James Fitzjames Stephen on democracy

The main thrust of Jame Fitzjames Stephen's book, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, was a critique of John Stuart Mill's views from the position of orthodox Utilitarianism.  But Stephen's own views shifted markedly from the orthodox Benthamite position over time.  In March 1867, contemplating the Reform Act being considered by Parliament, he wrote:

"Our case is that the interests of all classes are substantially identical; that the existence of masses of wealth is essential to the employment of labour, and that realized capital forms the fund by which labour is supported and want relieved; that the existence of a large class which has leisure enough to learn to think, to insist upon all that we mean by refinement, and into which any one may by industry and good conduct earn an entrance for himself and his family, is essential not merely as a stimulus to industry, but for the purpose of conducting public business; and these facts, we further say, are as well known to the poor as to the rich, and as little likely to be forgotten or undervalued by them. They are and ought to be regarded as the natural friends and supporters of wealth and education, the willing and intelligent critics and followers of those who possess them. In a word, we regard the whole nation as an organized body, capable, to use Milton’s splendid language, "of the greatest designs that can be attempted to make a church or kingdom happy." Taking this view, it appears to us undignified, cowardly, and narrow-minded in the extreme for the upper classes to be looking out for substitutes for rotten boroughs, and to be admitting that they are altogether incompetent to the task of leading, persuading, and heading a majority. The justification, and the only possible justification, for their existence is that they are the natural leaders of the nation, the natural friends, instructors, and representatives of the poor. They are the officers of the regiment freely chosen by the men, who, as a matter of fact, actually do, and from the nature of things must, have in their hands the final and unquestionable sanction of physical force. Let them try to fill this position worthily, let them, really believe and act on the belief that they are not a privileged minority, but the natural leaders of the majority, and they will find their whole position infinitely strengthened and improved. They will be what they are and always have been, but their power will be held by a more secure tenure, and will rest on a broader basis. What they have to do is to lead the majority, not to admit themselves to form a minority. If they take the first course, they will constitute a natural aristocracy. If they take the second, they will degenerate into a paltry and narrow-minded clique. Nothing is so narrow, so bigoted, so essentially inaccessible to reason as a minority artificially invested with political power."

Leslie Stephen believed his brother "a good deal corrupted by old Carlyle."  Indeed, a few months after this piece was published, contemplating an article Thomas Carlyle on the topic, the tone of his views appear to have shifted substantially.

"The point on which we should be most inclined to agree with Mr. Carlyle is the unfitness of the bulk of the population and of any Government representing them for carrying out arduous schemes in the teeth of difficulties and in spite of opposition by systematic and careful legislation. The essence of legislation by a majority of the whole nation is to let people do as they like as much as possible, and to take a minimum of trouble. Such a democracy as we should have in England would have very little faith in legislation. They would simply turn their backs upon the devices for improving and governing the world which require constant adjustment and elaborate care, and the thing to apprehend would be that, after getting their elbows entirely free, they would settle down in a stolid, rather sluttish condition of ease and indifference. It may well be the destiny of the British empire under its new rulers to dwindle down by degrees to the condition of a larger Holland, prosperous and insignificant."

Yet, at an analytic level, Fitzjames Stephen was consistent in the Tocquevillian belief that: "Democracy is not a form of government, but a state of society" -- arguing that:

"The real importance of Reform Bills and other constitutional changes in countries in which the broad principles of legal government and equal legal rights are fully recognized, consists not in the fact that they alter its distribution of political power, but in the fact that they render its working safe and regular, and provide a legal channel for its exercise."

