What Robert Caro learned about power after studying it for 50 years

1. 0:00 – 5:03

   How Caro gets people to talk

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel0:00

      If you do everything, you will win. That is the maxim by which Lyndon Johnson lived his life. My guest today is Robert Caro, and over the 50 years that he has spent writing about Lyndon Johnson, he has lived in the edges of the Texas Hill Country to understand the poverty and loneliness of Johnson's youth. He has sifted through millions of documents in the Senate and presidential libraries of the entire nation, and he has chased down for interviews the former goon who helped Johnson steal an election to the chauffeur who drove him on his first desperate campaign. In other words, my guest today is a man who understands Johnson's aphorism, "If you do everything, you'll win." Mr. Caro, it is such a huge honor to have you on the show.

   2. RCRobert Caro0:45

      It's great to be here.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel0:47

      So my first question is just this that I hinted in the introduction. How much do you see yourself represented in Johnson or in Moses? Is part of the reason you're able to write so compellingly about them that you share some of their qualities?

   4. RCRobert Caro1:05

      Well, let me say first, I think, I hope there, there, there are qualities-

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel1:13

      [laughs]

   6. RCRobert Caro1:13

      ... that I don't share of both these guys. Among other things, they are so, I'll use the word ruthless. You know? Um, you say they d- they'd do anything to, to win. That's part of their, uh, greatness. You know, I remember when I started learning about Robert Moses, I went to the La Guardia papers, which were in a, they were kept in the boat basin. They were stored by the Municipal Archives, literally in the 79th Street Boat Basin on the Hudson River three levels down. There were this row of file cabinets, you know, against the wall. So I'm sitting there day after day going through these documents, and occasionally I'd come across a note that Robert Moses wrote, and I realized I'm following the same path-

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel2:08

      [laughs]

   8. RCRobert Caro2:08

      ... he was. So it, it's fascinating, actually.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel2:12

      Well, obviously not all the qualities. Um, but the quality I'm referring to here is that just like Johnson or just like Moses, you refuse to take no for an answer. If somebody says, "I won't give you an interview," you don't stop there. You refuse to leave a stone unturned. And so there is a relentlessness that you share with these subjects.

   10. RCRobert Caro2:36

       I'm gonna take that as a real k-

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel2:37

       [laughs]

   12. RCRobert Caro2:37

       ... as a compliment. [laughs]

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel2:41

       Yes.

   14. RCRobert Caro2:41

       Um, well, you f- you feel there are certain people that you have to interview, and if they don't wanna give you an interview, you can't, I feel, you can't say no. Like you say Lyndon Johnson's first secretary, the one who rode in the car with him on the campaigns. I said, "There's no other human being on Earth who knows what Lyndon Johnson is doing all these hours driving back and forth across Texas. I don't know what I have to do, but I have to get him-"

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel3:18

       [laughs]

   16. RCRobert Caro3:18

       "... to tell me honestly about this thing." So.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel3:22

       So this raises another question that I wanted to ask you, which is you're interviewing all these people, and in many cases, they know, they must know that it's not good for them to tell you what you wanna know.

   18. RCRobert Caro3:37

       Yes.

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel3:37

       And in many cases, they tell you anyways. How do you get people to tell you things-

   20. RCRobert Caro3:43

       [laughs]

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel3:43

       ... [laughs] that they know they shouldn't tell you?

   22. RCRobert Caro3:45

       [laughs] You ask, you ask terrific questions. Sometimes you're sitting there and you know this person doesn't wanna talk to you about what you wanna get out from, like John Connally on how Johnson used money to get political power. And, and I'm thinking, "But I've been through the notes. Connally collected the money and gave it out at Johnson's instructions, so he's the only guy who can tell me how Johnson did this. You know, how he judged who to give money to." Sometimes Johnson would write on a request for money, if the guy asked for $1,500, Johnson would write, "Okay, 1,500." Sometimes he'd write, "500." Sometimes he'd write, "No," but sometimes he'd write, "No, never." And I asked Connally, "What did that mean?" And he said, "This guy was never gonna get money from Lyndon Johnson." So then when you ask why he felt this way about this particular congressman, that's when the really fascinating stories emerge.

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel5:02

       Hm.

2. 5:03 – 12:42

   Does America need a little more Moses today?

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel5:03

      Bef- before we get more into Johnson, I wanna f- first start with Moses.

   2. RCRobert Caro5:07

      Sure.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel5:08

      So in the last decade or two, people have been complaining that it's become too hard and too difficult to build things.

   4. RCRobert Caro5:19

      Yes.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel5:19

      Especially for the government to build things.

