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What I learned about power from LBJ and Robert Moses · Dwarkesh Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: So I recently interviewed Robert Caro.
0:02
Speaker 2: He spent the last 50 years writing a four-volume biography
0:05
Speaker 2: of Lyndon Johnson, and he spent another seven years before
0:08
Speaker 2: that writing the biography of Robert Moses, who was a
0:11
Speaker 2: master builder of New York. His books are widely regarded
0:15
Speaker 2: as the best explorations of political power that have ever
0:18
Speaker 2: been read. And they also happen to be literally my
0:21
Speaker 2: favorite books ever. Whenever I meet somebody new, one of
0:23
Speaker 2: the first questions that they often ask me is, who's
0:26
Speaker 2: the person you most want to interview that you haven't yet?
0:29
Speaker 2: And for six years, I've answered that question in the
0:32
Speaker 2: same way, Robert Kira. And I've actually spent a lot
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Speaker 2: of time trying to make this interview happen. I've chased
0:37
Speaker 2: down his agent, I've called this publisher. I've contacted the
0:42
Speaker 2: museums which are hosting his archives. I've even sent him
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Speaker 2: handwritten letters. I finally got to sit down with him
0:47
Speaker 2: and I'm very happy with how it turned out. It'll
0:49
Speaker 2: be out tomorrow. In the meantime, as I was preparing
0:52
Speaker 2: for this interview and I was rereading all of these biographies,
0:55
Speaker 2: I was writing down all the lessons that they'd laid
0:58
Speaker 2: out about how to accumulate and use power. And this
1:01
Speaker 2: video essay is the result. Robert Moses was the master
1:11
Speaker 2: builder of New York.
1:13
Speaker 3: Our distinguished guest was Mr. Robert Moses, the nation's foremost
1:17
Speaker 3: city planner.
1:18
Speaker 2: He built more of the physical city than anybody before
1:21
Speaker 2: or since. He built the Triborough and Verrazano Bridges, the
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Speaker 2: Cross Bronx Expressway, Jones Beach, Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium, two
1:30
Speaker 2: giant power dams upstate, in addition to hundreds of parks
1:33
Speaker 2: and pools.
1:34
Speaker 1: Of the 899 miles.
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Speaker 2: Of highways completed in New York State by 1964, Moses
1:40
Speaker 2: had built 672 of them. His projects collectively cost hundreds
1:45
Speaker 2: of billions of dollars in today's money. For more than
1:48
Speaker 2: 30 years, Robert Moses was the most powerful person in
1:51
Speaker 2: New York. More powerful than any elected mayor or governor,
1:55
Speaker 2: despite the fact that he was not elected to anything.
1:58
Speaker 3: I've heard it ad nauseum for the last 30 odd years.
2:02
Speaker 1: They say you don't have to be elected.
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Speaker 3: My stock reply to them is you don't have to
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Speaker 3: be either.
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Speaker 2: How did he get that much power and how did
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Speaker 2: he keep it? Part of the answer is that Moses
2:12
Speaker 2: wrote the laws that governed him. He was called the
2:15
Speaker 2: best bill drafter in Albany and he used that skill
2:18
Speaker 2: to write himself powers that the legislators voting on his
2:20
Speaker 2: bills didn't know that they were granting.
2:23
Speaker 1: The political genius of.
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Speaker 2: Robert Moses is perhaps best illustrated by his use of
2:28
Speaker 2: public authorities.
2:29
Speaker 1: These are government-created corporations that build city infrastructure.
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Speaker 3: Public authorities sell bonds to pay for a specific project,
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Speaker 3: say a new bridge. Once the bridge is built, the
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Speaker 3: authority would charge drivers a toll until it had collected
2:43
Speaker 3: enough money to pay off its bonds. Then the authority
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Speaker 3: would tear down the toll booths, hand the bridge over
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Speaker 3: to the city, and go out of existence.
