"If you do everything, you will win." That is the maxim by which Lyndon Johnson lived his life. My guest today is Robert Caro. Over the 50 years that he has spent writing about Lyndon Johnson, he has lived in the edges of the Texas Hill Country to understand the poverty and loneliness of Johnson's youth. He has sifted through millions of documents in the Senate and presidential libraries of the entire nation. He has chased down for interviews everyone, from the former goon who helped Johnson steal an election to the chauffeur who drove him on his first desperate campaign. In other words, my guest today is a man who understands Johnson's aphorism: "If you do everything, you'll win." Mr. Caro, it is such a huge honor to have you on the show.
My first question is what I hinted at in the introduction. How much do you see yourself represented in Johnson or in Moses? Is part of the reason you're able to write so compellingly about them that you share some of their qualities?
Let me say first, I think, I hope, there are qualities of both these guys that I don't share. Among other things they're so, I'll use the word, ruthless. You say they'd do anything to win. That's part of their greatness. I remember when I started learning about Robert Moses, I went to the La Guardia papers, which were kept in the Boat Basin. They were stored by the Municipal Archives, literally in the 79th Street Boat Basin on the Hudson River, three levels down. There was this row of file cabinets against the wall. I'm sitting there day after day going through these documents. Occasionally I'd come across a note that Robert Moses wrote, and I realized I'm following the same path he was. It's fascinating, actually.
Obviously, not all the qualities. But the quality I'm referring to here is that just like Johnson or just like Moses, you refuse to take no for an answer. If somebody says, "I won't give you an interview," you don't stop there. You refuse to leave a stone unturned. So there is a relentlessness that you share with these subjects.
I'm going to take that as a compliment.
Yes. You feel there are certain people that you have to interview. If they don't want to give you an interview, you can't, I feel, say no. Like Lyndon Johnson's first secretary, the one who rode in the car with him on the campaigns.
I said, "There's no other human being on earth who knows what Lyndon Johnson is doing all these hours driving back and forth across Texas. I don't know what I have to do, but I have to get him to tell me honestly about this thing."
This raises another question that I wanted to ask you. You're interviewing all these people, and in many cases, they must know that it's not good for them to tell you what you want to know. In many cases, they tell you anyway. How do you get people to tell you things that they know they shouldn't tell you?
You ask terrific questions. Sometimes you're sitting there and you know this person doesn't want to talk to you about what you want to get out of them, like John Connally on how Johnson used money to get political power. I'm thinking, "But I've been through the notes. Connally collected the money and gave it out at Johnson's instructions, so he's the only guy who can tell me how Johnson did this, how he judged who to give money to." Sometimes Johnson would write on a request for money. If the guy asked for $1,500, Johnson would write, "Okay, 1,500." Sometimes he'd write 500, sometimes he'd write no, but sometimes he'd write, "No, never." I asked Connally what that meant, and he said, "This guy was never going to get money from Lyndon Johnson." Then when you ask why he felt this way about this particular congressman, that's when the really fascinating stories emerge.
Before we get more into Johnson, I want to first start with Moses. In the last decade or two, people have been complaining that it's become too hard and too difficult to build things, especially for the government to build things. If you look at the Second Avenue subway, they've been building it for around 50 years. They've opened up a mile and a half. It cost more than $4 billion. People have been saying, "The Power Broker came out. It was an immensely influential book. We were concerned about so much power being centralized and delegated to one person so they could build. We wanted to prevent that, and so we made environmental review and land use review and community boards and litigation." People say, "We've overcorrected. We've gone too far in the other direction." What do you think of that?
They also say that because of all these safeguards, Robert Moses could not operate in the same way today. But the fact is, when Robert Moses started, there were also safeguards. People were also saying, "You can't build anything." This was in the 1920s. People were saying, "Government can't build anything. There are too many blocks. Nothing's getting built. We need highways. It's the age of cars. Everyone's getting automobiles, but we have the same old roads. Nobody can build them because the property owners don't want the roads built through their land." Robert Moses comes along, and all of a sudden those things vanish because, despite all the safeguards and everything else, he just builds. Doing The Power Broker, it was just fascinating to me to see how he gets around everything. It doesn't matter what it is. He's going to build a beach at Jones Beach. He sees it one day. He says, "This is the greatest beach I've ever seen. It's only 27 miles from New York City. If I can build a road out here, I will give the people of New York City this great beach." But it seems impossible to build that road because the property owners don't want the road going through their farms and property. He basically says, "I'm going to build it." To watch him do it, to overcome each obstacle, there are so many, and then all of a sudden it's open and you have Jones Beach and you have it accessible to New York. It's an act of political genius, and it's also an act of will: "I'm going to do it." That's fascinating to learn about.
So you think today if there were a Moses-type figure, they would figure out a way to work around everything that's been set up?