   6. RCRobert Caro5:21

      Yes.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel5:21

      So if you look at the Second Avenue Subway, they've been building it for around 50 years.

   8. RCRobert Caro5:26

      Yes.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel5:26

      They've opened up a mile and a half.

   10. RCRobert Caro5:28

       Yes.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel5:28

       And it cost more than $4 billion. And people have been saying, "We were concerned," The Power Broker came out. It was an im- immensely influential book. And we were concerned about so much power being centralized and given, delegated to one person so they could build. And we wanted to prevent that, and so we made environmental review and land use review and community boards and litigation. And people say we've overcorrected. We've gone too far in the other direction. What do you think of that?

   12. RCRobert Caro6:03

       They also say, uh, Robert, because of all these safeguards, Robert Moses could not operate in the same way today. But the fact is, when Robert Moses started, there were also safeguards. People were also saying, "You can't build anything." This was in the 1920s. The people were saying, "Government can't build anything. There are too many blocks. Nothing's getting built. We need highways. The, it's the age of cars. Everyone's getting automobiles, but we have the same old roads, and nobody can build them because the property owners don't want the roads built through their land." And Robert Moses comes along, and all of a sudden those things vanish because he, despite all the safeguards and everything else, he just builds. So doing The Power Broker, it was just fascinating to me to see how he gets around everything. But it doesn't matter what it is, he's gonna build a beach at Jones Beach. He sees it one day. He says, "This is the greatest beach I've ever seen. It's only 27 miles from New York City. If I can build a road out here, g- I will give the people of New York City this great beach." But it seems impossible to build that road because the property owners don't want the road going through their farms and pr- and property. But he basically says, "I'm going to build it." And to watch him do it, to overcome each obstacle, there are so many, and then all of a sudden it's open, and you have Jones Beach, and you have it accessible to New York. It's an act of political genius, and it's also an act of will that I'm gonna do it that's fascinating to learn about.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel8:06

       Hmm. And so you think today if there was a Moses-type figure, they would figure out a way to work around everything that's been set up?

   14. RCRobert Caro8:14

       Well, the answer to that, um, is when Moses was building, they were saying the same thing.

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel8:22

       Hmm.

   16. RCRobert Caro8:23

       Nobody's, nobody's ever gonna build it. We need roads for the automobiles, but they'd have to go through hundreds, dozens of farms, scores of property. No one's ever gonna be able to do it. But he comes along and does it. So today someone would come along and do it.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel8:44

       Hmm. This I think is a profound question for democracies, which is how do we end up in a place where, which is not the extremes of '50s or '60s Moses, but not also where we are now? So where I live in California, we've spent, I don't know, $15 billion over the last decade, and we haven't gotten a single new line or single new mile of railway that those $15 billion have been s- spent to build. Whereas a, a different system, you could say China today is like New York City in the '40s and '50s, where they have a very Moses-type attitude, and they put up tens of thousands of miles of railways over the last 10, 20 years. But of course, at the cost of similar amounts of displacements of people and recklessness. So how do we land in a good spot between either extreme?

   18. RCRobert Caro9:42

       I'm not sure there is a good spot.

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel9:44

       Hmm.

   20. RCRobert Caro9:45

       Um, what you just said is the situation. To build anything on a large scale, um, you're confronted with dozens or scores or perhaps hundreds of property owners who don't want it built there. So the question is, how does anything get built? Then someone comes along and can do it. Now, when Moses, when Robert Moses started, it seemed impossible, actually impossible to build roads out into Long Island because the road would have to cross scores of properties, most of which the people didn't want the roads coming and had the power to stop them then because he didn't have the power of eminent domain then. But Moses said, basically, "I'm going to build it." And he would find a way to overcome each difficulty. Now, you say, what am I trying to say by that? Trying to say that every once in a while, someone comes along who's sort of a p- a genius, if that's the right word, at getting big things built for the public. Decades may pass when there's no one like that, and you say, "Everything's stalled. Nothing bi- nothing's gonna be... nothing big is ever gonna be built again." And then someone suddenly comes along, and all of a sudden things get built. That's the nature of political genius. I happen to be writing about two guys, Lyndon Johnson and Robert Moses, who in both cases, fa- Johnson with civil rights and, and Moses with, uh, public works, where people were saying, "You can't do this" and "Can't," but they, but they did it.

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel11:45

       Correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but if I, uh, if I may attempt an interpretation of what you said-

   22. RCRobert Caro11:54

       Yes

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel11:55

       ... it sounds like you think we need a little Moses today.