2:51
Speaker 2: At least that was the idea. And that's what Albany
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Speaker 2: assumed would happen when the New York State Congress approved
2:56
Speaker 2: the Triborough Bridge Authority Act of 1933. whose final version included,
3:02
Speaker 2: buried within pages and pages of legalese, a few seemingly
3:05
Speaker 2: minor alterations that were drafted by Robert Moses. Now, Section
3:09
Speaker 2: 1 of this act clearly stated that the authority would
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Speaker 2: dissolve once the bonds were paid off. And since the
3:15
Speaker 2: bonds could run at most 40 years, and the revenues
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Speaker 2: from the bridge would pay back the initial cost far sooner,
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Speaker 2: it seemed like the authority had a clear built-in expiry date. However,
3:26
Speaker 2: in a subsection of Section 9, Moses added a single
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Speaker 2: sentence that said that the authority could, quote, from time
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Speaker 2: to time, end quote, pay off its old bonds by
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Speaker 2: issuing new ones.
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Speaker 1: And those new ones.
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Speaker 2: Could be, quote, for any other corporate purpose, end quote.
3:41
Speaker 2: So just before the original bonds were about to expire,
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Speaker 2: the authority now had the right to issue a totally
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Speaker 2: fresh 40-year note for a potentially totally different use. And
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Speaker 2: what could the authority build with all this money? Well,
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Speaker 2: the original act let it build two bridges and their approaches.
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Speaker 1: Moses' amendments also gave this authority the right to build.
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Speaker 2: Connecting roads, and quote, facilities not inconsistent with the use
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Speaker 2: of the project, end quote. These rights, when interpreted as
4:28
Speaker 2: creatively as Moses intended to, would allow Moses to alter
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Speaker 2: most of the roads, parks, and housing in New York.
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Speaker 2: For if a road connected to a road which connected
4:39
Speaker 2: to a road which connected to the bridge, or if
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Speaker 2: a park lay along the road that connected to the
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Speaker 2: road that connected to the road that connected to the bridge,
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Speaker 2: Surely the Triborough Authority was entitled to improve and change it.
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Speaker 2: All this construction cost could be financed by the bridge's
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Speaker 2: enormous toll revenues and the right of the Triborough Authority
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Speaker 2: to borrow against them. To give some perspective, in 1946,
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Speaker 2: the entire New York City government could only borrow $ 150
5:06
Speaker 2: million before hitting its legal debt limit. That very same year,
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Speaker 2: Triborough could borrow $ 360 million. So Moses's Bridge Authority had
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Speaker 2: access to more than double the amount of money as
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Speaker 2: the largest city in America. And what if a future
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Speaker 2: governor or mayor eventually learned about all this power and
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Speaker 2: revenue that had been delegated to this authority and they
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Speaker 2: decided to claw it back? Moses had planned for this too.
5:31
Speaker 2: And his solution was so clever that no lawyer or
5:35
Speaker 2: lawmaker in Albany saw it coming. The United States Constitution
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Speaker 2: says that no state shall make, quote, any law impairing
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Speaker 2: the obligation of contracts, end quote, entered into by a
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Speaker 2: government entity. A bond issued by a public authority is
5:50
Speaker 2: such a contract. Moses snuck a clause into the act
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Speaker 2: which allowed him to add, quote, any other matters of
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Speaker 2: like or different character which in any way affect the
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Speaker 2: security or protection of the bonds, end quote.
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Speaker 1: Into these bond contracts.
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Speaker 2: And these matters included that Triborough could charge whatever tolls
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Speaker 2: it wanted and for however long they wanted, and they
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Speaker 2: could keep the surplus thus generated. That is to say,
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Speaker 2: Moses could now entrench his powers simply by writing them
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Speaker 2: into the bonds that he issued. From the moment that
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Speaker 2: those bonds were sold, those powers could no longer be
6:28
Speaker 2: revoked by the legislature or by the governor or by
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Speaker 2: the mayor, by anything, in fact, short of a constitutional convention.
