this land. And Robert Caro,

1:01:28

he has this amazingly vivid

1:01:30

section. This is one of the sections of

1:01:32

the book that I always remember the most

1:01:34

when I think about it, that is him

1:01:36

describing the experience of you being a guy

1:01:38

taking your family in your car on the

1:01:40

weekend to drive out to Long Island to

1:01:42

find a place to have a picnic, and

1:01:44

just how incredibly futile it is to do

1:01:46

this. And I'd

1:01:49

love to read some of it. If

1:01:52

they were heading for the North Shore on Northern Boulevard, 160 feet

1:01:54

of smooth McAdam

1:01:56

shrank to 18 at the city line. The

1:01:58

cars heading east had to cram into the city to a single file.

1:02:01

As they crept along, the paving of the

1:02:03

boulevard deteriorated, so that each family had to

1:02:05

watch the cars ahead jounce one after the

1:02:07

other into gaping potholes, and then wait for

1:02:09

the jolts themselves. More and more

1:02:12

frequently they came to unpaved stretches in which,

1:02:14

if there had been a recent rain, cars

1:02:16

became mired, bringing the endless line behind them

1:02:18

to a halt. If the earth

1:02:20

was dry, thick clouds of dust hung over

1:02:22

the unpaved stretches, turning dirty the gay dress

1:02:24

Mother had worn for the excursion. As

1:02:27

the families drove they could see on either

1:02:29

side of them, through gates set in stone

1:02:31

walls or through the openings and wooden fences,

1:02:33

the beautiful meadows they had come for, stretching

1:02:35

endlessly and emptily to the cool trees beyond.

1:02:38

But the meadows and trees were not for

1:02:40

them. The gates would be locked, and men

1:02:42

carrying shotguns and holding fierce dogs on straining

1:02:44

leashes would point eastward, telling the families there

1:02:46

were parks open to them farther along. There

1:02:49

was no shade on Northern Boulevard, and the

1:02:51

children became cranky early. The more

1:02:53

persistent who determined to head east until they

1:02:55

discovered some place to swim or picnic found

1:02:57

the road becoming worse and worse. They

1:03:00

would see Long Island villagers sitting on the fences

1:03:02

and laughing at the families, who, because of engine

1:03:04

overheating or in a desperate try at a piece

1:03:06

of grass, pulled off the road. The

1:03:09

line of cars was so solid, the radiator of

1:03:11

one almost touching the tailgate of the one before

1:03:13

it, that once out of the line it was

1:03:15

hard for a car to get back in. And

1:03:17

it was fun, the villagers said, to watch them

1:03:20

try. Just like all the

1:03:22

elements of a really terrible outing

1:03:24

with your family are there so vividly to

1:03:26

me where it's like, it was supposed to

1:03:29

be nice, it's not working out, it's hot,

1:03:31

it's gross, and the locals are laughing at you,

1:03:34

and you're trapped there, you're stuck. And

1:03:37

I think, you know, we're all fathers, right? We've

1:03:39

all been in situations where we want to do

1:03:41

something nice with our families and nothing is working

1:03:44

out right. And I feel like Robert Carrot does

1:03:46

such a good job, to me at least, of

1:03:49

taking this big issue

1:03:51

of public space and

1:03:53

how it's allocated and what's public space and what's

1:03:55

private space and making it really

1:03:58

relatable in that experience. We

1:04:01

just want to go somewhere outside the city today, and

1:04:03

instead we're going to end up spending the entire day

1:04:06

in the car, and then we have to go back,

1:04:08

and it's terrible. The point is that people need parks.

1:04:10

Long Island is the best place for them, but

1:04:12

building a park there means you have to get the

1:04:14

state legislature involved. They're in the control of the barons.

1:04:16

The land is too valuable for the government to buy.

1:04:18

It's too valuable for them to condemn it. They can't

1:04:20

afford it. And if you did build parks, even if

1:04:23

you did, how would anybody get out there? The

1:04:25

roads are so bad. The

1:04:27

reformers who talk about parks, they have to

1:04:29

settle for little city playgrounds. There's nobody who's

1:04:31

going to be able to cut this Gordian

1:04:33

park knot. Except

1:04:36

there is one man. One man? Who would

1:04:38

that man be? His name

1:04:40

is Robert Moses, and in

1:04:43

1922 Robert Moses and his

1:04:45

wife Mary, they're renting a

1:04:47

bungalow in Babylon, Long Island.

1:04:50

This is one of the few times you actually see Robert Moses

1:04:52

on a train. Yes. He

1:04:54

has to take the Long Island railroad

1:04:56

from Manhattan to Long Island. The same

1:04:59

railroad he will years later help to

1:05:01

push into deterioration and almost to disintegration

1:05:03

with his road building. And

1:05:06

as he's taking this long train ride, he's looking

1:05:08

out the window to the

1:05:11

north of the railroad, and he realizes

1:05:13

he's passing all this untouched land.

1:05:15

There's housing and towns in between

1:05:17

it. There's ponds and woods and

1:05:19

streams. There's just land that is just

1:05:21

sitting there. Nobody's doing anything with it. Have this

1:05:23

land get there. Well, this is

1:05:25

what's the most amazing thing. He does some

1:05:28

research, and he goes to the Babylon town

1:05:30

hall, and he's told that this property was

1:05:32

bought by the city of Brooklyn when it

1:05:34

was its own independent city in 1874. And

1:05:38

it was the emergency backup water

1:05:40

reservoir in case the city

1:05:42

needed extra water. And so he goes to

1:05:44

the Department of Water, and he asked

1:05:46

the clerk, have they ever used it? And

1:05:49

he says no, and he's just sitting there.

