The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York

by Caro, Robert A

  At first, reporters, not understanding the conditions under which Moses was resigning his city jobs, assumed that Moses was losing his power over roads, but soon Ed Katcher of the Post was writing that "Commissioner Moses, New York's longest-running municipal feature, is not, after all, vanishing entirely from the local administrative scene. ... He will continue to represent the city on the federal and state arterial highway programs." On the day he resigned, Peter Kihss of the Times took the trouble to do a little figuring of the cost of the arterial program and such other Moses projects under way as the Verrazano and Throgs Neck bridges and the Niagara power, park and parkway project and wrote that "a rough check indicated that Mr. Moses . . . still retained other jobs by which he was presiding over $2,800,000,000 in projects to make over the city and state."

  The only power Moses lost by his multiple "resignations" was in housing—a power he was glad to give up anyway. In parks and roads he was still in charge. And to replace the power he had lost in housing, he had been given command of a new project loaded with power.

  He left in triumph—because he wasn't really leaving at all. Furthermore, no one could ever make him leave. Thanks to his control of one city and

  * Wagner confirms Screvane's statement, even if he does so in more tactful terms. "Bob wanted Morris," the Mayor says. Why? "Frankly, I think Bob knew he would have an influence on him."

  three state public authorities, he had anchored himself in a position so secure that no one could take his power away from him. Only he could lose it for himself; his career, booming to new heights in the eighth decade of his life, could be checked only by his own personality. Only Robert Moses could lose Robert Moses his power. And he did.

  political financing? So large are the Rockefeller shareholdings in the state's largest utility, the Consolidated Edison Company, that White says they are "probably the controlling shareholdings." The dominance of the Rockefellers over the whole politically powerful Wall Street financial community was symbolized by the fact that former Governor Dewey, powerful in that community in his own right, was David Rockefeller's lawyer (to be more precise, in fact, he was one of David Rockefeller's lawyers) and by the ease with which, deciding in 1958 to enter New York politics at the top, Nelson Rockefeller took the gubernatorial nomination away from the previous Wall Street favorite for the job, former GOP national chairman Leonard W. Hall. "I bet on money—not just any kind of money but old money," one veteran New York politician says. "New money buys things; old money calls notes." In politics in the Empire State, the Rockefellers held enough notes to achieve any aim; their power was as close to an absolute as had ever existed in New York.

  But the difference could not be defined strictly in dollar signs. Harri-man used wealth to obtain the prize, but, having won it, he did not know what to do with it. Nelson Rockefeller knew exactly what to do with it. He may have bought his way into the game; once in it he played it like a master —as if he had been raised in the Fourth Ward instead of Pocantico Hills— played it with zest and verve in public and, in private, with a ruthlessness that was a reminder that his bloodline ran direct from the grandfather who had created the greatest monopoly the world had ever seen by mercilessly crushing every competitor—played it, in fact, with a ruthlessness that reminded some politicians of Robert Moses. Of the men who had been Governor over Moses, only Smith and Roosevelt had possessed such onstage and backstage capabilities in combination.

  Nelson Rockefeller possessed, moreover, a particular type of imagination possessed neither by Smith nor by Roosevelt. It was not the original, creative, shaping imagination of a Robert Moses. But Rockefeller did possess an appreciative imagination of a high order, an ability (rare in itself) to grasp and judge the inspirations of other men—to see them as their creators saw them while they still existed only in their creators' minds. He could see —not only visualize but judge and assess the value of, and determine to bring to reality—proposed physical developments. He had always been the Rockefeller most interested in art and architecture and housing. Bored by a routine executive job as a young man, a biographer reports, his imagination was fired by Rockefeller Center, the complex of office buildings his father was building in midtown Manhattan. At the age of thirty, he became its president: "Nelson . . . enjoyed his job—especially when it allowed him to don a hard hat and preside over ceremonies celebrating construction progress." He had the imagination of the builder.

