Dwarkesh PatelWhat Robert Caro learned about power after studying it for 50 years
Dwarkesh Patel
Moses and Johnson 0:00
Caro says he has spent fifty years on Lyndon Johnson and Robert Moses by going to archives, tracking down witnesses, and following leads others would drop. He says he shares their relentlessness, but not their ruthlessness. He will keep asking when a person refuses an interview, because one witness may be the only one who can explain how Johnson used money or how Moses forced a project through.
Building through resistance 5:05
He says large projects always run into owners, lawsuits, and limits on power. That was true when Moses was building roads and beaches, and it is true now. Moses could still push through because he kept finding a way around each obstacle. Caro calls that political genius and will, though he also says there is no good answer between paralysis and the damage caused by unchecked force.
Moses and political limits 22:05
Moses could not really be removed for decades because he was too popular and had built an interlocking set of posts that ended at different times. He was chairman of the State Power Authority, the Triborough Bridge Authority, the Parks Commission, the Long Island Parks Commission, and the Jones Beach Commission. That web made him hard to fire. In the end, Rockefeller did it, but only after cracks had appeared in the armor and public criticism became easier to brave.
Ruthlessness and will 33:02
The same pattern of power shaped Johnson and the writing life. Behind Johnson’s charm was leverage: he could promise a committee post or block a law. Moses used weakness too, even destroying a Bronx politician by spreading word of an affair. The energy of both men came from will, not from some special constitution. When they wanted something, they kept going, late at night and into the early morning, until it was done.
Research access and archives 44:31
Caro says digital archives and the internet help his current Vietnam work, especially when he wants to trace a battle like Ia Drang through oral histories and documents. But he thinks they would have saved little time on his earlier books, because finding sources was never the hard part. The real work was reading them. He also explains why he gave his papers to the New-York Historical Society: he wanted the material easy to reach in New York, not locked far away, so later scholars can use the interviews, notes, and cut material he never published.
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