Utilitarianism and Moderation

"I cannot help persuading myself, that the disputes between contending parties between the defenders of a law and the opposers of it, would stand a much better chance of being adjusted than at present were they but explicitly and constantly referred at once to the principle of UTILITY. The footing on which this principle rests every dispute, is that of matter of fact; that is, future fact the probability of certain future contingencies. Were the debate then conducted under the auspices of this principle, one of two things would happen: either men would come to an agreement concerning that probability, or they would see at length, after due discussion of the real grounds of the dispute, that no agreement was to be hoped for. They would at any rate see clearly and explicitly, the point on which the disagreement turned. The discontented party would then take their resolution to resist or to submit, upon just grounds, according as it should appear to them worth their while according to what should appear to them, the importance of the matter in dispute according to what should appear to them the probability or improbability of success according, in short, as the mischiefs of submission should appear to bear a less, or a greater ratio to the mischiefs of resistance. But the door to reconcilement would be much more open, when they saw that it might be not a mere affair of passion, but a difference of judgment, and that, for any thing they could know to the contrary, a sincere one, that was the ground of quarrel.
...
The question is now manifestly a question of conjecture concerning so many future contingent matters of fact: to solve it, both parties then are naturally directed to support their respective persuasions by the only evidence the nature of the case admits of; the evidence of such past matters of fact as appear to be analogous to those contingent future ones. Now these past facts are almost always numerous: so numerous, that till brought into view for the purpose of the debate, a great proportion of them are what may very fairly have escaped the observation of one of the parties: and it is owing, perhaps, to this and nothing else, that that party is of the persuasion which sets it at variance with the other. Here, then, we have a plain and open road, perhaps, to present reconcilement: at the worst to an intelligible and explicit issue, that is, to such a ground of difference as may, when thoroughly trodden and explored, be found to lead on to reconcilement at the last. Men, let them but once clearly understand one another, will not be long ere they agree. It is the perplexity of ambiguous and sophistical discourse that, while it distracts and eludes the apprehension, stimulates and inflames the passions."

 -- (Jeremy Bentham, ch.4 in "A Fragment on Government")

Thiers on why the Convention wasn't able to crush Jacobin gangsterism

This, published in 1823, could easily be read as a justification of Thiers' approach to dealing with the Paris Commune in 1871:

"Barbaroux immediately proposed four formidable and judiciously conceived decrees:

By the first, the capital was to lose the right of being the seat of the national representation, when it could no longer find means to protect it from insult or violence.

By the second, the federalists and the national gendarmes were, conjointly with the armed sections of Paris, to guard the national representation and the public establishments.

By the third, the Convention was to constitute itself a court of justice for the purpose of trying the conspirators.

By the fourth and last, the Convention was to cashier the municipality of Paris.

These four decrees were perfectly adapted to circumstances, and suitable to the real dangers of the moment, but it would have required all the power that could only be given by the decrees themselves in order to pass them. To create energetic means, energy is requisite; and every moderate party which strives to check a violent party is in a vicious circle, which it can never get out of. No doubt the majority, inclining to the Girondins, might have been able to carry the decrees; but it was its moderation that made it incline to them, and this very moderation counselled it to wait, to temporize, to trust to the future, and to avoid all measures that were prematurely energetic. The Assembly even rejected a much less rigorous decree, the first of those which the commission of nine had been charged to draw up. It was proposed by Buzot, and related to the instigators of murder and conflagration. All direct instigation was to be punished with death, and indirect instigation with ten years' imprisonment. The Assembly considered the penalty for direct instigation too severe, and indirect instigation too vaguely defined and too difficult to reach. To no purpose did Buzot insist that revolutionary and consequendy arbitrary measures were required against the adversaries who were to be combated. 'He was not listened to, neither could he be, when addressing a majority which condemned revolutionary measures in the violent party itself, and was therefore very unlikely to employ them against it. The law was consequently adjourned; and the commission of nine appointed to devise means of maintaining good order, became, in a manner, useless."

(from p431, "The History of the French Revolution" by Adolphe Thiers")

Beyond the failed Presidential SCOTUS strategy

For over half a century, conservatives have struggled to rein in the Supreme Court.  In the 1960s the court crippled the criminal justice system, leading to the greatest spike of crime in American history.  In the 1970s, they imposed irreversible abortion legalization nationwide, polarizing the nation's politics to this day.  Throughout the past couple of decades, the Court has repeatedly continued to sweep aside incremental policy arrangements in favor of dogmatic rights and irreversible social experiments.  The expectation that courts will pick apart legislative compromises has scared Congress away from making them.

Following the appointment of Clarence Thomas in 1991, 8 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices had been appointed by Republican Presidents.  Yet, rather than rolling back prior encroachments, the past two decades have seen the tides of judicial liberalism wash further forward.