  On the grand scale. Hardly had he become Governor when he was undertaking a vast expansion of the state's educational plant—large, beautiful new campuses all across the state. Soon his architects were planning a "State Mall," a complex whose four mammoth office buildings would tower

  over a rebuilt Albany. Money was no consideration. To finance such immense physical improvements, he resorted to a variety of "backdoor" financing plans (most of them modeled on Moses' public authority concept) that allowed the state's voters no say over them and that preserved the illusion of a "balanced budget"—and even so, during Rockefeller's Governorship, the state budget would increase by more than 300 percent and the state debt would quadruple. He was a builder on a scale on which no previous Governor had been a builder. He was, in fact, a builder on Moses' scale.

  His arrogance was also on the Moses scale.

  Behind it lay what White calls "a strange, pietistic sense of responsibility," a serene sense that because his motives are pure, his decisions are right. "He was rough," White writes. "His enemies called him, quite simply, the most ruthless man in politics. But what in other men would be simple arrogance was in Rockefeller the direct and abrupt expression of motives which, since he knew them to be good, he expected all other men to accept as good also." Behind it lay principles: in the midst of his run for the presidency in 1964, a run that needed Southern support, he insisted on giving substantial donations to activist Negro civil rights groups Behind it lay sheer stubbornness: once his mind was made up, he would not change it. And behind it lay the assurance, based on a lifetime as a member of America's closest counterpart to a royal family, that what he wants he will get.

  His arrogance was easy, charming, gracious—the arrogance of a man handed at birth the power to enforce his will. It was not the hard, glittering, abrasive arrogance of a Robert Moses who had had to fight and scheme for that power. But it was equally unshatterable. Nelson Rockefeller was rough, all right. He was a threat to Robert Moses far more dangerous than any that had previously existed in Albany. Moses had defied and overawed all Al Smith's successors in the Executive Chamber. The threat to resign—his ultimate ultimatum—had brought them all to heel. But the man in the Executive Chamber now was not a man who would be willing to heel. And, perhaps most important so far as Moses was concerned, Rockefeller would, moreover, be an opponent—the only opponent Moses had met, since he conceived and gained the powers of the public authority—on whom there was no handhold. Governor Dewey had deeply resented both his power and his arrogance, and Dewey had been ruthless and shrewd. But Russ Sprague and King Macy and the banks had been the way to exert pressure on Dewey, and Moses had been in a position to make Sprague and Macy and the banks exert that pressure. Governor Harriman had sought at first to curb him. But De Sapio and Rosenman and the unions had been the way to exert pressure on Harriman, and Moses had been in a position to make De Sapio and Rosenman and the unions exert that pressure. But when Rockefeller had come to the Governorship, there had been no way to exert pressure on him except through the unions, and the Governor had early struck up his own alliances with them to make himself exempt even from that pressure. "In the Empire State," Theodore White writes, "Nelson Rockefeller was beholden to no one; no crevice of weakness or

  obligation could be found. ..." "Moses could push a button," Lutsky says, "and in would come the calls"—from men who wielded immense power. But there was no power that Nelson Rockefeller could not deny.

  There were so many avenues that Moses could use to get to someone. But not one of them led to Nelson Rockefeller. Survey t
he whole vast cast of characters on the New York political scene and there was only one man who could with impunity confront—and defeat—Robert Moses.

  The man who was now Governor.

  It is not so difficult to see the arrogance and strength in Nelson Rockefeller. One has only to see that big jaw set once to know it. Penetrate the slightest bit beneath that charm and the tough stubbornness is there, not the surface crustiness of a Harriman but the real iron. Robert Moses, once the keenest reader of personalities, should have been able to read that of his new Governor like a book.

  But Moses had long since ceased being interested in personalities. He believed that even a Governor's had no significance for him. If this newest Governor disliked him, so what? Dewey had disliked him. And anyway, he didn't think Nelson disliked him. In fact, he was sure Nelson liked him—liked him and admired him.