1:05:51

It's undeveloped. And Moses

1:05:54

can't help but think to himself,

1:05:56

I've got to look at it. I've got to see how much of

1:05:59

this there is. And he decides to just

1:06:01

hike through Long Island. Just on

1:06:03

his own, he's just tromping through the woods. And

1:06:05

it turns out every time he thinks he's

1:06:07

figured out how much land there is, there's more. It's

1:06:10

so much more extensive than he thought it was. It's so much more

1:06:12

beautiful than he thought it was. There's so much of it. Yeah.

1:06:15

There's 3,500 unused acres that are just sitting there. And

1:06:18

it's within 30 miles of Manhattan. And he really

1:06:20

starts to, you know,

1:06:22

create this vision of parks and

1:06:24

sports facilities. And it's

1:06:26

all right there. And he

1:06:28

gets a motorboat, like a little motorboat, and he

1:06:30

begins to explore the shoreline. And these

1:06:33

are the most vehicles that Robert Moses will use

1:06:35

in the entire boat. He is

1:06:37

piloting this motorboat. He's never going to drive a car, but

1:06:40

he can apparently drive a boat,

1:06:42

which I don't know why he didn't transfer those

1:06:44

skills to cars, but he set the boats. He

1:06:47

just can't help exploring, and he gets almost

1:06:49

obsessed with it. He's spending all of his

1:06:51

time just pioneering through Long Island, this land

1:06:54

that nobody has bothered to look at in

1:06:56

such a long time. And

1:06:58

because of the sort of, I don't know,

1:07:00

hydrology and geology, there's actually more beach and

1:07:02

more land than even the mapmakers had when

1:07:05

they last surveyed it than

1:07:07

he thought. And he gets obsessed

1:07:09

with this little area, this area called

1:07:11

Jones Beach. It's this huge untouched stretch

1:07:13

of shoreline. And he says to himself,

1:07:16

this would be the greatest bathing beach

1:07:18

in the world. This could be, but it's totally

1:07:20

unused. It's totally untouched. There's only two problems. One,

1:07:24

how do I turn this stretch of beach

1:07:26

into the greatest bathing beach in the world?

1:07:28

And two, even if I

1:07:30

do that, how do I get people there? Because the reason

1:07:32

this land is so untouched is partly because the city owns

1:07:34

it and no one knew that, but also partly because there's

1:07:36

no roads out there. He had to take the train to

1:07:38

get where he was going, and you can't just

1:07:40

turn a train and drive to a new

1:07:42

area. You need roads to get there. And

1:07:44

so now as he is tromping through Long

1:07:46

Island, he is drawing on pads, drawing on

1:07:48

maps, these parkway lines, lines

1:07:51

for imaginary parkways that he is envisioning the

1:07:53

same way that Robert Carroll told us in

1:07:55

the previous episode that he was still doing

1:07:57

years later. He just could not stop. drawing

1:07:59

lines on maps that represented roads. This is

1:08:01

where he starts to do that, really for

1:08:04

the first time. And he's spending so much

1:08:06

of his time doing it. And it really

1:08:08

makes you wonder, like, how does

1:08:10

he have time to do his job and to be an Albany?

1:08:12

He's a very busy man. And

1:08:15

he somehow has time to just wanderlust

1:08:17

through Long Island, drawing imaginary parkways. This

1:08:20

guy, he's just really good at using

1:08:22

his time. He seems to be, and

1:08:24

other people don't seem to be demanding too much of his

1:08:26

time. Hey

1:08:29

boss, can I just go walk around Long Island for a couple of days?

1:08:31

You got it. You're the best bill drafter in Albany. I don't need you

1:08:33

for anything else. And

1:08:36

there were a few state parks at the time.

1:08:38

Robert Harrell goes into this. In the early 1920s,

1:08:40

there were a few small state parks in the

1:08:42

hands of local associations because the state basically didn't

1:08:44

want to handle the responsibility. So they would say,

1:08:46

like, great. This land, you can take

1:08:48

care of it. You want to be the caretakers, this

1:08:51

local historical association or whatever, go for it. And

1:08:54

Moses says this is a dissipation of

1:08:56

power instead of one major parks organization.

1:08:58

There's political muscle behind it. You have

1:09:00

these competing little tiny private organizations that

1:09:02

the legislature doesn't want to give money

1:09:04

to because they can't really control it. And

1:09:07

through the New York State Association, Moses issues

1:09:09

a report that sums up all this called

1:09:12

a State Park Plan for New York, a

1:09:14

beautiful name for a beautiful report. Just really

1:09:16

gets the blood pumping, a state park plan.

1:09:19

I want to bring in Jamel here for

1:09:21

a second. And a lot of, like, our

1:09:24

political history is

1:09:26

about our relationship with land.

1:09:29

And there was a sort of national

1:09:31

parks movement associated with Teddy Roosevelt

1:09:33

before this. And then there's also like

1:09:35

the use of common land. And that

1:09:37

was sort of like disrupted

1:09:40

by barbed wire in the West. Where

1:09:43

are we in our thinking of public land

1:09:45

at this point in time in our political

1:09:47

history? Or an interesting

1:09:49

point. I mean, one of the things that

1:09:52

is structuring how Americans are thinking about public

1:09:54

land is just that the frontier, as they

1:09:56

understood it, does not exist anymore. There's no

1:09:58

what. West for the

1:10:01

young man to go to, everything's been settled.