Quite simply, the conservative strategy of reshaping SCOTUS through Presidential appointments has failed.  There is very good reason to believe it would be just as unsuccessful if Trump were elected President this year.

People overestimate the interest of the President in nominating a candidate preferred by their party's base.  Presidents care primarily about their own personal reputation for the sake of popularity with the electorate as a whole.  This is why Dwight Eisenhower nominated the liberal Earl Warren, why Richard Nixon appointed five members to the court without entrenching a conservative majority, and why Donald Trump could be expected to do likewise.  It is the path of least resistance for a President who has no deep ideological attachment to the judicial cause.

Furthermore, if the President is more desperate than the Senate to fill a vacancy on the Court, the Senate can insist that the President nominate someone ideologically congenial to them.  Hence Justices Souter, Kennedy, and Stevens were appointed nominally under Republican Presidents, but in practice as the result of Democratic Senate majorities.  Not having a personal reputation at stake, a Senate majority party can be expected to hold firm for the sake of ideological principle where a President cannot.  In fact, it may be easier for the a Senate party to take a stand on principle when the President is a member of the other party.

But, the problem with judicial activism is a deeper one than SCOTUS membership.  On the surface, it has the lure of an easy way to bypass political tangles and solve social problems.  But, in reality, while Courts can easily launch half-baked forays, the end-run around the process of legislative consultation leaves their projects without deep public support and woefully ill-equipped to marshal the resources needed to effectively follow through.  Like an army equipped with artillery but no infantry, they may be able to destroy institutions, but lack the capacity to replace them.  This was made clear following Brown v. Board of Education, where little school desegregation occurred in practice until Congress and the executive branch put real resources behind the initiative.

While liberals regularly voice hopes that Courts might enact their dream social reforms through swiping decrees, some conservatives entertain similar delusions that the New Deal regulatory state could be rolled back by judicial fiat.

Alas, there is no easy alternative to the hard work of winning elections, building coalitions, and designing effective compromises, necessary to reform the regulatory and entitlement programs on which every sector of the economy and society relies to some extent.  Declare the Medicare program unconstitutional, and the problem of providing $650bn of healthcare needed by those out of work for reason of disability and old age remains.

The lure of the permanent victory through SCOTUS decree is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.  One should work to check the power of the Courts to do ill -- not to try to capture absolute power for one party in the belief that it can effectively solve complex social problems with delicate trade-offs through sweeping pronouncements.

The United States Constitution was designed on the premise that those in power naturally seek to extend their authority, and that each branch of government must be given the "necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others". The Supreme Court, being a panel of political-appointees, should be a part of the system of checks and balances, not above it.  It is foolish to expect a change in the membership to cause the Supreme Court to yield authority that it has usurped from elected officials.  Why should we expect Justices to give up their own power at the very moment that their allies have assumed a majority?

It should rather be up to Congress to take power back from the Supreme Court.  Article III of the Constitution specifies: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."  The membership and size of these judicial authorities are also left to Congress.

During the first century of the American republic, Congress repeatedly altered the size of the Court, keeping it on a short leash.  As with the unelected 19th Century British House of Lords, it was clear that the power of Justices would be diluted by the addition of new members, should they flagrantly overstep their authority.  Like all the other branches of government, they were subject to checks and balances.  Court-packing was, of course, difficult -- as it is not easy to get legislation to seat additional Justices approved by House, Senate, and President -- but it was an effective gentle restraint. In practice this forced those seeking to enact projects of social reform to proceed through the longer path of securing broad public approval through elected legislatures, rather than attempting immediate nationwide revolution by legal decree.

Court-packing fell into disrepute when FDR sought to employ it to aggrandize his own power and impose his own agenda.  But he was frustrated by the congressional process working as intended.  Defensive court-packing, being essential to the balance of the constitution, should in no way be stigmatized.  Congress should therefore make it clear that members of the Supreme Court will find their personal power diluted whenever the institution oversteps its bounds.  This may erode the exulted status of the Supreme Court in society -- and that would be a good thing.