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Speaker 2: The powers that Moses now had were guaranteed for the
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Speaker 2: bond's entire lifetime. a lifetime which could always be extended
6:43
Speaker 2: simply by refinancing. So with just a few minor tweaks,
6:47
Speaker 2: Moses had turned an act meant to allow for the
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Speaker 2: construction of two bridges into the basis of an institution
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Speaker 2: that could build basically anything it wanted anywhere in New
6:58
Speaker 2: York and whose authority to do so was protected by
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Speaker 2: the United States Constitution. These bond covenants had turned Triborough
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Speaker 2: authorities' powers into granite, but nothing in them guaranteed that
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Speaker 2: Robert Moses would remain its chairman. So how did Moses
7:14
Speaker 2: retain this position for 30 years? Part of the answer is, again,
7:18
Speaker 2: the law. Moses drafted the Triborough Act so that its
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Speaker 2: commissioners could be removed midterm only on, quote, stated charges
7:26
Speaker 2: after a formal hearing, end quote. But any differences he
7:29
Speaker 2: had with a mayor or governor were more about what
7:31
Speaker 2: he decided to build, and whom he displaced to build it,
7:34
Speaker 2: rather than his personal conduct. As Carrow himself writes, So
7:37
Speaker 2: there were never any formal charges to bring. But this
7:52
Speaker 2: only explains why he wasn't fired in the middle of
7:54
Speaker 2: his term. Why was he reappointed every six years? Well,
7:58
Speaker 2: at his peak, Moses was a Hydra with a dozen heads.
8:02
Speaker 2: He held 12 different government posts at the same time.
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Speaker 2: City construction coordinator, chairman of the state council of parks,
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Speaker 2: chairman of the state power authority, and so on. Some
8:11
Speaker 2: of these positions were appointed by the mayor, some of
8:13
Speaker 2: them by the governor, and so no single person could.
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Speaker 1: Cut off the head simultaneously.
8:18
Speaker 2: And removing him from any one position meant that you
8:20
Speaker 2: were making an enemy with the man who would still
8:23
Speaker 2: be the most powerful.
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Speaker 1: Person in New York.
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Speaker 2: More importantly, no mayor or governor wanted to fire him.
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Speaker 2: The way we remember Robert Moses today is based on
8:34
Speaker 2: a reputation that was calcified in the 1970s, when the
8:37
Speaker 2: power broker came out and where New York was experiencing
8:40
Speaker 2: a dark age of crime, deindustrialization, and white flight. Moses
8:44
Speaker 2: got much of the blame for this. After all, the
8:47
Speaker 2: subtitle of The Power Broker is Robert Moses and the
8:50
Speaker 2: Fall of New York. But in my opinion, this crisis
8:54
Speaker 2: had more to do with larger structural factors that had
8:58
Speaker 2: nothing to do with Moses himself. Cities that he had
9:00
Speaker 2: nothing to do with, like Detroit and St. Louis, experienced
9:04
Speaker 2: a much more dramatic collapse. For the vast majority of
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Speaker 2: his career, Moses was incredibly popular. In the 1930s and 1940s,
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Speaker 2: New York high schools voted Moses the most admired New Yorker.
9:15
Speaker 2: This was because he had delivered, over and over again,
9:19
Speaker 2: public works which millions of New Yorkers got to use
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Speaker 2: and enjoy.
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Speaker 1: The beaches, parks, pools.
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Speaker 3: They used to dive off a dock into the murky river,
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Speaker 3: but now it's splashing deluxe in a grand up-to-date Lido.
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Speaker 3: It cost a cool million and the kids say it's
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Speaker 3: worth it.
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Speaker 2: And he did so at a speed and a scale
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Speaker 2: that nobody had seen before. In his first four months
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Speaker 2: as the city's park commissioner, he kept crews working around
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Speaker 2: the clock and finished 1,700 park renovations.
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Speaker 1: And he did this all without a whiff of personal scandal.