1:10:04

And there were also sort of in

1:10:06

this age of industrial capitalism. And so

1:10:08

all around the country, and especially in

1:10:10

places that are well populated, you're seeing the,

1:10:13

you know, the, the march

1:10:15

of industry, the use of natural resources

1:10:17

and the growth of the country's productive

1:10:19

capacities. And for many Americans in the

1:10:21

political elite, this is all well and

1:10:23

good, right? This is like, this is

1:10:25

the way things ought to be. But

1:10:27

there is like this anxiety about what's

1:10:29

being lost. One like

1:10:31

interesting social wrinkle here

1:10:33

is that the early 20th century, there

1:10:36

are these recurring panics in the United

1:10:38

States over whether young men are manly

1:10:40

enough. And like this is this is

1:10:42

one of them is happening sort of

1:10:44

like, Oh, okay, are are America's young

1:10:46

men? Are they being feminized? Are they

1:10:48

spending enough time outside? Are they engaged

1:10:52

manly pursuits? Or are they reading books and

1:10:54

being inside and all these sorts of things?

1:10:56

This feels like a direct attack on me.

1:10:58

But I understand. All

1:11:01

of this really does come together in all

1:11:03

this is not I want to say come together, but

1:11:06

it's part of this push for public

1:11:08

parks, and national parks and

1:11:10

places where we can preserve the land

1:11:12

both because we want to, we want

1:11:14

to have a sense of what America

1:11:17

was like in the mythic past. So

1:11:19

we want to preserve what our forefathers

1:11:21

saw. But then also sort of

1:11:23

like, we want to make sure that, you

1:11:25

know, the young men of the country can

1:11:28

be exposed to the outdoors

1:11:30

can be exposed to physical activity, the

1:11:33

Boy Scouts are founded during this time,

1:11:35

like we want to make sure that

1:11:37

the young men of the country are

1:11:40

engaged in the pursuits that

1:11:42

will keep them manly, and

1:11:44

not unduly feminine. This is the time when

1:11:46

more and more men are growing up never

1:11:48

having had the experience of cutting down a

1:11:50

tree or something like that. And

1:11:52

it's time to get them back into back into

1:11:54

knowing what that's like and what it's like to

1:11:56

I don't know, sleep outside things that people spent

1:11:58

thousands of years trying to Get away Pretty

1:12:00

good sign. I only go back to

1:12:03

this are just more Americans are living

1:12:05

in cities right? Living in cities Loving

1:12:07

him, living in urban environments like the

1:12:09

percentage of Americans who are engaged in

1:12:11

agricultural workers. Liao Low point as at

1:12:13

this time into this all the sort

1:12:15

of exile the about a little what

1:12:17

what was what's gonna happen to American

1:12:20

manliness? Could masculinity. He. If. You.

1:12:22

Know there's no frontier for kids super

1:12:24

young men to go to. Sort of

1:12:26

like make their way. Everyone's live in

1:12:28

a city. Of back anything begin

1:12:30

soft area in and there's a bit

1:12:32

of an evolution here of like open

1:12:34

land in the beginning is sort of

1:12:37

like part of a com and that's

1:12:39

doled out enough. Not exactly fairly but

1:12:41

it's part of commons for exploitation because

1:12:43

is always more land. you can exploit

1:12:45

it and use it to whatever sort

1:12:47

of industry you're trying to do. And

1:12:49

then there's this moment of like omega

1:12:51

we to conserve some of this to

1:12:53

keep it as natural as possible because

1:12:55

that's important or character to and and

1:12:57

a little bit of moses evolution here.

1:13:00

Is Steve not trying to preserve the

1:13:02

marshlands of of Long Island so that

1:13:04

there's a nice natural place for us

1:13:06

to go see is going to? He's

1:13:09

a new kind of developer. He's a

1:13:11

developer of recreation and attractions and so

1:13:13

when he means park he doesn't mean

1:13:15

this nice natural area. He means ugh

1:13:18

a thing of of really great design

1:13:20

and utility for for the purpose of

1:13:22

recreate. Yes and they typically you know

1:13:24

he means baseball diamonds. he means band

1:13:27

shells is cause a half way between

1:13:29

being. A Yeah, A soft. City

1:13:31

lad and being like out a rough and tumble.

1:13:34

Country Boy is that you get to go

1:13:36

out on the weekends and play baseball words,

1:13:38

footlight, you know it, or football or something

1:13:40

in a in a. Park. space ah

1:13:43

during that time and this is a big

1:13:45

new idea for the reform element at the

1:13:47

time in that state is this idea land

1:13:49

not for conservation but for recreations that these

1:13:51

parts that are going to have roads and

1:13:54

facilities are you saying that can be design

1:13:56

things and he asks for a bond issue

1:13:58

a sixteen million dollars to fund

1:14:00

state parks and parkways overseen

1:14:03

by a proposed new state

1:14:05

council of parks. And

1:14:07

first he's got to win over Al Smith this

1:14:09

idea. Al Smith, he doesn't really care

1:14:11

that much about athletic recreation. He is not a guy who

1:14:13

is, he's not a big sports buff and he thinks the

1:14:16

plane is too expensive. But Robert

1:14:18

Moses knows, and this is something that will come

1:14:20

up throughout the book too, that other people are

1:14:22

attracted to this as well, but that Al Smith

1:14:24

particularly is attracted to big visual ideas. Show

1:14:27

him a thing. Show him a made built thing.

1:14:29

And that will impress him and it's something that

1:14:31

he can point to for the voters and say,

1:14:33

look at this thing I've got made. Look

1:14:36

at the thing that we produced. If

1:14:38

you elect me again, I will make

1:14:40

more of those things. That you can really improve

1:14:42

people's lives in a visual way by building stuff.