   24. RCRobert Caro12:01

       Oh. Um, uh, a great insight. I sometimes wonder about just what you said. And the answer is, well, I certainly don't want someone as ruthless and disregarding public opinion as a Robert Moses. But at the same time, you need someone who's gonna find a way to get things built, and he's gonna have to find a way despite the fact that so many people don't want it built.

3. 12:42 – 17:57

   Moses the young idealist

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel12:42

      A lot of people who haven't read the book have this impression that you think everything Moses did was bad, and that we need to make sure that we can never have a Moses again.

   2. RCRobert Caro12:51

      Yes.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel12:53

      And so it's interesting to hear you say that we need a little Moses again.

   4. RCRobert Caro12:58

      Well, wh- when people say to me everything was bad that he did, what I say is, "You didn't read the book." Because certainly the first parts of the book, well, hundreds of pages, are about a young idealist who sees this great need for recreation, for beaches on Long Island for the city people, and is gonna get a way to make them accessible to the ci- to people in the city. Uh, you say... And it's an act of genius and willpower the way he does it, and that's great. Now, does it become, does it evolve into where Moses listens to nobody, and the only thing that matters is what he wants to get built? It does evolve into that. He does change. But the young Moses, the idealist, who before he's building, is an expert in civil service, technicalities of civil service, and devotes all his energies to trying to reform the civil service and make it, uh, that people get promoted on merit instead of political pull. And he works so hard, and as you see, a real idealism, and you see an idealism in his early works. You know, when you say, "I wanna make these beaches accessible to New York." Now, does that evolve into s- where, "I think there ought to be a highway here no matter what anybody says, and I, no matter how many thousands of people are in the way, like the Cross Bronx Expressway. I'll evict them"? It does. He changes. Um, that to me is the story of the, a big part of the story of The Power Broker. How this guy who's in the beginning a young, idealistic guy who wants to build to make lives better, better for people, to give them access to the ocean, beaches and all, changes into someone who just wants to build because he thinks something should be built no matter whatever anyone else says, and is gonna do it no matter how many thousands, hundreds, thousands of people he has to evict. No matter how bad an idea it is, like the Cross Bronx Expressway. People are telling him not to do that before he does it. The minute this road opens, it's the world's longest traffic jam. Not thousands, but tens of thousands of people were evicted, thrown out of their homes by him without any relocation provisions. So you say, um, in a way, it's a story of how do you give somebody power without the power, in a way, harden... I don't wanna use the word corrupting him, but hardening him to anyone who op- uh, who opposes him, to any opposition.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel16:27

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4. 17:57 – 24:01

   Watching Moses lose power

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel17:57

      You're writing the book. You start writing it in '66, '67?

   2. RCRobert Caro18:02

      Yes.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel18:03

      You're writing it while Moses is losing power. His career is not over yet.

   4. RCRobert Caro18:10

      Yes.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel18:11

      And so the story changes-

   6. RCRobert Caro18:12

      Yes

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel18:13

      ... while you're writing it.

   8. RCRobert Caro18:14

      Yes.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel18:15

      And I don't know if you've talked about that, but presumably the conclusion changes because-

   10. RCRobert Caro18:19

       Yes

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel18:19

       ... you don't know whether he's gonna lose that power or not when you start.

   12. RCRobert Caro18:22

       No, and I watch... Oh, that's a great question. And I watch that happen, and I'm a young, I'm, whatever I was, young. And, and whether w- whatever my age was, I didn't really know what I was doing. And I watched him lose power, and I had learned enough about him to know how fair this was going to be. Um, if I could think a moment, there w- th- there's a moment that this happened. Yeah. His office was still up at the Triborough Bridge Authority. When he was in power, I interviewed him in that office several times. You felt his power. You felt outside there were all these people waiting for his decisions, sitting around waiting for his decisions. W- as soon as I finished, the secretary would come in with a list of telephone calls of people who had called asking for, you know, wanting, uh, wanting something from him while I was talking to him, right? By the time I finished, I remember I realized I had one long interview with him. Maybe it was my last one, and I realized there wa- there had been no calls.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel19:47

       Mm.

   14. RCRobert Caro19:47

       The secretary had nothing to tell him. So whatever you thought of Moses, you felt the s- the poignance of someone losing power.

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel20:01

       Yeah. Um, that's, that's fascinating. That's, that's what I was wondering about.

   16. RCRobert Caro20:06

       Yeah. You couldn't help feeling sad for him, no matter, no matter even though you knew what he had done. You couldn't help feeling, oh, this is, in a way, tragic that no one's calling and asking him for a favor anymore. Yeah.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel20:30

       Did he realize that was happening?