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Speaker 2: As Kira writes in The Power Broker, quote, it was
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Speaker 2: not unusual at park and playground opening ceremonies for children
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Speaker 2: prodded by their parents to break into the cheer.
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Speaker 1: Who do we appreciate?
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Speaker 2: Mr. Moses! Mr. Moses! Mr. Moses! Importantly, Moses could deliver
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Speaker 2: these enormous and popular public works within a timeframe that
10:12
Speaker 2: fit into a single election cycle. If the mayor gave
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Speaker 2: Robert Moses the power to build something, he could expect
10:18
Speaker 2: to be standing at its ribbon cutting before he was
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Speaker 2: up for reelection.
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Speaker 3: Robert Moses, Mayor Wagner, and Cardinal Spellman join other dignitaries
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Speaker 3: in a ribbon cutting at the Brooklyn side of the bridge.
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Speaker 2: Today, it's almost unimaginable that the government could construct big
10:30
Speaker 2: things in a year or two. For example, construction on
10:33
Speaker 2: the Second Avenue subway in New York began in 1972.
10:37
Speaker 2: and the first section was opened in 2017. And just
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Speaker 2: these initial two miles have cost the taxpayers $ 4. 5 billion.
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Speaker 2: A lot of the funding for public works comes from Washington.
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Speaker 2: Cities that receive the most money are the ones that
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Speaker 2: have finalized their blueprints and can start breaking around as
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Speaker 2: soon as a new federal initiative is announced. Moses had
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Speaker 2: the largest and best team of planners and engineers in
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Speaker 2: the entire country. And because of that, by 1936, New
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Speaker 2: York was getting one-seventh of the money that the federal
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Speaker 2: government had set aside for Depression-era work relief for the
11:09
Speaker 2: entire nation. And the projects that this funding was going
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Speaker 2: towards were the ones chosen by Moses. If the mayor
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Speaker 2: had some different idea about what should be constructed, he'd
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Speaker 2: have to draw up his own plans, which he didn't
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Speaker 2: have the independent technical expertise to do so. So he
11:24
Speaker 2: could either build the projects that Moses wanted to build,
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Speaker 2: or he could build nothing at all. Between his ability
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Speaker 2: to get things done, his popularity, and his control over money,
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Speaker 2: Moses had a lot of leverage, and he was not
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Speaker 2: shy about using it.
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Speaker 1: Far from being.
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Speaker 2: Worried about getting fired, Moses would constantly threaten to quit
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Speaker 2: whenever he didn't get his way. Under Mayor Wagner, one
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Speaker 2: aide said that, quote, it seemed like he was resigning
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Speaker 2: about one thing or another about twice a day, end quote.
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Speaker 2: He threatened resignation to Mayor LaGuardia so often and over
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Speaker 2: such small things, that LaGuardia's lawyer got a stack of
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Speaker 2: forms printed that read, I, Robert Moses, do hereby resign
12:01
Speaker 2: as so-and-so, to save Moses the trouble of writing it
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Speaker 2: out every single time.
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Speaker 1: But behind that joke was real fear.
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Speaker 2: If a mayor accepted that resignation, not only would he
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Speaker 2: be forfeiting the completion of whatever projects Moses was working on,
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Speaker 2: along with the money that was apportioned for those projects,
12:19
Speaker 2: he'd also be picking a public fight with the most
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Speaker 2: respected official in all of New York. Moses has spent
12:28
Speaker 2: years befriending the owners of the city's newspapers. He spent
12:31
Speaker 2: many weekends at the summer home of the Sulzbergers, which
12:34
Speaker 2: is the family that owns the New York Times. The
12:36
Speaker 2: mayor knew that if Moses resigned, the next morning all
12:41
Speaker 2: the front pages would tell the same story about how
12:43
Speaker 2: a man above politics was driven out by a craven
12:46
Speaker 2: politician because he refused to compromise the city's interests. And
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Speaker 2: the power that Moses derived from his popularity with the
12:53
Speaker 2: masses was nothing compared to the power that he derived
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Speaker 2: from his connections with New York's powerful private interests. We
13:00
Speaker 2: are very used today to NIMBY, not in my backyard,
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Speaker 2: where powerful but concentrated interest groups manage to stymie projects
13:08
Speaker 2: despite their broad popularity. Moses built a concentrated faction for YIMBY,
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Speaker 2: yes in my backyard. He built a graft machine that
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Speaker 2: ensured that the most powerful people in the state would
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Speaker 2: all benefit when new construction happened.