In more ordinary times, Senators should avoid being bullied into seating nominees made by the other party's President.  The past year should reassure those concerned that the sky would fall if SCOTUS went long without 9 Justices.  There is no reason why Senators shouldn't be able to insist that a seat be left open indefinitely unless a compromise replacement be seated.  Nor is there any reason why a nominee from each party couldn't be seated together as a compromise to preserve the balance of the court.  A court with an even number of justices might occasion circuit splits -- but, more likely it would cause Justices to behave less intransigently, and find some basis for agreement.  After all, as much as Supreme Court Justices might disagree with each other, they wouldn't want to let other Courts have the final say!

Regulating spiritual vs temporal affairs

"There is no distinction between things spiritual and things temporal. The two are so intimately connected by the Author of our nature that no human power can separate the one from the other. The subject of all government is man; but man is a spirit, and it is because he is a spirit that he is capable of government. A corpse cannot be governed, nor can it perform the most ordinary functions of life. There is a mental or spiritual element in sweeping a room or mending a pen. When we get to the higher functions of life, the distinction between spiritual and temporal becomes unmeaning. Take, for instance, the case of a war. War is always described as a temporal matter, the highest manifestation of the secular power; but surely there is nothing which makes greater demands upon all that is spiritual--upon courage, upon conscience, upon every moral faculty whatever. What, then, is the sense of the assertion that to go to battle is a secular act, and to go to prayers a spiritual act? Is there any subject in the world on which a man who really believed in prayer would pray with more intense earnestness than the question whether or not he should lend his influence to peace or to war? Is there any higher religious duty than that of manfully carrying on a just war and inflexibly opposing an unjust one? The only real ground for the distinction is the desire to protect particular religious bodies, especially the Roman Catholic Church, from inquiry. It is the bait which the priest holds out to the layman--“Let me alone, and I’ll let you alone. You shall have all that you really care for--noise, excitement, wealth, and power; leave the soul to me.” An honest man or nation will refuse the offer with disgust. The use of wealth and power and hard work is to educate the soul, and if that is to be privately drugged with narcotics by a representative of the “principle of authority” the rest matters very little."

(from "Carlier's Early History of the American States", review by James Fitzjames Stephen, in Saturday Review, 2 April 1864)

The case against moderation

"After all, the greatest pleasure in life is to have a fanatical enthusiasm about something. It may be the collection of pictures or of foreign postage stamps—the preaching of teetotalism or of ritualism; it matters comparatively little what is the hobby upon which a man should mount; but the possession of at least one hobby, if not of a complete stud of hobbies, is the first condition towards a thorough enjoyment of life. It is commonly said that chess is too severe an intellectual trial to be suitable as an amusement; and the argument is a very sound one against learning chess for those who cannot devote their time to it; but the intense attention which is willingly granted by a good chess player is the best proof of the powerful attractions of the occupation."
(from "The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen", pp.48-49)

Thoughts on Robert Caro's "Power Broker"

When Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency and ascended into Marine One for the last time, he took a way of doing politics with him.  Americans had grown disgusted with the backroom deals and wire-pulling which characterized the post-war era, and fearful of an Imperial Presidency that had established itself.  The methods of that moment have received – and continue to receive – their richest portrayal in Robert Caro’s multi-volume series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson.  But, the vivid character of the man and the highly-charged partisan and ideological aspects of his career easily overwhelm the work as a focused assessment of pure politics.  Nonetheless, in Caro’s defense, it could be said that he had already written such a book, with his 1974 biography of Robert Moses. 

The story of Robert Moses is the story of the construction of massive public works in a densely populated urban area in the context of a modern liberal democracy.  The story of his career is an account of the political maneuvers undertaken by an unelected official to overcome a thicket of parochial and private interests for the sake of grand public designs. 

Across five decades, Robert Moses oversaw the planning, legislation, funding, and implementation for the construction of a vast array of public works including the entire system of highways, bridges, and tunnels connecting Long Island to the mainland of the United States, the vast majority of the metropolitan region’s parkland, the creation a half-dozen massive new beaches, the reclamation of New York City’s waterfront, the building of several hydro-electric dams, Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, the United Nations headquarters, hundreds of public playgrounds, and new public housing for thousands of residents.

