2: The New York Machine
Caro’s introduction is an absolute masterpiece, a showstopper of a thing that bears down upon his subject to give us a 21-page distillation of Moses’ absolute essance, and it’s perhaps the best piece of writing I’ve been exposed to in a good couple years. Bracingly, lyricaly, and relentlessly, he catalogues Moses’ incredible acheivements, laid out in my previous post, and his equally incredible sins. Moses’ organization, known as the Triborough Commission, was a government entity that was legally a corporation, with its records sealed to public view. The justification for this was that it financed all its projects entirely with private bonds and tolls, requiring no taxpayer money, and while this was absolutely untrue, the veil of secrecy allowed Moses to function as an emperor. He flew phalanxes of dignitaries to the openings of new projects for weekend-long receptions. He displaced perhaps half a million people from their homes in order to build his works. He used the same techniques as J. Edgar Hoover, amassing dossiers on any and all public figures full of misdeeds or family scandals that could be released to the media if they crossed him. He kept a yacht driver on call, seven days a week, paid for with public money. Triborough secretaries received higher salaries than did city commissioners, and had their own chauffers. He gave a four-million dollar stadium at Jones Beach to Guy Lombardo, his favorite musician, so that he would be on call. He used the funds at his disposal to help out other politicians, placing himself at the center of New York City political life, essential to its operation and thus unremovable. And he received a tacit veto over all public works projects in the state of New York. This was corruption on a massive scale, benefitting not constituents, as the Tammany system at least occasionally did, but only a select few.
Caro argues that, though we may disapprove of what Moses did with his power, it was absolutely essential to the development of New York City that someone come along and find a way to construct public works in a coordinated and efficient way. “It had become a cliche by the mid-twentieth century to say that New York was ‘ungovernable,’” Caro writes. The city is so huge and complex and sprawling and combative that it is impossible to manage the whole thing. A mayor, with political considerations and a limited term, can never unite the warring factions of business, labor, neighborhoods, and preservationists needed to make any large development project happen. This may have seemed true at the time, but it seems to fall prey to the same sort of romantic (or, maybe, Randian) fantasy that allowed Moses to do what he did. The argument here is that Moses’ problem wasn’t the power, but what he did with it. It would be nice to have a powerful figure who could, say, institute a development plan that made the city greener, created livable public housing, broadened mass transit, and reduced sprawl, all within a short period of time and all in a smart and unified way, without any compromises. But this, it would seem, is only a fantasy. Democratic politics is inherently slow and inefficient, and while certainly an occasional backroom deal needs to be (and, to be honest, always it) cut, I would argue that to do things Moses’ way inevitably produces Moses’ kind of results. Though some of Bloomberg’s power grabs have been productive, his development fiats would favor pro-developer monstrosities, and his opinion that living in Manhattan is a priviledge echoes Moses’ construction of middle- and upper-class housing and amenities that displaced the poor to other boroughs, or to housing projects far from Manhattan’s commercial opportunities. Public works decisions just have too big and direct an impact on people’s lives to be made quickly.
It was easy to see, in 1975, how Moses’ policies had fucked up New York City. By starving public transportation, constructing expressways that displaced the poor into ghettos, developing Long Island as a suburban paradise accessible primarily by car, and taking land off the tax rolls, he created the bankrupt wasteland that was New York in the 70s. But, for all his faults, this may be placing too much blame on the man rather than the system that allowed him to exist. New York was run by the Democratic Party until, arguably, very recently (or maybe still is), which prevented real political competition from taking place. Moses created a public image that valorized him for not being a politician, pulled this way and that by interests, but as one man making the best decisions for us all. But if Moses had not been coddled by the party machine that had a vested interest in his continued dominance (Democratic judges affirming Triborough as a non-public entity, for instance), he might have made better decisions. Moses was a very smart guy who, at least at first, genuinely had good interests at heart. If he had been forced to take the public’s reaction into account, as he was for instance when he wanted to build an expressway through Soho and the Lower East Side, he might really have been able to concoct a good, long-lasting development plan. Instead, he was rewarded for being a mercurial solo actor, gaining more power for his unpredictability and willingness to go against neighborhood will. If we want to affix blame here, it might be the machine at fault.
New York might be legendarily ungovernable, but in these non-legendary times, it’s actually looking pretty goddamn governable. Things are far from perfect, of course, but they’re not too bad. And as much as we might complain about Bloomberg and Giuliani—legitimately so!—they weren’t part of the machine. And while they certainly had their own particular interests that they pursued, those interests at least were not those of the machine. The machine is only interested in perpetuating itself enough to reap the spoils, in keeping the right people happy and the rest of them happy enough not to vote them out. Our recent Republican administrations, largely isolated in a Democratic city, have been motivated instead by winning over a lot of people who might not otherwise vote for them, and this at least meant having the best interests of a large part of the city at heart. This is not to say they did not make many mistakes, or that they always pursued that goal. But it does make a difference that their motivation laid in gaining public approval rather than pleasing other government officials. Moses accurately saw where the power was, and he pursued that; if the power was in the wrong places, it’s hard to say that was his fault.
2 years ago | Tags: the power broker bloomberg giuliani politics