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Speaker 1: The banks got to.
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Speaker 2: Buy his bonds at a steep discount without competitive bidding,
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Speaker 2: the unions got more jobs, politically connected lawyers got legal fees,
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Speaker 2: and party bosses got paid to broker insurance policies to
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Speaker 2: bridges that had no plausible risk of falling down. Moses
13:37
Speaker 2: could then rely on these beneficiaries to call up anyone
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Speaker 2: who stood in the way of one of his projects
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Speaker 2: whether that was a borough president or the governor himself.
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Speaker 2: Caro paints Moses as somebody who began as an idealist,
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Speaker 2: rather than somebody who craved power from the very start.
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Speaker 2: In the 1910s, Moses was a brilliant young reformer who
13:55
Speaker 2: joined this new good government movement, which was trying to
13:58
Speaker 2: replace Tammany Hall's patronage with honest and competent administration. He
14:03
Speaker 2: spent years fighting this machine, but his reforms got killed.
14:08
Speaker 1: The machine won.
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Speaker 2: Moses learned that ideals are useless without the power to
14:12
Speaker 2: realize them. Carrow writes, quote, In the beginning, and for
14:16
Speaker 2: decades of his career, the power Robert Moses amassed was
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Speaker 2: the servant of his dreams, amassed for their sake, so
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Speaker 2: that his gigantic, city-shaping visions could become reality. But power
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Speaker 2: is not an instrument that its possessor can use with impunity.
14:31
Speaker 2: It is a drug that creates in the user a
14:33
Speaker 2: need for larger and larger doses.
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Speaker 1: And Moses was a user. End quote.
14:41
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson's story, on the other hand, is kind of
14:44
Speaker 2: the opposite. Through most of his career, there's little evidence
14:47
Speaker 2: that he had a coherent political ideology. He was a
14:50
Speaker 2: ruthless power seeker who embraced whatever happened to be the
14:53
Speaker 2: most expedient thing to do at that time. When Johnson
14:56
Speaker 2: first entered the U.S. Senate, he realized that the most
14:59
Speaker 2: powerful men there were the conservative Southern Dixiecrats, and the
15:03
Speaker 2: Johnson that they encountered was one who molded himself to
15:06
Speaker 2: their form. While writing Master of the Senate, Volume 3
15:10
Speaker 2: of his Johnson biographies, Caro interviewed former Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge.
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Speaker 2: He asked Talmadge what impression he got from freshman Senator
15:18
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson about the proper relationship between white people and
15:21
Speaker 2: black people. And now quoting Caro's recounting of this exchange, quote,
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Speaker 2: Master and servant. So I, Caro, asked, well, didn't Johnson
15:31
Speaker 2: have any sympathy for blacks? Any desire to improve their lot?
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Speaker 2: My notes say long pause. And then I wrote Talmadge's
15:39
Speaker 2: two-word reply, none indicated. Another pause. And then, he was
15:44
Speaker 2: with us in his heart. I believed him. I believed him.
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Speaker 1: End quote. Of course, we know that.