The case against Moses (where it is not a dispute about the merits of various projects) is the classic case for skepticism of centralized discretionary power, and of the costs incurred in its accumulation.  The argument in his defense is the case for putting public above private interests, and for public improvements against the tyranny of the status quo. 

The Power Broker by Robert Caro is an outstanding and gripping narrative of the career of Robert Moses, a lucid exposition of his methods of accumulating and wielding power, a reasonable picture of mid-twentieth century New York politics, and a melodramatic and often poorly reasoned discussion of urban policy. 

To put the strength of Caro’s political analysis in perspective, it is therefore best to begin with its flaws.  As a (highly successful) attempt to turn arcane bureaucratic wrangling and policy disputes into a bestselling book, dispassionate reasoning regularly takes a back seat to emotive exaggeration.  The brilliance of Moses’ early idealism is given a godly hue as pure as the darkness of his later supposed cynicism.  Characters enter as caricatures, and the routing of every mile of road is a battle of good versus evil.  Long Island landowners are in one chapter put-upon property-holders, and in the next grotesque oligarchic barons – so best to suit the grand morality play.  Nowhere is a policy choice portrayed as a fine judgment-call, and subject to uncertainty or compromise. 

This is a shame, for such bombast renders Caro’s judgments often imprudent and untrustworthy, and his discussion of policy presumptive and lopsided.  Moses is blamed for the insufficient supply and poor quality of housing in New York City and the inability of displaced families to find accommodation at the same price they previously enjoyed – yet 1162 pages pass without the slightest reference to the logic of rent control legislation.  Unpleasant insinuations of racism are made in Moses’ direction, and yet Caro goes on to complain that expressway construction leads to the decline of the Bronx, as Jewish families are replaced by “families from the other side of the park”. 

Moses is portrayed as insatiable in his lust for power, yet reluctant to extend his empire into mass-transit.  Suburban rail lines are described as subject to collapsing demand, yet also the focus of irrationally foregone opportunities.  Implicit in Caro’s jeremiad on the decline of Long Island Railroad, is almost a wish that if only a man of Robert Moses’ brilliance, power, and ruthlessness was a zealot for mass transit, then wonders would truly be possible.

Yet, with this attitude, Caro misses the key to the whole Robert Moses story: the man only accumulated such power because he was the only man who could consistently deliver what the public wanted. 

All other considerations derive from this basic point.  As an unelected official, Moses’ power had to constantly be fought for and justified at the margins, on the merits of each specific project.  Even at the supposed height of his power, Moses was unable to gain assent for the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge or even a small parking facility for Tavern-on-the-Green. 

Moses’ power was to a large extent contingent on policy subsystems being left to operate by themselves by the broader public realm.  He obviously devoted much attention and resources to ensuring that fundamental questions of the desirability of the power that he had accumulated was never a matter of open controversy, but he was also very much aware that discretion was only afforded to him out of an understanding that he had a peerless capacity for Getting Things Done.  While Caro intermittently acknowledges this point, this discipline was ever-present and acknowledged by all – not least by Moses, who imposed a phenomenal workload upon himself and his staff.  Moses’ innumerable threats to resign derived their strength from this popular mandate, and the potency of the threat was to a great degree contingent on the things that were to be Done being of significant value to the public – and to elected officials, who needed achievements (not just intentions) to proclaim. 

Although Caro portrays the decline of Moses’ power as the result of a extraordinary presence of countervailing power in the person of Nelson Rockefeller, it is probably more important to note just how easily and painlessly this fall from grace was achieved, once an elected official set his mind to achieving it.  John Lindsay’s attempt to quash the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, which Caro acknowledges involved remarkable ineptness on behalf of the Mayor, is portrayed as a result of Moses marshalling the resources of a hidden oligarchy to subvert the cause of democracy.  A more accurate characterization of the incident would be to suggest that Lindsay and his team were quite clueless as to the true value to the city of existing institutional arrangements, and that the legislature was easily persuaded by the unanimous agreement of the experts who had any knowledge of the situation whatsoever.