1:14:44

It's just very straightforward. There's an acronym that I've

1:14:46

been trying to get off the ground in my

1:14:48

private life, but I can't really for politics where

1:14:51

my model I wanted to be noticeably improve people's

1:14:53

lives, which is nipple. The

1:14:55

people I've tested it on, mainly my wife and my

1:14:57

mom, I think I need a new acronym. It's not

1:14:59

– they don't love it. They don't love the nipple

1:15:02

acronym, but that's essentially what they're getting at here is

1:15:04

noticeably improving people's lives with big visual things. And

1:15:06

Moses wears Al Smith down and Al Smith goes,

1:15:08

okay, but according to law, I can

1:15:10

only request one bond issue a year. I already requested

1:15:13

one and I'm not quite

1:15:15

sure how the public is going to go with this because the

1:15:17

price tag is so big. So I'm

1:15:20

going to make a public statement saying that next year,

1:15:22

I want to issue these bonds

1:15:24

and we'll see how it goes over. And

1:15:26

he makes a statement saying next year we

1:15:28

should have this $15 million bond issue to

1:15:30

build parks. And the immediate

1:15:32

public response is enormous. People

1:15:35

– almost nearly unanimous. People love it. Everyone

1:15:37

approves of building parks. There's no one who

1:15:39

sees the downside to it. Parks are the best. Everybody

1:15:42

loves them. Robert Caro, he goes back

1:15:44

to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to the park where Mark

1:15:46

Antony is like, not only was Julius Caesar going

1:15:49

to do these great things for you, when he

1:15:51

died, he left you all of his estates as

1:15:53

parks. And that's what makes the Romans go nuts.

1:15:55

They now miss Julius Caesar. People love parks. You

1:15:58

just can't get over how much they're going to do. They

1:16:01

love the idea of it. And Al Smith, he knows good politics

1:16:03

when he sees it. He knows that even

1:16:05

if they're expensive, if parks are something people love, then

1:16:07

that's the thing that will get votes. And

1:16:10

Robert Caro goes into this description

1:16:13

here of Moses' kind of comprehensive vision

1:16:15

of Long Island in total as this

1:16:17

working unit, this enormous development,

1:16:20

and compares it to Walt Whitman's poetic vision

1:16:22

of the area. He says basically Walt Whitman's

1:16:24

the only other person he can think of

1:16:26

who has that kind of grand and universal

1:16:28

vision for this region. And Moses is not

1:16:30

done. He's still roaming Long Island. He's still

1:16:32

finding unused land. He goes to Fire Island,

1:16:35

and he's confused that the

1:16:37

beach looks so much bigger than his map shows.

1:16:39

And he remembers back to earlier when he was

1:16:41

told that the ocean is always depositing new sand.

1:16:44

It's been so many years since anyone mapped this

1:16:46

area that there is 600 new

1:16:48

acres of beach that nobody knew about that

1:16:51

is right here, that it's ready to use.

1:16:53

And he's like drunk on the

1:16:55

idea of land. He's just drunk on space and

1:16:57

the ability to make these parks and on his

1:16:59

own dreams. And Moses

1:17:02

says there's even more. We should do an even

1:17:04

bigger system, more parks, bigger parks, a bigger parkway

1:17:06

system. And Al Smith proposes

1:17:09

making him the president of the Long Island

1:17:11

State Park Commission. And Moses,

1:17:13

unsurprisingly, accepts the job because

1:17:15

if he didn't, that's the end of the book. There's

1:17:17

no book left. He doesn't take the job.

1:17:19

We don't have a book. There's no book. There's nothing there.

1:17:23

But luckily, there is a whole lot of book

1:17:25

there left, and we're going to start with the

1:17:27

next bit, chapter 10, after this. Okay,

1:17:38

we're back starting with chapter 10, the

1:17:40

best bill drafter in Albany, which is

1:17:42

a short chapter, a very fun chapter.

1:17:44

I love this chapter. It's a very

1:17:46

important chapter. The title makes it sound

1:17:48

like the worst of the

1:17:50

tall tales and legends of Upstate

1:17:53

New York's Adirondacks Mountains. It's

1:17:56

like there's Paul Bunyan, there's the best

1:17:58

bill drafter in Albany. Gather around. There

1:18:00

is no one could draft. feels better

1:18:02

faster than this man's as the city

1:18:04

cut down trees or anything. Now he

1:18:06

just was draft and bells all the

1:18:08

time. Yeah, that really well and this

1:18:10

is where Really liked his brains to

1:18:12

sort of. On are

1:18:14

no devious miss and everything is coming together

1:18:16

to give him the power that he needs

1:18:19

to do what the rest? the book In

1:18:21

a liaison. Yes, He is writing the

1:18:23

law that creates the State Council of Parks knowing

1:18:25

that he will be in charge of the state

1:18:27

councilor parts. he's going to have that positions and

1:18:30

so his job here is to write a law

1:18:32

and as job it's his his missions. No one

1:18:34

said to him right the last you can be

1:18:36

an independent have rather but his macy personally sinister

1:18:39

do just that. And so for instance he says

1:18:41

well we've organized the government This they council has

1:18:43

to be under the head of one of the

1:18:45

previous the department's I'll put it in the conservation

1:18:48

department and I'll say that the Conservation Commission or

1:18:50

submits my budget to the legislature. Been

1:18:52

a little bit farther down on the right. a

1:18:54

law that says I prepare that budget and the

1:18:56

Conservation Commission Earth doesn't have anything to say about

1:18:59

it, he just delivers It's and you know obviously

1:19:01

this is part of executive branch after responsible to

1:19:03

the Governor, bought on a make it so that

1:19:05

my term is six years long which is longer

1:19:07

than the governor's term cylinders a new Governor. I.

1:19:10

Get to stick around. I don't have to leave and he's

1:19:12

just. Putting. In all these ways like

1:19:14

that, to give himself his own powers and

1:19:16

cement himself as an independent part of the

1:19:18

government that other people don't have control of

1:19:21

and cannot remove very easily. Yeah, like he's

1:19:23

creating his own deep state. Like to be

1:19:25

safe parts that you have a deep parks?