15:50
Speaker 2: Once he became president, Johnson spearheaded the 1964 Civil Rights
15:54
Speaker 2: Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most important
15:58
Speaker 2: civil rights laws since Reconstruction. So, Moses began as a
16:02
Speaker 2: naive idealist, but in Kero's telling, became somebody seeking power
16:06
Speaker 2: for its own sake. Johnson, on the other hand, was
16:09
Speaker 2: an opportunist from the very start. It was only once
16:12
Speaker 2: he had real power that he used it for ideals
16:15
Speaker 2: few knew that he had. Before he was president, Lyndon
16:18
Speaker 2: Johnson was vice president. And before he was vice president,
16:20
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson was in the Senate. And Lyndon Johnson was
16:24
Speaker 2: the most powerful Senate majority leader, perhaps the most powerful legislator, period,
16:29
Speaker 2: in the history of this country. Here's Carrow, quote, He
16:32
Speaker 2: was master of the Senate, master of an institution that
16:36
Speaker 2: had never before had a master, and that at the
16:38
Speaker 2: time almost half a century later, when this book is
16:41
Speaker 2: being written, has not had one since, end quote. No
16:44
Speaker 2: leader before Johnson had wielded this kind of power because
16:47
Speaker 2: the Senate had deliberately been set up by the founders
16:50
Speaker 2: to not be led. When Johnson asked the Library of
16:53
Speaker 2: Congress for a list of the majority leader's formal powers,
16:57
Speaker 2: he found that there was exactly one, the right to
16:59
Speaker 2: be recognized first on the floor. Before Johnson, the majority
17:02
Speaker 2: leader was less a leader and more.
17:05
Speaker 1: A lightning rod.
17:06
Speaker 2: He'd be blamed in the national press and in his
17:08
Speaker 2: home state for everything that the Senate failed to do,
17:11
Speaker 2: yet he had no actual power to do anything about
17:14
Speaker 2: those failures. Being in this predicament was so politically toxic
17:18
Speaker 2: that Johnson's two.
17:19
Speaker 1: Predecessors as majority leaders had both lost their own Senate seats.
17:23
Speaker 2: A big part of the reason that Johnson became his
17:25
Speaker 2: party's leader at just 44 years old, in a Senate
17:28
Speaker 2: whose average age was around 60, was that hardly anybody
17:31
Speaker 2: else wanted this thankless and useless job. And in their hands,
17:36
Speaker 2: the job would have remained useless. But they were not
17:39
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson. From this position, Johnson turned himself into the
17:42
Speaker 2: second most powerful person in America, right after the president.
17:46
Speaker 2: And he used three different tactics to do so.
17:48
Speaker 1: First, he gained leverage.
17:50
Speaker 2: He made sure that he had things to promise and
17:53
Speaker 2: things to threaten with. Johnson transformed the Senate's rules, institutions,
17:57
Speaker 2: and norms so that he alone had the power to
18:00
Speaker 2: grant important favors to his colleagues. If a senator needed
18:03
Speaker 2: a bill passed, Johnson was the one who could get
18:06
Speaker 2: it scheduled on the floor and persuade the committee chairman
18:08
Speaker 2: to report it out. And if the bill needed help
18:11
Speaker 2: in the House, Johnson was the one who had a
18:13
Speaker 2: direct line to Speaker Sam Rayburn. And if the senator
18:16
Speaker 2: needed money for his next campaign so that he could
18:18
Speaker 2: make sure he remained a senator, Johnson was the one
18:21
Speaker 2: who could put in a good word with the oilman
18:23
Speaker 2: from his native Texas. Johnson also put himself in a
18:26
Speaker 2: position to control committee assignments, which are the single biggest
18:29
Speaker 2: factor that shapes how a senator's whole career plays out.
18:32
Speaker 2: For about a century, they had been handed out based
18:35
Speaker 2: on seniority. Practically overnight, Johnson changed the system so that
18:39
Speaker 2: many seats were no longer being settled by seniority, but
18:42
Speaker 2: rather negotiated by the party's steering committee, which Johnson controlled.
18:47
Speaker 2: If you wanted a good seat, you had to do
18:49
Speaker 2: what Johnson wanted.
18:51
Speaker 1: In 1957, S.S.