  He had been an ally of Nelson's father in many projects; the two men had laid out the Palisades Interstate Parkway together during his long days driving through John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, vast tract along the Hudson. He had been an ally of Nelson's brothers. He had envisioned and obtained the land for Lincoln Center, for whose construction John D. Rockefeller 3d had raised a large share of the money. David Rockefeller, whose Chase Manhattan Bank presidency gave him a vast stake in Lower Manhattan, had always been one of the strongest supporters of his Lower Manhattan Expressway. Laurance Rockefeller had drawn often on his beachfront expertise in developing his Dorado Beach resort in Puerto Rico. He had been an ally of Nelson himself; not only had they worked together in bringing the United Nations to New York, but in 1948 Nelson's International Basic Economy Corporation, building housing projects, factories and supermarkets in Venezuela, had retained him, at a fantastic fee (which, of course, he distributed to his "muchachos"), to lay out a highway program for Caracas. (So pleased had Nelson been with the Caracas-La Guaira toll highway and other arterials that were a monument to that consultantship that in 1950, with IBEC expanding into Brazil, Moses and muchachos had been retained to lay out a comprehensive city plan for Sao Paulo, and year after year Nelson asked him to return there to check on its implementation.) A long history of alliances counted for a lot in Moses' world. The admiration of the younger man—fifty when he became Governor- to Moses' seventy—who wanted to get things done for the older man who had got so many things done, was well known. When the incoming Governor accepted his recommendations on several appointments—including that of Burch McMorran as Superintendent of Public Works—and vetoed the bill that would have forced Moses to shift

  his Verrazano Bridge approach out of Bay Ridge, Moses began to speak of "Nelson" (he would never address him as Governor, as he had never addressed Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey or Harriman as Governor; for Robert Moses, there would always be only one Governor) with an affection that was almost paternalistic.

  In the early months of Rockefeller's Governorship there had been one area of friction. William J. Ronan, a former professor of government at NYU who had begun working for Rockefeller in 1956 as executive director of a temporary state commission Rockefeller was heading, and had thereafter— thanks, in the opinion of some observers, to a remarkable capacity for obsequiousness to the Governor—advanced to become a steadily more important member of his inner circle of advisers. In 1957, as staff director of another temporary state commission, Ronan had recommended curbing the "potentially dangerous" power of public authorities. Moses had told reporters, "I don't take this seriously," and his power in Albany had insured that he didn't have to. But Ronan had irritated him. A tall, bespectacled, jowly, smoothspoken man, he seemed typical of the "impractical" academics, men who were afraid to do anything except by committee, whom Moses despised. While demolishing the commission's recommendations, he had taken time out to deliver Ronan a gratuitous public spanking, charging that the recommendations had "emanated from an ambitious professorial mind." With his patron in the Governor's chair, Ronan had evidently been emboldened to try for a small measure of revenge; shortly after taking office, Rockefeller had appointed him chairman of a "task force" to reorganize the state government, and one of the recommendations of the task force was that Moses' State Council of Parks be abolished and authority over state parks be given in fact as well as theory to the Department of Conservation. Moses blasted the "Ronan Report"—and Rockefeller had evidenced a distinct unwillingness to get into any conflict with him; nothing further was heard of the parks recommendation.

  Nonetheless, tension began to build between Moses and the Governor. Observers who saw them both frequently believe it could not be avoided. Two men so arrogant, so accustomed to getting their own way in everything, could not long be in contact without friction—particularly when both men were grand-scale builders. So acute an observer as Perry Duryea says he "could just see Rocky thinking that there wasn't enough room in one state for a Robert Moses and a Nelson Rockefeller both clicking on all six." Rockefeller's first great programs of public improvements, moreover, had concerned—perhaps deliberately—areas outside Moses': education, for example. But they were beginning now to intrude more and more on Moses' turf—turf that had been his, and his alone, for close to forty years. Rockefellers had always been interested in parks; their creation was part of the family's heritage. Understanding the need to acquire as much as possible of the state's remaining open space before it was swallowed up by the developers' bulldozers, by i960 the Governor was discussing the matter in depth with his brother Laurance, a dedicated conservationist who had established the Virgin Islands National Park and a foundation to coordinate conservation

  efforts, and had chaired a presidential Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. This did not cause too much friction with Moses; when Laurance mapped out a state park-land acquisition program and Rockefeller adopted it, Moses campaigned for the $100,000,000 bond issue referendum that made it possible. But no such harmony was possible with the Governor's feelings about mass transportation. With an insight still rare among government officials in i960, the Governor had seen that if congestion was ever to be eased in and around urban areas, the emphasis on building more and more highways must be replaced by a balanced transportation system—in which emphasis must be shifted, gradually but steadily, to mass transportation.