1:19:27

Yeah and that he is. He's the lowest

1:19:29

things that like of. I feel like we're

1:19:31

warned about about sneaky politicians. This one more

1:19:33

than a want to mention that is because

1:19:35

it feels so bunkers and then I want

1:19:37

to. Thirty two mellowed out the stereotypes on

1:19:39

this kind of thing. but at he writes

1:19:41

the bill. using. The word

1:19:43

appropriation. and the legislators would have

1:19:45

taken that to me and allocation of funds that

1:19:48

the only whether use appropriate you prorate money for

1:19:50

a thanks but then in the bill it says

1:19:52

that the term is used quote in the manner

1:19:54

provided by section fifty nine for laws and just

1:19:56

like you said you melt that law is one

1:19:59

that hasn't eaten That's 40 years

1:20:01

earlier, and in that law, it provides for

1:20:04

appropriation of land by

1:20:06

a state official by walking onto private land

1:20:08

and saying, I am now taking this

1:20:10

land from you. And if you want

1:20:12

compensation, come back to us later. And

1:20:14

it's a method that hasn't been used in 30

1:20:16

years at that point. There was questionable constitutionality, but it's

1:20:19

still on the books. It was never appealed, so

1:20:21

it's still a law. Moses knows that

1:20:23

law. Most of the legislators don't. And

1:20:25

there's just clause after clause in this bill that gives the Sprech

1:20:27

Council a chance to get a better answer. This Sprech Council, so

1:20:30

much power, power to control roads,

1:20:32

power to control – to

1:20:35

have their own police force, power to basically

1:20:38

write their own bylaws in parks. And

1:20:40

he writes a thing in it saying that the

1:20:42

commission shall have power to improve, maintain, and use

1:20:44

lands of the municipalities adjoining the parks and parkways

1:20:46

of the commission with the consent of the local

1:20:49

authorities having jurisdiction thereof. And

1:20:51

since this is in Long Island, the legislators all say, oh

1:20:53

yeah, well, that means the local Long Island governments because

1:20:55

they don't know. A lot of this

1:20:57

land is owned by New York City, so

1:21:00

he doesn't have to get the consent of the local Long Island

1:21:02

governments. He just asked the city, and the city is like parkland

1:21:04

for our residents? Go for it. I don't care what happens to

1:21:06

Nassau County. Just build the

1:21:08

roads. And so he's managed

1:21:10

to kind of hide all these things in there. And

1:21:14

Jamal, the question I want to ask you is, I feel like it's been

1:21:16

a stereotype in American politics for,

1:21:18

I don't know, 200 years that politicians are

1:21:20

kind of like slimy

1:21:22

folks hiding things in bills to

1:21:24

do favors for people or to get things for

1:21:26

themselves. And it feels like

1:21:29

Robert Moses is really doing that here in order

1:21:31

to make this parks committee as powerful

1:21:33

as possible, or parks council. I

1:21:36

keep using council commission and committee interchangeably when I know they're not. I

1:21:39

don't know the definitions of. I apologize to council members, committee

1:21:41

members, and commission members who are listening to this. We're very

1:21:43

frustrated by it. But how

1:21:46

often do you know of this kind of

1:21:48

thing really happening, where someone is

1:21:50

really hiding things

1:21:52

in bills knowing that by

1:21:54

the time anyone finds out it's going to be too late? Is that really a

1:21:56

thing that happens, or is this out of the ordinary? This

1:21:59

is unusual. only because it's such a

1:22:01

singular person doing it. This is a conservative,

1:22:03

unusual case of a singular guy being like,

1:22:05

I know I'm gonna be in this position

1:22:07

and I wanna make sure that I

1:22:09

can accrue as much authority to myself

1:22:11

as possible in a way that no

1:22:13

one's really gonna notice. And that's, I

1:22:15

can't think of it happening all

1:22:19

that often. Because

1:22:21

usually a bureaucrat like that isn't in the

1:22:23

position to write laws, right? Like usually a

1:22:26

bureaucrat like that is in the executive

1:22:28

branch and they may have influence on

1:22:30

writing laws, but they may not be

1:22:32

able to directly write the law themselves.

1:22:36

That's a, that's what we call like a

1:22:38

separations of power problem. Like you don't want,

1:22:41

you don't necessarily want the person charged with

1:22:43

executing a law to be

1:22:46

the one writing the law. More

1:22:48

common is executives,

1:22:51

whether they're at the state level or the

1:22:54

federal level, creatively reading existing

1:22:56

laws for the sake of like

1:22:58

doing things they wanna do, right?

1:23:00

Sort of like maybe the

1:23:02

great example

1:23:04

with the presidency is

1:23:07

like the Emancipation Proclamation, right? With like

1:23:09

the Lincoln, essentially saying, I'm, you know,

1:23:12

this category of person, these

1:23:14

are contraband and

1:23:16

the law gives me the legal

1:23:19

authority to seize enemy contraband. And

1:23:22

so I'm saying that

1:23:24

all states in rebellion, because they, the

1:23:26

Lincoln administration does not recognize the Confederacy

1:23:28

as a thing, legally, according

1:23:30

to the White House, the Confederacy does not

1:23:33

exist. These are just states in rebellion. I

1:23:35

can confiscate contraband in the states

1:23:37

of, in rebellion under the existing

1:23:39

legal authority I have. That's all

1:23:42

just a creative reading of like

1:23:44

existing law, right? Like, I

1:23:46

mean, that's way more common than someone

1:23:48

writing the law itself to give them basically

1:23:50

a bunch of secret power that no one

1:23:52

anticipated. Okay,

1:23:55

well, I feel good knowing that this is

1:23:57

out of the ordinary. Yeah,

1:24:00

that's a little less common in part

1:24:02

because lawmakers are very jealous of their

1:24:04

power to write laws. They don't want

1:24:06

other people to do it. So

1:24:09

it's very clever and sneaky. Robert Moses

1:24:11

just put himself in a position to

1:24:13

be the guy to write the laws.