The answer to that is, when Moses was building, they were saying the same thing. "Nobody's ever going to build. We need roads for the automobiles, but they'd have to go through dozens of farms, scores of properties. No one's ever going to be able to do it." But he comes along and does it. So today someone would come along and do it.
This, I think, is a profound question for democracies: how do we end up in a place which is not the extremes of '50s or '60s Moses, but also not where we are now? Where I live in California, we've spent, I don't know, $15 billion over the last decade. We haven't gotten a single new line or single new mile of railway that those $15 billion have been spent to build. Whereas in a different system… You could say China today is like New York City in the '40s and '50s. They have a very Moses-type attitude and they put up tens of thousands of miles of railways over the last 10-20 years. But of course, at the cost of similar amounts of displacement of people and recklessness. So how do we land in a good spot between either extreme?
I'm not sure there is a good spot. What you just said is the situation. To build anything on a large scale, you're confronted with dozens or scores or perhaps hundreds of property owners who don't want it built there. So the question is, how does anything get built? Then someone comes along and can do it. When Robert Moses started, it seemed impossible, actually impossible, to build roads out into Long Island because the road would have to cross scores of properties, most of whose owners didn't want the roads coming through. They had the power to stop them then because he didn't have the power of eminent domain. But Moses said basically, "I'm going to build it." He would find a way to overcome each difficulty. What am I trying to say by that? I'm trying to say that every once in a while someone comes along who's a genius, if that's the right word, at getting big things built for the public. Decades may pass when there's no one like that. You say, "Everything's stalled. Nothing big is ever going to be built again." Then someone suddenly comes along and all of a sudden things get built. That's the nature of political genius. I happen to be writing about two guys, Lyndon Johnson and Robert Moses, Johnson with civil rights and Moses with public works, where people were saying, "You can't do this." But they did it.
Correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but if I may attempt an interpretation of what you said, it sounds like you think we need a little Moses today.
A great insight. I sometimes wonder about just what you said. The answer is, I certainly don't want someone who's as ruthless and disregarding public opinion as a Robert Moses. But at the same time, you need someone who's going to find a way to get things built. He's going to have to find a way despite the fact that so many people don't want it built.
A lot of people who haven't read the book have this impression that you think everything Moses did was bad, and that we need to make sure that we can never have a Moses again. So it's interesting to hear you say that we need a little Moses again.
When people say to me everything was bad that he did, what I say is, "You didn't read the book." Because certainly the first parts of the book, hundreds of pages, are about a young idealist who sees this great need for recreation, for beaches on Long Island for the city people, and is going to find a way to make them accessible to people in the city. It's an act of genius and willpower the way he does it, and that's great. Now, does it evolve into where Moses listens to nobody, and the only thing that matters is what he wants to get built? It does evolve into that. He does change. But the young Moses, the idealist, before he's building, is an expert in the technicalities of civil service. He devotes all his energies to trying to reform the civil service so that people get promoted on merit instead of political pull. He works so hard at that. You see a real idealism in his early works, when he says, "I want to make these beaches accessible to New York." Now, does that evolve into "I think there ought to be a highway here no matter what anybody says, and no matter how many thousands of people are in the way," like the Cross Bronx Expressway, "I'll evict them"? It does. He changes. That to me is a big part of the story of The Power Broker: how this guy who's in the beginning a young, idealistic guy who wants to build to make lives better for people, to give them access to the ocean and beaches, changes into someone who just wants to build because he thinks something should be built no matter what anyone else says. He's going to do it no matter how many hundreds, thousands of people he has to evict, no matter how bad an idea it is, like the Cross Bronx Expressway. People are telling him not to do that before he does it. The minute this road opens, it's the world's longest traffic jam. Not thousands, but tens of thousands of people were evicted, thrown out of their homes by him without any relocation provisions. So in a way it's a story of how you give somebody power without the power, in a way — I don't want to use the word "corrupting" him — but hardening him to anyone who opposes him, to any opposition.
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You start writing the book in '66, '67. You're writing it while Moses is losing power. His career is not over yet. So the story changes while you're writing it. I don't know if you've talked about that, but presumably the conclusion changes because you don't know whether he's going to lose that power or not when you start.
That's a great question. I watch that happen, and I'm young. Whatever my age was, I didn't really know what I was doing. I watched him lose power, and I learned enough about him to know how sad this was going to be. If I could think a moment, there's a moment that this happened… Yeah… His office was still up at the Triborough Bridge Authority. When he was in power, I interviewed him in that office several times. You felt his power. You felt outside there were all these people sitting around waiting for his decisions. As soon as I finished, the secretary would come in with a list of telephone calls from people who had called wanting something from him while I was talking to him. I remember I had one long interview with him. Maybe it was my last one. By the time I finished, I realized there had been no calls. The secretary had nothing to tell him. So whatever you thought of Moses, you felt the poignance of someone losing power.
