The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

As the title suggests, The Power Broker charts Moses’s accumulation of power over several decades. In his early life, however, he is less interested in power. Moses’s conceptions of power are informed by his family and education. In particular, he learns to be idealistic from his mother and grandmother, while his time spent in English universities provides him with a classist template for the implementation of power that he carries with him for the rest of his life. When he enters government, he first focuses on changing the world following the lessons taught to him by his family and his time abroad. He wishes to change society, proposing a model to revamp the civic administration of the government, using exams to institute a meritocracy that is simultaneously overruled by a distinct class of wealthy, educated men. This hypocritical form of egalitarian reform flounders because Moses has no power to institute his plans. In typical Moses fashion, he conceives of the world in a very specific way and will not change his mind. At this point, however, he is forced to reckon with his relative lack of power, and he resolves to acquire it and reshape the world.

Moses gets his first taste of power while working with Al Smith. He witnesses Smith’s influence up close and covets the power that the governor wields. His first taste of control and influence is addictive, and Moses spends the rest of his life pursuing increasing amounts of authority. As Smith’s advisor, then as parks commissioner, then as the head of the Triborough Authority, Moses increases his power at each step. At first, this pursuit of power masquerades under the pretense of politics. Moses tells himself that he wants to help people and shape the world. As he accumulates power, however, this ceases to be true. Moses covets power for its own sake. He enjoys wielding it, not only in the buildings and projects he heads but also the privileges he receives. Moses’s power is such that he can face down mayors and governors, he can shout at whoever he wants, and he can live like a ruler of his own empire without caring about public opinion. He reshapes New York City in his own image, often because he simply can. Power, to Moses, becomes a tool and a goal at the same time.

This pursuit of power becomes Moses’s undoing. He becomes so powerful that he is insulated from the real world. With so few people willing to challenge him, he has no means by which to moderate or modulate his ambitions. As the world around Moses changes, becoming more modern, Moses remains the same. He wants to build a 1920s vision of how the world should be in a 1950s society. Since he has the power to do so, no one can stop him, but his ruthless exercise of power makes him few friends. Eventually, he is brought down by Governor Rockefeller, a man from one of the wealthiest families in the world who—far more than Moses—adheres to the archetype of the born ruler that Moses felt was so important to civic governance. Moses’s vast power is ended by exactly the kind of man he believed should hold all the power in any given society. After Moses is exiled from power, few people mourn him; his power makes him feared and respected, but not loved. The book ends with Moses bemoaning the ingratitude of those he dominated, making him the archetypal tragic hero undone by his hubris.