1:24:15

There's some of that kind of, I guess,

1:24:18

setting himself up for those interpretations also

1:24:20

where he talks – in one section

1:24:22

it talks about the bill giving the

1:24:24

commission power over parks. And

1:24:26

then another section it defines parks

1:24:29

as including parkways, boulevards, docks, piers,

1:24:31

bridges, entrances to parks. And

1:24:33

it says the state law on

1:24:36

highways says counties can veto highways near borders,

1:24:38

but that law doesn't mention parkways. So

1:24:41

he specifically makes sure that they are labeled as

1:24:43

parkways, and that's one of those readings where I'm

1:24:45

like, okay. I mean it's

1:24:47

roads, right? The idea that a highway

1:24:49

and a parkway are such totally different

1:24:51

animals that the counties can veto

1:24:54

one and not the other seems like an interpretation. Yeah,

1:24:56

I mean that kind of politics

1:24:59

and bureaucratic maneuvering rewards people

1:25:01

who are really into being

1:25:04

the biggest pedant so you can enmesh. And

1:25:10

we're finally answering this question that Robert Caro

1:25:13

started in the very beginning when

1:25:15

we talked to him and he's like a reporter at Newsday and he's like

1:25:17

– he hears

1:25:19

Robert Moses being mentioned in

1:25:21

something and then he looks up his title and it's

1:25:23

like New York City Parks Commissioner. Why

1:25:26

is he building roads and

1:25:28

housing developments in

1:25:31

all these places if he's the parks commissioner? And it's

1:25:33

like this is it. He answered the question. This is

1:25:35

how – because he's managed to call everything a park.

1:25:39

A road to the park. Just look

1:25:41

at subsection C of clause nine.

1:25:43

You'll see that parks commissioner is

1:25:45

defined as a god emperor of

1:25:47

New York. Yeah, it's kind

1:25:50

of it. Yeah, clearly this isn't

1:25:52

a park, Mr. Moses. If you look

1:25:54

at the section after, you can see parks can be

1:25:56

defined as the internal organs of people I don't

1:25:58

like, and so that's why – I've been

1:26:00

removing the kidneys of people who get in my way.

1:26:02

It's legal. It's all there in black and white. I

1:26:05

guess we should have read the law. But

1:26:08

luckily for Moses, nobody reads

1:26:10

the law. Nobody reads it before it's introduced

1:26:13

to legislature. The people who run the small

1:26:15

parks in the state, Moses is

1:26:17

like, hey, this is just going to be like a coordinating

1:26:19

agency. You guys are still going to control your own little

1:26:21

parks. So will you support me in this? And they go,

1:26:23

certainly, and that's a lie. It's just an outright lie. And

1:26:27

Moses hand selects to introduce the law a

1:26:29

state assembly member representing the North Shore,

1:26:31

a guy named F. Truby Davison, which

1:26:33

Truby is an amazing middle name for

1:26:36

the guy who is kind of the political novice who

1:26:38

represents rich people. He is a

1:26:40

wealthy 22-year-old. He is

1:26:42

so impressed to be in a room with Al Smith.

1:26:45

He doesn't really know what he's doing. He doesn't read

1:26:47

or study the bill. On

1:26:49

April 10, 1924, he introduces it. It passes by

1:26:51

unanimous vote with no debate. And then Robert

1:26:55

Carroll depicts Moses as being so impatient for Al

1:26:57

Smith to sign this bill, probably because he's worried

1:26:59

someone's going to read it before Al Smith gets

1:27:01

around to signing it into law. And

1:27:03

finally, eight days later, Smith signs the bill.

1:27:05

He immediately appoints Moses president of the Long

1:27:07

Island State Park Commission, which makes him a

1:27:09

part of the state council of parks. The

1:27:11

state council of parks elects him its chairman.

1:27:13

And as Caro ends this chapter, end this

1:27:15

part, part three, he says, At

1:27:18

the age of 35, Robert Moses had power, and

1:27:20

no sooner did he have it than he

1:27:22

showed how he was going to use it. Oh,

1:27:25

that's where we leave off. He's got the power finally. Finally,

1:27:27

he's brokering power. It's

1:27:30

so good. So

1:27:33

much of this book feels at times like a – like

1:27:35

each chapter is the end of an episode, and I'm like,

1:27:37

all right. Well, how are they going to get me excited

1:27:39

for the next episode? And then they do it, and I'm

1:27:41

like, wait. How's he going to use that power? I

1:27:44

just watched the movie Executive Decision,

1:27:46

and there's a scene where a

1:27:49

character says, the president's going to have to

1:27:51

make an executive decision. And this is what this feels

1:27:53

like. It's

1:27:58

probably the only time that a Stephen Seagal

1:28:00

movie, or I guess really a Kurt Russell movie, right? It has

1:28:02

been compared to The Power

1:28:04

Broker. It

1:28:07

reminds me of the end of that last

1:28:09

section where we said, what about Parks? It

1:28:11

kind of reminds me of like every dumb

1:28:13

ass Easter egg in the Star Wars prequels,

1:28:15

you know, trying to

1:28:17

give some little backstory here and you're

1:28:20

like, oh, I know what that means.

1:28:22

I know. Oh, that's where Han Solo

1:28:24

got his jacket. I was wondering that.