   18. RCRobert Caro20:32

       I don't think he really... I don't think... In a way, I'm sure he did. But by that time, he was so... Remember, he was so insulated. He was so... Whatever his age was, he was up in the 80s. He was deaf, you know? Um, he still had in, at the Tr- in his offi- at the Triborough headquarters on Randall's Island were all these Moses men who were loyal to him and treated him with the same deference they always had. Uh, he knew he wasn't getting his projects done, but he felt, I know, I know he felt he was just gonna keep pushing like he always did, and he was gonna win again. So I don't... I... The answer to your question is no, I don't think he did-

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel21:22

       Mm-hmm

   20. RCRobert Caro21:23

       ... ever realize that.

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel21:24

       Hmm. That's fascinating.

   22. RCRobert Caro21:25

       Yeah.

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel21:27

       In, I think, '62, as you say, r- he tries to pull a trick on Nelson Rockefeller that he had pulled on countless previous mayors and governors, which is to threaten to resign if he didn't get his way.

   24. RCRobert Caro21:43

       Yes.

   25. DPDwarkesh Patel21:45

       And Rockefeller says, "I regretfully accept," and nothing happens. And that made me wonder as I was reading it. Could all those previous governors and mayors who were getting threatened-

   26. RCRobert Caro21:59

       [laughs]

   27. DPDwarkesh Patel21:59

       ... have done the same thing?

   28. RCRobert Caro22:01

       Great, great question. Yeah, the answer is yes. Well, the... You say, could they have done the same thing? So the easy an- the first, in part, the answer is yes. They had the power to, to, uh, to fire him. He wasn't an elected official. But they couldn't re- there wasn't really a possibility. The answer to the question at the bottom is no, they couldn't, because he was simply too popular. You know, you couldn't fire Robert Moses. You know, that was, that's like firing, uh, some, some idol, person who was the idol of New York. But in addition, he had, with his genius, he had created, in all his different posts, uh, chairman of the State Power Authority, chairman of Triborough Bridge Authority, Parks Commissioner, Long Island Parks Commissioner, Jones Beach Commissioner. He had created such an interlocking, you couldn't fire him from everything because the terms ended in different ways, and some you didn't have the power to fire him from, that he had really made it impossible. Well, almost impossible. Because at the end, if you wanted to do it, uh, Rockefeller did it. But by that time, cracks had appeared in the armor. I think for decades the answer to your question is you couldn't do it. But then as he got older, cracks appeared in the armor, and you could, if you, if you wanted to brave criticism in all the newspapers and public criticism and everything else, you probably could have done.

   29. DPDwarkesh Patel23:58

       Hmm.

   30. RCRobert Caro24:00

       Good question.

5. 24:01 – 27:53

   Did Moses realize he was changing?

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel24:01

      Which, um, leads into the next question I wanna ask you. So you interviewed him seven times. Um, and the seventh time, you mentioned your awareness of a donation that was made to his commission by a millionaire-

   2. RCRobert Caro24:18

      Arnold

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel24:18

      ... whose golf course was spared by the new route for his parkway, and after that, he didn't talk to you again.

   4. RCRobert Caro24:26

      Yes.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel24:27

      If you had gotten an eighth interview with Robert Moses, what is the one question you would most wanna ask him?

   6. RCRobert Caro24:35

      Oh, God, what a great- Great question. Well, you know, off the top of my head, I think if I only had one question to ask him, I think I'd ask him, "Did you realize you were changing?"

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel25:04

      Hmm.

   8. RCRobert Caro25:06

      That's off the t- that's a great question you asked. Uh, but that's the, the answer I'll give for now. That's all I... That's-

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel25:15

      Hmm

   10. RCRobert Caro25:15

       ... that's, that's something I always wanted, would like to have asked him, you know?

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel25:21

       Do you think he realized that he was changing?