That's fascinating. That's what I was wondering about.
You couldn't help feeling sad for him, even though you knew what he had done. You couldn't help feeling, "Oh, this is, in a way, tragic that no one's calling and asking him for a favor anymore."
Did he realize that was happening?
I don't think he really did. In a way, I'm sure he did. But by that time he was so insulated. Whatever his age was, he was up in his 80s. He was deaf. He still had at the Triborough headquarters on Randall's Island all these Moses men who were loyal to him and treated him with the same deference they always had. He knew he wasn't getting his projects done. But I know he felt he was just going to keep pushing like he always did, and he was going to win again. The answer to your question is no, I don't think he did ever realize that. In, I think, '62, as you say, he tries to pull a trick on Nelson Rockefeller that he had pulled on countless previous mayors and governors, which is to threaten to resign if he didn't get his way. Rockefeller says, "I regretfully accept," and nothing happens.
That made me wonder as I was reading it. Could all those previous governors and mayors who were getting threatened have done the same thing?
Great question. Yeah, the answer is yes. Well, you say, "could they have done the same thing?" In part, the answer is yes. They had the power to fire him. He wasn't an elected official. But there wasn't really a possibility. The answer to the question at the bottom is no, they couldn't, because he was simply too popular. You couldn't fire Robert Moses. That's like firing some person who was the idol of New York. But in addition, with his genius, he had created, in all his different posts — chairman of the State Power Authority, chairman of Triborough Bridge Authority, Parks Commissioner, Long Island Parks Commissioner, Jones Beach Commissioner — such an interlocking web that you couldn't fire him from everything, because the terms ended in different ways, and some you didn't have the power to fire him from. He had really made it impossible. Well, almost impossible, because at the end, if you wanted to do it, Rockefeller did it. But by that time, cracks had appeared in the armor. I think for decades, the answer to your question is you couldn't do it. But then as he got older, cracks appeared in the armor. If you wanted to brave criticism in all the newspapers and public criticism and everything else, you probably could have done it.
Which leads into the next question I want to ask you. You interviewed him seven times. The seventh time, you mentioned your awareness of a donation that was made to his commission by a millionaire whose golf course was spared by the new route for his parkway. After that, he didn't talk to you again. If you had gotten an eighth interview with Robert Moses, what is the one question you would most want to ask him?
Oh, God, what a great question. Off the top of my head, if I only had one question to ask him, I'd ask him, "Did you realize you were changing?" That's off the top… That's a great question you asked. But that's the answer I'll give for now. That's something I always would like to have asked him.
Do you think he realized that he was changing?
No. I think he felt from the beginning that he had this vision to build roads here and parks there. That was the best thing to do. It was going to get done, and it should get done. No matter how many hardships he had to inflict on people, no matter how many thousands he had to evict, no matter what he had to do, he was going to get the roads built. You see this increasing ruthlessness, this utter ruthlessness of him. If someone stood in his way, he was going to find a way to remove that person as an obstacle. I'll give you an example of that if you want. There's a politician in the Bronx named Henry Epstein. Henry Epstein is opposing the Cross Bronx Expressway. He's saying to Robert Moses, "You're putting it right through a neighborhood where you have to evict tens of thousands of people. You can just move it two blocks to the south, and you only have to evict a couple of hundred people." Moses sets out to destroy Epstein, and basically does, by making it known he's having an affair. If he can find a weakness in somebody, that he has a mistress, that he's taking money or something, he'll use it. He'll use whatever he has to to get things done. He learns that, in my opinion, by failing to get things done when he's very young. He has things that he wants to get done, and they don't get done. The awareness comes on him. We can see it in the book, or in my learning about him. I try to show how he learns that he has to find weaknesses in people. If he has a weakness, he's going to use it. He's going to get things done. There's a hardening, an increased ruthlessness, where the only thing that matters is to get the thing done. Anyone who stands in his way is going to get whatever it takes. If Moses has to destroy him, he'll destroy him.
As you say, you're writing not the history of one man, but of an era in America. One of the most interesting things about The Power Broker is, especially in the period in which he's able to accomplish so much so quickly, what's happening, and you talk about this, is the Great Depression. He's hiring thousands of architects, tens of thousands of linemen, for pennies on the dollar to do big public works for the city. So I wonder how big a part of Moses' early achievements is just that the government, because of the Great Depression, could compete with the private sector for the top talent and for lots and lots of labor working 24/7 through the winter, moving fast.
Another great question. The answer is that it played a big role. He needed architects for something. I don't remember what it is. It's in The Power Broker. They lined up on Fifth Avenue, thousands of out-of-work architects that he could hire for very low wages. But more than the wages, they were available, because they didn't have anything to do. He was able to hire so many people, and hire and fire them in a ruthless way, making the workmen work hard. He could just fire them. It was the Depression. They didn't have other jobs to go to. He used that. Yes.