1:28:26

But yet there's a, he's, Robert

1:28:28

Caruson has done such a good job of setting up. This

1:28:31

guy is going to take parks and he's going to

1:28:33

use them to reshape the city. And so as we

1:28:35

see him getting closer and closer, it's

1:28:37

even though I know where it's going, I know that it's

1:28:39

going to a place that is going to be very bad

1:28:42

for certain people as for thousands of

1:28:44

people as they are forcibly removed from their

1:28:46

homes and later projects. I'm still like, there's

1:28:49

the excitement of seeing come to fruition and the

1:28:51

fact that when we started this episode, he was

1:28:53

30 years old and he seemed like it has

1:28:55

been. And now he is 35 years

1:28:57

old and he is approaching

1:29:00

the apex of this power that he's going to wield

1:29:02

for the next 40 years

1:29:05

as one of the most important people in

1:29:07

the in the Northeastern United States. It's

1:29:11

a, it's a, yeah, it's a real Star Wars

1:29:13

prequel thing where it's like, oh, Anakin, he's, he's

1:29:15

becoming more and more like Darth Vader. I'll

1:29:17

say it's always striking to me

1:29:19

just to see how young people are, right? Like

1:29:21

35 years old and sort

1:29:24

of, it makes me very mad. Yeah.

1:29:26

About the wield, a

1:29:28

tremendous amount of authority

1:29:31

and that, that to me is always

1:29:33

quite striking. Yeah. It's also what's striking

1:29:35

about this moment is there's

1:29:38

only one person in the world who knows how

1:29:40

powerful he is at this moment. And that's Robert

1:29:42

Moses. Only is he's the only one who knows

1:29:44

how powerful he has made himself. And

1:29:47

that is just a

1:29:49

great moment of, of

1:29:51

just, I don't know, like, I don't

1:29:54

know, like the end of Clockwork Orange or something, you know, like

1:29:56

when you look into his eye and you see, you know, like

1:29:58

he knows what's going on, you know, like You know,

1:30:00

it's just really an intense moment and I

1:30:02

love it. I love the trauma of it

1:30:04

Yeah, that sets us up for part four

1:30:07

the use of power which we will not

1:30:09

get into in this episode, but uh It's

1:30:12

gonna be very exciting. This is it. Look

1:30:14

moses versus the north shore barons. Moses is

1:30:16

gonna start getting corrupt He's gonna make his

1:30:18

dream a reality. He briefly gets involved with

1:30:20

boxing in a way that is not Totally

1:30:23

straightforward, you know, he's only grids very brief. Uh,

1:30:26

he's got power He wants to build

1:30:28

things and to do that he's gonna have

1:30:30

to start breaking things like rules because

1:30:32

he is the power broker rule

1:30:35

breaker There's only

1:30:38

so I mean it's only so exciting I can make this make

1:30:40

it a certain point Well,

1:30:43

that's that is on the next time so Jamel.

1:30:45

Thank you so much for joining us and like

1:30:47

I hope that we've Yeah

1:30:49

spoiled enough of this to convince you to pick

1:30:51

up the rest of the power broker and or

1:30:53

at least follow along with us Listening if there's

1:30:56

nothing else if there's an audiobook of this I

1:30:58

think I might pick up the power broker to

1:31:00

listen to at least because I am I am

1:31:02

genuinely fascinated by kind of bureaucratic Maneuvering and like

1:31:04

legislative maneuvering. It's it's fascinating to me. Oh, you

1:31:06

will you will get your fill. Yeah 66

1:31:10

hours. The audiobook is actually very good. Anyway,

1:31:12

the um, robertson Dean is the is a

1:31:14

narrator He has extremely good diction so you

1:31:16

can speed that sucker up So

1:31:19

you can get through it I

1:31:22

I tend to go back and forth when I when

1:31:24

I redid it I went back and forth and read

1:31:26

some parts and like and then took the dog on

1:31:28

a walk and listen to listen to Some and it's

1:31:30

it's it's a good way to get your your power

1:31:32

broker in for sure Do that because I have to

1:31:34

admit I have my two copies of the book my

1:31:36

signed copy that I will not let my children

1:31:38

touch and then the copy my working copy That

1:31:40

uh that I write notes in and I will

1:31:43

frequently find myself reviewing it by Reading

1:31:45

it in bed before I go to bed and it's

1:31:47

such a big book that it like hurts my tummy

1:31:49

When it's resting on it Like

1:31:52

it's not really comfortable to rest on my stomach. So the audiobook

1:31:54

might be the way to go for me And

1:31:57

notoriously there is no ebook version of this that

1:31:59

which a lot of people on our Discord

1:32:01

have complained about and they're like, you think

1:32:03

maybe the presence of this book club will

1:32:05

make them put out an ebook version? In

1:32:07

a way, like perversely, I

1:32:10

never want to see an ebook version of it. I

1:32:12

really wanted to be this big tome that you have

1:32:14

to carry. What I love most

1:32:17

about it is when I was carrying around reading it

1:32:19

the second time, I would rest it on

1:32:21

the passenger seat of my car and it weighs

1:32:24

enough that the car thinks I need to

1:32:26

buckle the seat belt of the passenger seat

1:32:29

because it just sets off the

1:32:31

alarms. It's

1:32:34

a human-sized book. It's a person-sized book. And

1:32:37

I love that about it. Jamel,

1:32:39

where can people find you? Like listen to your

1:32:41

podcast. All that sort of stuff. Let's do that. You

1:32:44

can find me usually twice a week at The New

1:32:46

York Times. I have my weekly

1:32:48

column that runs on Tuesdays and Fridays most of

1:32:51

the time. We also have a new blog at

1:32:53

The New York Times for opinion. Sometimes I post

1:32:55

on that. That's my job. That's my main job. Honestly, a lot

1:33:02

of people don't necessarily

1:33:04

understand. They think that, oh, you

1:33:07

write for The New York Times sometimes

1:33:09

and then you do other stuff. My

1:33:11

full-time job is writing that column. That's

1:33:14

how I can afford to go to the dentist.