Of course, it is true that some of the value of existing institutional arrangements had been deliberately crafted by Moses to sustain a need for himself.  Just as Alexander Hamilton bound states to the new Union with debt, so Moses was able to bind a network of banks, corporations, and labor groups in support of Triborough.  Yet, it is also clear that such designs had been approved by elected authorities at every stage.  Indeed, the long-term autonomy and power of Triborough was of significant value to the public as a whole.  The bankers, who Caro at times portrays as puppets of Moses’ power, had good reason to entrust an independent authority with so much credit for highly profitable public works – and citizens of New York, though guaranteed contracts of an independent agency, were in turn able to (with very low risk, and hence interest rates) credibly commit to turning over some of the value that would be created for them. 

Similarly, while Caro is eager to suggest that Moses’ staying power enabled him to outlast elected officials, it also enabled him to be a reservoir for long-run trust.  Indeed, one of the reasons for his rapid downfall in old age, was the widespread recognition among interested parties that the post-Moses era was not far away, and that planning for this time had to occur sooner rather than later.  With this expectation and public opinion more strongly against him, Moses was not able to do much to forestall his loss of power.  Speaking of the 1964 World’s Fair, Caro suggested that “Moses appears to have seen the Fair as a gigantic gravy train on which he could ride back to power” and that the “World’s Fair gave Robert Moses a billion dollars to spend on power, and he got his money’s worth.”  Yet, while the snide remarks fit the story, they do not fit the facts: when his tenure at the Fair ended, Moses had far less power than when it had begun.

Nonetheless, while Caro’s wildest insinuations of Moses as a subverter of democracy are ill-founded, the more modest charge – that Moses construction plans were fully imbued with political calculations is clearly true.  Indeed, it is the ever-present considerations of democratic politics which makes Moses’ career a remarkably different enterprise to that of the more simply rationalistic, but politically far less involved Parisian urbanist, Baron Haussmann.  If the problem Moses faced was a multitude of stubborn rights-holders with their own private interests standing athwart his public designs, his weapons were democratic instruments – at every stage designed to mobilize the broader public to quash parochial interests.

Since his accountability to voters was indirect, he could not neglect their ultimate sovereignty. Yet, his methods were not conventional electoral devices, but owed much to the institutional situation with which he was located, the resources with which he was endowed, and the environment in which he was constrained. 

Not being constrained by the need to maintain a multi-issue electoral coalition or the need to keep a base enthused for fundraising, Moses had more flexibility, and hence was able to cast a wider net for popular support.  He could inveigh against Long Island barons one day to gain right-of-way for parkways, and wage war on leftists the next to remove obstacles to development on Manhattan – simultaneously reaping the benefits of right and left-of-center populism. 

The strength he gained from the bureaucratic arts, at which he was highly accomplished, also owed much to general popular appeal.  Indeed, his threats to elected officials could be said to depend upon a triangle of bureaucratic resources: the heat of information (the files of damaging facts he kept on associates, and the talking points he held on project proposals), the oxygen of publicity (his carefully cultivated relations with the media, and resources marshaled for public relations), and the fuel of public interest in his projects.  With these, each at his discretion, he was able to light a fire of public concern under the feet of elected officials who were minded to obstruct development.

With his ability to allow, block, or re-assign construction projects, Moses was able to orchestrate compliance from a vast network of political associates in support of his overall plans.  Although Caro does not say so explicitly, it is apparent that Moses’ objection to the “One Mile” diversion of the Cross-Bronx expressway was likely founded in such deals – without which the support of all officials possessing veto-powers would have been altogether impossible.  The assent needed to pass miles of highway through some of the most densely populated real estate in the western world could only be obtained by a man with an extraordinary knowledge of the legal, economic, and electoral sources of power, which motivated thousands of the nation’s savviest and best-connected political operators – and the ability to marshal them in support of his designs.  Moses’ persistent exasperation with critics who “don’t know what they’re talking about” likely stemmed from the highly delicate balance assembled from such an array of accumulated considerations.  His stubborn refusal to revise projects, once devised, seems to derive from the keen awareness that the carefully constructed web of political support for them could easily unravel.  Far from being evidence of his autocratic authority, his obstinacy was as much a product of his tireless coalition-building.