18:52
Speaker 2: Kefauer voted against Johnson on an important motion. That very
18:56
Speaker 2: same week, the highly coveted open seat on the Foreign
18:59
Speaker 2: Relations Committee, which Kefauer was expecting to get, was instead
19:03
Speaker 2: handed over to a far more junior senator named John F.
19:07
Speaker 1: Kennedy.
19:08
Speaker 2: The real political genius of Lyndon Johnson was identifying and
19:12
Speaker 2: then gaining control over.
19:14
Speaker 1: Every possible source of leverage over his colleagues.
19:18
Speaker 2: Whatever a senator needed to survive, whether that was money,
19:21
Speaker 2: committee seats, or the passage of bills that mattered to
19:24
Speaker 2: his home state, Johnson could give and Johnson could withhold.
19:29
Speaker 2: The second important tactic was setting the agenda. What is
19:32
Speaker 2: said by a bill that passes depends on which version
19:35
Speaker 2: actually comes up for a vote and with what final modifications.
19:39
Speaker 2: Whoever gets to set this agenda controls the outcome. So
19:42
Speaker 2: you won't be surprised by who put himself in this position.
19:46
Speaker 2: Johnson's main tool for controlling the agenda was the unanimous
19:50
Speaker 2: consent agreement. By default, Senate debate is unlimited. A senator
19:54
Speaker 2: can talk about a bill for as long as he likes,
19:56
Speaker 2: and as he does so, he can also offer amendments
19:59
Speaker 2: that have nothing to do with that bill, each of
20:01
Speaker 2: which can stall the bill even further. A unanimous consent
20:04
Speaker 2: agreement sets those freedoms aside.
20:06
Speaker 1: For a single bill.
20:07
Speaker 2: It fixes the allotted time for debate and constrains the
20:10
Speaker 2: opportunity to amend it.
20:12
Speaker 1: Earlier leaders had rarely used such agreements.
20:14
Speaker 2: And even when they had, they'd only use them after
20:17
Speaker 2: weeks of debate on a bill that had already been
20:19
Speaker 2: exhausted in its deliberations. Johnson made their use the norm
20:23
Speaker 2: in the Senate. He wouldn't even allow a bill to
20:25
Speaker 2: reach the floor until such an agreement was in place.
20:29
Speaker 2: And the reason was that Johnson wanted to control which
20:31
Speaker 2: bills reached the floor and to keep the floor from.
20:34
Speaker 1: Changing anybody's mind.
20:36
Speaker 2: Because he wanted every vote settled in private beforehand, through
20:39
Speaker 2: the wheeling and dealing where his leverage worked best. The
20:42
Speaker 2: last thing he wanted was for a long public debate
20:44
Speaker 2: about the merits of some bill to change a senator's
20:47
Speaker 2: mind at the very last minute, or for a surprise
20:49
Speaker 2: amendment to unravel a deal that he had spent weeks
20:52
Speaker 2: painstakingly brokering. As Senator Paul Douglas put it, under Johnson,
20:56
Speaker 2: all the actions take place offstage before the play begins.
21:00
Speaker 2: And the third tactic that Johnson employed was brokering all
21:03
Speaker 2: the deals to his advantage. Johnson made sure that as
21:06
Speaker 2: much of the Senate's information as possible ran through him.
21:09
Speaker 2: He had every committee assign a staffer to tell him
21:11
Speaker 2: what was being drafted. His aides tracked what every senator
21:14
Speaker 2: was up to. And he spent his own days in
21:17
Speaker 2: the cloakroom and in the hallways cajoling and listening to
21:19
Speaker 2: his colleagues. So he knew exactly what each senator really
21:23
Speaker 2: wanted and what he would and wouldn't give up to
21:25
Speaker 2: get it. In any session, the Senate faces hundreds of
21:29
Speaker 2: possible bills and amendments. A senator's vote on one bill
21:32
Speaker 2: can be traded for another senator's vote on a different one.