1:33:16

I have this podcast, Unclear and Present Dangerous, my

1:33:18

friend John Ganz who is also a writer. We

1:33:21

watch the political and military tours like the

1:33:23

post-Cold War period of the 90s. Otherwise,

1:33:25

you can just find me around the internet. I don't

1:33:27

know. I'm on TikTok. I've

1:33:29

been on Elliot's other podcast, The Flophouse. That's

1:33:32

right. Jamel, The Flophouse is politics and hedgehogs

1:33:35

correspondent. He was on our episode for Sonic

1:33:37

the Hedgehog and our episode for Andy the

1:33:39

Talking Hedgehog. We're looking forward to having you

1:33:41

back for Sonic the Hedgehog 2, I guess.

1:33:43

I just hope you had a

1:33:46

larger purview. That's the only

1:33:48

other hedgehog movie. I'm sure there'll be

1:33:50

others. Hedgehogs, I guess,

1:33:53

are popular. I don't

1:33:55

know. That's where you can find me. Tell me

1:33:57

a little bit about this TikTok

1:34:00

outlet that you have, because I don't

1:34:02

use TikTok very much, but I

1:34:04

mostly just see you on it.

1:34:06

And it's great. And it's

1:34:09

sort of an interesting and maybe

1:34:11

not intuitive place for, you know,

1:34:13

good political discourse, but you bring it

1:34:16

there. You know, how did you

1:34:18

stumble upon it? How do you use it? Like,

1:34:20

how's that working? Ah,

1:34:22

you know, I so I've been I've been in

1:34:24

journalism for about 13 years now. And the entire

1:34:28

time, my, my thinking has always been

1:34:30

whenever there are new social platforms, it's worth trying to

1:34:32

get familiar with them just because I don't know what,

1:34:35

who knows what's going to happen. It's nice

1:34:37

to be able to translate what I

1:34:39

do to maybe a different kind of

1:34:42

medium. What I what I think I

1:34:44

do is think about

1:34:46

contemporary American politics with an eye

1:34:48

towards like broader American history. Yeah,

1:34:50

very often, I'm like, I'm not, you know, you can

1:34:53

believe or think what you want. But

1:34:55

it's like worthwhile to know the specifics

1:34:58

and the actual mechanisms

1:35:01

that at work here. Some

1:35:03

of this is like pushing against, you know,

1:35:05

things I like to call folk civics, like

1:35:07

ideas about the way government works that have

1:35:09

no real relationship to reality, but are like

1:35:11

a good story that we've told ourselves are

1:35:13

true. Some of this

1:35:15

just relates to sort of straightforward

1:35:17

American history. There is a period

1:35:20

where I was like constantly doing

1:35:22

videos about why like Abraham Lincoln

1:35:24

really did a post-slave. Like

1:35:29

really trying to impress some people like no, this is really

1:35:31

this is like actually very significant thing that is true. So

1:35:34

why do you think we have to

1:35:36

reset a narrative about Abraham Lincoln? Like

1:35:38

I have this hypothesis. And I think

1:35:40

narrative journalism plays a role in this,

1:35:42

that it is our tendency as humans

1:35:45

to to revise narrative sort of like

1:35:47

in surprising ways, especially. And so you

1:35:50

grow up, you know, and you think,

1:35:52

well, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, there's

1:35:54

no argument there. And then there's like

1:35:56

this impulse to forward the story in

1:35:58

some way that complicated. it, it

1:36:00

makes it different and develops it and maybe

1:36:03

eventually even makes it counterintuitive and then we

1:36:05

have to reconnect to the original story again.

1:36:08

What is that impulse? I'm so curious about

1:36:10

it. No, I think your initial explanation actually

1:36:12

is a lot of it. We

1:36:15

get these stories and these ideas and

1:36:17

these oftenness and then we learn more

1:36:19

and it challenges and shatters our previous

1:36:21

conceptions. We think that

1:36:24

we make the totally reasonable and

1:36:27

rational supposition that

1:36:29

for anything that even seems a little

1:36:31

good in the past, in the past

1:36:33

especially, there must be some complicating factor

1:36:36

to show that either it's actually bad

1:36:38

or even if the result is good,

1:36:40

the intention was bad. With

1:36:44

Lincoln in particular, Lincoln is a perfect

1:36:47

subject for this precisely because he's

1:36:49

the great secular American saint. He's

1:36:54

the guy for whom he's unimpeachable and

1:36:56

then people learn that through much of

1:36:58

his career

1:37:00

he supported a colonization of blacks. They

1:37:03

read the letter he wrote The Horse Freely which

1:37:06

says, if I could save the union without

1:37:08

freeing a single slave, I would. It

1:37:11

all builds up as a circumstantial

1:37:13

picture for like, oh, well, this guy was

1:37:15

totally insincere and he was a politician and

1:37:17

blah, blah, blah. The thing

1:37:19

that's actually kind of hard to communicate

1:37:21

is that at the

1:37:24

same time, all of those

1:37:26

things are totally true. But

1:37:28

then you read more about the guy's life

1:37:30

and the politics and it's also very clear

1:37:35

that this is a guy who has a

1:37:37

deep sea of opposition to slavery

1:37:40

and is negotiating that through the

1:37:42

world of, for him,

1:37:44

contemporary American politics. How