Although Moses’ ability to construct a power apparatus for his own pleasure has been exaggerated, he did possess one significant independent source of power – the revenues, available for use at his discretion, at the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. 

The functions of money in economics are classically defined as being a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value.  In the field of politics, relative to the direct bartering of the commodity of power, money similarly has certain critical advantages.  It is easily aggregable (it does not perish in accumulation), it is fungible (it can be leveraged on targets regardless of pre-existing ties), and its value is clearly recognizable.  Moreover, money also yields certain advantages unique to the realm of politics:  it is non-reciprocal in its effect (control of funds does not produce exposure in the way that an alliance or trading of favors would) and it solves a multiple principal problem (at least where there are no checks on appropriations procedures, as in the case of Moses).   

This advantage was heightened by circumstances.  City and state funds were under assault from all sides and felt the pinch of inflation, whereas Triborough’s funds grew steadily with traffic flows through its toll booths. Possessing control over such a potent weapon of power, Robert Moses was also assisted by the relative scarcity of discretionary resources available to his rivals and associates.  While he could get the most out of his money, legislators, state and city officials were constrained by a web of checks and balances, as well as entitlement obligations.  Instead of going cap-in-hand to elected officials for funds, it was they who would have to bear the burden of begging from him.

Yet, money alone does not yield power in a democracy.  It must be leveraged to move elected officials so that they not obstruct one’s designs.  Moses’ investments were largely of this sort – not campaign contributions aimed at promoting the rise of certain officeholders, but the carefully controlled disbursement of funds so as to direct their attention and efforts in a more amenable direction.  Moses spent money to create incentives for compliance with his designs and political momentum behind his plans.

At the same time, with his post as Construction Coordinator for New York, Moses held a choke-hold on the city’s alimentary canal of federal assistance.  This enabled him to impose take-it-or-leave-it offers upon officials and highly mobilized interest groups, hungry for funds, and to accumulate influence at all levels of government.  Yet, this important power was also highly conditional on the application of Moses’ unique ability to Get Things Done.  Indeed, it derived from the fact that his team at the Park Commission was the only one able to develop plans, on time, and to implement them swiftly.  Unions could be sure to benefit from patronage regardless of the source of funds, but Harry Van Arsdale’s support of Moses’s authority was to a large extent the product of his unique ability to win these supplementary contracts for the region.  Without widespread trust in his ability to deliver, the power for him to do so would not have been so widely supported.

Almost all of Moses’ projects would be categorized by political scientists as “non-incremental policymaking”.  For instance, the essence of bridge-building, from a political standpoint is that half-a-bridge is as useless as no bridge.  Only a fully complete bridge is of any value whatsoever, regardless of how many public funds have been spent up until that point.  This allows those in charge of construction to hold the public hostage to a certain extent, and to derive a significant degree of discretionary power in the process.  Robert Moses did this repeatedly – almost always being sure to lay foundations before full right-of-way (or even full funding) had been obtained. 

It was this and a multitude of other similar bureaucratic tactics that eventually soured much of the city on Moses, when given full exposure in its press.  Although he had traded on his popularity to keep his methods quiet, once his reputation was tarnished in a number of relatively minor incidents, elected officials were less keen to entrust him with authority, and his power gradually ebbed away. 

Yet, while his successors have doubtless avoided his level of controversy, they have also fallen far short in accomplishment.  America struggles to upgrade its crumbling infrastructure to keep up with a growing population, despite hundred-billion-dollar legislative appropriations for surface transportations, as major projects are stymied by interminable legal wrangling and battles with environmentalists, unions, and local communities.  While it may be easy to blame others for gridlock and inertia, a free society rightly affords people multiple opportunities to defend their private rights when there is no demonstrable popular enthusiasm to usurp them for the sake of the public interest.  Hence the indispensible role for leadership – to offer a vision that moves people, brings together those with widely-differing motives, and gives foot-draggers a reason to get on board. 

In the mid 1960s, Nelson Rockefeller decided against giving Robert Moses the responsibility for constructing a Long Island Sound Crossing.  Over forty years later, the project remains on the drawing board.