  Dinner with Nelson Rockefeller sometimes had a new feature now, Theodore White relates:

  ... he might, immediately after coffee, haul out the red cardboard folders in which he carries his papers, and spread out on the floor the state's master program for parks—explaining in detail his plan for Troy, Syracuse, Utica, as if he were rearranging the furniture in his living room. . . . Lounging by a pool-side, he might suddenly set off on a gorgeous imaginary tour of New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley as they would be twenty years hence when his transportation program was finished: in his imagination, high-speed trains darted from Riverhead, Long Island, seventy-five miles away, to downtown Manhattan in less than an hour. Subways served the great airports.

  For almost forty years, public physical development in New York State had been shaped pre-eminently by the vision of one man. Now there were two.

  "Transportation was becoming one of Nelson Rockefeller's crusades— you know, like health became one of his crusades and housing became one of his crusades," says one long-time political observer. "And when Nelson Rockefeller had a crusade, it was Nelson Rockefeller's crusade. He was going to get credit for it. And Moses, being the way he was, could never be part of a transportation setup identified with Rockefeller."

  Moreover, Rockefeller had delegated authority for explorations into transportation needs to Ronan, who was rapidly becoming his closest adviser. And while in Moses' presence the ex-professor was always, Moses' aides say, "sucking up" to Moses (Moses would scarcely deign to speak to him), Moses' men began to hear reports that Ronan was constantly working to "poison" the Governor's mind against Moses. A confrontation was inevitable. And when it occurred, Moses' personality led him—forced him—to make a mistake.
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  The confrontation came over age, and was caused in part by another aspect of Moses' personality—the overriding vanity which kept him from wearing a hearing aid although his deafness had worsened until he could no longer discern clearly the words of a man only a desk-width away.

  His age had become the sorest of subjects with Moses, who disregarded it utterly himself, still working the endless schedule he had been working for half a century, still swimming far out into the ocean on the roughest days, and who expected others to disregard it as well—to such an extent that he seemed to regard every reference to it as a personal affront.

  The heart of the soreness was the relationship of age to his power. All

  state employees were required by law to retire at the age of sixty-five. The Governor was empowered to request the board of the State Retirement System (which, of course, invariably honored his requests) for a one- or two-year extension in exceptional cases, and Moses had been receiving such extensions since he had turned seventy. But whereas Harriman had gone out of his way to offer two-year extensions well before his birthday and without being asked, Rockefeller had been less gracious. "Each [extension] was to the annoyance of Bob Moses because the Governor would keep him waiting until just before his birthday," Sid Shapiro recalls. "RM had consulted his attorneys, but they told him there was no way of getting around this. And every week, he'd say, 'Did that thing come yet?' You'd call the Governor's office and ask about it and the answer would be, 'It's in the works. Don't worry.' But legally, if the thing didn't come through by the day his birthday arrived, he'd have to retire." Equally disturbing, each extension was for one year, not two, so that Moses had to go through the whole humiliating experience every December. Worse still, during the last two years, the Governor had become more and more insistent on discussing an "orderly transition" which he felt had been made necessary in the overall direction of the state park program because the acquiring and developing of parks under the $100,000,000 program would take probably two decades. "Rockefeller had had discussions with Moses about Laurance taking over"— moving up from vice chairman to chairman of the State Council of Parks— Shapiro recalls. The Governor had even made a public statement about it —with Moses sitting right behind him on the speakers' platform. In a speech opening Lake Welch Beach in Harriman State Park on June 15, 1962, Rockefeller had said that his brother was "Bob Moses' greatest disciple" in recreation. "New York State is fortunate to have Laurance Rockefeller following in the footsteps of Robert Moses." And observers glancing quickly at Moses to gauge his reaction had seen him smiling pleasantly.