21:35
Speaker 2: And any single bill can be amended a dozen different
21:38
Speaker 2: ways to win somebody over. So there's almost an endless
21:41
Speaker 2: combination of possible deals to be made. Johnson made sure
21:45
Speaker 2: that he was the one instigating and brokering most.
21:47
Speaker 1: Of these deals.
21:49
Speaker 2: As a result, he would be making sure that any
21:51
Speaker 2: deal left Johnson coming out ahead. A good example is
21:55
Speaker 2: how he got the Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed
21:57
Speaker 2: through the Senate. Johnson was desperate to make sure that
22:00
Speaker 2: at least some civil rights bill passed that year, even
22:02
Speaker 2: if it was weak. That's because he wanted to become president,
22:05
Speaker 2: but no Southerner with his record of consistently voting against
22:09
Speaker 2: civil rights could hope to win the Democratic presidential nomination
22:13
Speaker 2: in 1960. The problem was there seemed to be no
22:16
Speaker 2: bill strong enough to win the Northern liberals, yet weak
22:19
Speaker 2: enough that the Southerners wouldn't filibuster it. The sticking point
22:23
Speaker 2: was who would preside over the court cases where Southern electoral.
22:26
Speaker 1: Officials were accused of suppressing Black voters.
22:29
Speaker 2: Southern senators insisted on jury trials, but Northern senators were
22:34
Speaker 2: livid because in their view, this would gut the whole bill.
22:37
Speaker 2: The entire point of the law was to combat the
22:40
Speaker 2: exclusion of black citizens from the voting rolls. But southern
22:43
Speaker 2: states require jurors to be registered voters. And an all-white
22:47
Speaker 2: southern jury would never convict a white registrar for turning
22:50
Speaker 2: away black voters. And so any version that one side
22:53
Speaker 2: could accept, the other would reject. A less creative legislator
22:57
Speaker 2: would have backed down. But over the course of seven months,
23:01
Speaker 2: Johnson built a masterful deal that brought together wholly unrelated factions.
23:06
Speaker 2: and whose byproduct included the passage of this civil rights law.
23:10
Speaker 2: Western senators got a vote on a federal dam that
23:12
Speaker 2: they had wanted for years between Idaho and Oregon. Midwestern Republicans,
23:16
Speaker 2: who had powerful railroad unions in their state, got a
23:19
Speaker 2: right to a jury trial extended to striking workers. And
23:22
Speaker 2: moderates got a clause guaranteeing that black citizens could serve
23:25
Speaker 2: on federal juries, so that.
23:27
Speaker 1: They could tell voters that they had created a new
23:29
Speaker 1: civil right.
23:30
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the jury trial guarantee for southern election officials stayed in.
23:35
Speaker 2: which kept the bill weak enough that Southerners agreed not
23:38
Speaker 2: to filibuster it. A dam in Idaho and protections for
23:41
Speaker 2: union workers and federal jury rules had nothing to do
23:45
Speaker 2: with voting rights in the South, at least not to
23:48
Speaker 2: anyone who lacked the inside knowledge and political creativity of
23:51
Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson. Kira's books are the best-written accounts of how
23:59
Speaker 2: political power actually works, but they are written so compellingly
24:02
Speaker 2: and with characters more vivid and stories more gripping than
24:06
Speaker 2: any novel, that it's very easy to get so engrossed
24:09
Speaker 2: that you just keep turning the pages. And you never
24:12
Speaker 2: stop and ask yourself, what are the lessons these stories
24:16
Speaker 2: are teaching about power? I wanted to make this video
24:19
Speaker 2: essay both so that I could think through what these
24:21
Speaker 2: lessons actually are, but also so that you would have
24:24
Speaker 2: the context necessary to watch my interview with Caro and
24:27
Speaker 2: get as much out of it as I did. You'll
24:29
Speaker 2: be able to watch the interview tomorrow. So by the
24:31
Speaker 2: time you're listening to this, it might already be out.
24:34
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy it.