   12. RCRobert Caro25:24

       No. I think, I think he felt from the beginning that he had this vision for build- uh, roads here and there are parks here. That was the best thing to do, and it was going to get done, and it should get done. No matter how many hardships he had to inflict on people, no matter how many thousands he had to evict, no matter what he had to do, he was going to get the roads built. And you see this increasing ruthlessness, this utter ruthlessness of him. If someone stood in his way, he was gonna find a way to remove that person as an obstacle. I mean, I'll give you an example of that if you want. There's a re- a, um, a politician in the Bronx named H- Henry Epstein. Uh, Henry Epstein is opposing the Cross Bronx Expressway. He's saying to Robert Moses, "You're putting it right through a neighborhood where you have to evict tens of thousands of people. You can just move it two blocks to the south, and you only have to evict a couple of hundred people." Moses sets out to destroy Epstein, and basically does by making it known he's having an affair. If he can find a weakness in somebody, that he has a mistress, that he's taking money or something, he'll use it. He'll use whatever he has to to get things done. Uh, he learns that, in my opinion, by failing to get things done when he's very young. He has things that he wants to get done, and they don't get done. And the awareness comes on him, and we can see it in the book. Or in my learning about him, I try to show how he learns that he has to find wi- weaknesses in people. He has to use it. If he ha- if he has a weakness, he's going to use it. He's going to get things done. There's a hardening, an increased ruthlessness, where the only thing that matters is to get the thing done. Anyone who stands in his way, if Moses has to destroy him, he'll destroy him.

6. 27:53 – 32:51

   Building during the Great Depression

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel27:53

      Hmm. As you say, you're writing not the history of one man, but of an era in America. And one of the most interesting things about The Power Broker is, especially in the period in which he's able to accomplish so much so quickly, what's happening, and you talk about this, is, uh, the Great Depression. You know, he's hiring thousands of architects, tens of thousands of linemen for pennies on the dollar to do gr- big public works for the city. And so I wonder how big a part of Moses' early achievements is just that the government, because of the Great Depression, could compete with the private sector for the top talent and for lots and lots of labor working 24/7 through the winter, moving fast.

   2. RCRobert Caro28:51

      Yeah. A- another great q- yes. The, and the answer to your question is, that played a big role because, like, a, uh, he needed architects for something. I don't remember what it is. It's in The Power Broker. And they lined up on Fifth Avenue, thousands of out-of-work architects, you know, uh, that he could hire for very low wage- you know, very low wages. But more than the wages, they were available, you know? Because they didn't have anything to do. He was able to hire so many people, and hire and fire them in a ruthless way. You know, making the workmen work hard, you know. He could just fire them. It was The Depression. They didn't have other jobs to go to. I think that was... He used that, yes.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel29:48

      Hmm. So as somebody who has studied urban development so deeply, here is one thing I'm curious about. You look at the things that were built at the beginning of the last century or before the beginning of the last century, you know, Grand Central Station and all the beautiful architecture in New York, versus the things that are built in the second half of the century. They look a lot less beautiful.

   4. RCRobert Caro30:18

      Yeah.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel30:19

      And the earlier, more beautiful things were built by a much poorer country.

   6. RCRobert Caro30:23

      Yeah.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel30:24

      What, what changed? Why were you able to build more beautiful things before?

   8. RCRobert Caro30:27

      Well, one thing that changed is you had all these out-of-work artisans who could, we'll just say, uh, carve stonework on buildings. Like my apartment is on the 15th floor of an apartment house. Uh- Across the street is a building that's fifteen stories or sixteen stories high, and you say, "Look at all the beautiful carving that's done in the stonework of that building up on the roof." I said, "The only person who can see it is the people in my apartment-

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel31:04

      [laughs]

   10. RCRobert Caro31:04

       ... and the people in the apartment next to them." Someone, someone was willing to spend that money because the builders who built that could hire-

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel31:14

       Yeah

   12. RCRobert Caro31:14

       ... skilled people at such low wages that they could make them, uh, do the decorations to make a building beautiful up on, uh, uh, at floors that nobody's gonna see, gonna see them because people came cheap.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel31:35

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7. 32:51 – 36:08

   The threats and promises of Lyndon Johnson

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel32:51

      I want to ask you about Johnson now.

   2. RCRobert Caro32:53

      Okay.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel32:55

      Master of the Senate, you make two points about how Johnson is effective, or at least this is the way I read it. One is that he's very persuasive if you're talking to him.

   4. RCRobert Caro33:07

      Yes.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel33:08

      The other is he's put himself in a position of leverage such that he has things to promise you or things to threaten you with. So it's not that he's convinced you of anything, but you know that you need his favor if you want to be successful.

   6. RCRobert Caro33:24

      Exactly. Uh-

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel33:25

      And, and of the two, I'm curious which was really the source of his power, his leverage or his persuasion?

   8. RCRobert Caro33:34

      Behind his persuasion was the power. When you were talking to him, if he asked something of you, you knew he had the power behind him to give you or deny you things that you wanted. Say he was asking a senator something, uh, for a vote on a specific issue. The senator might not agree with him, might not want to give him the vote, but he would know he wants committee as- a committee assignment. Johnson has the power to give him that or not. Or he would know he wants a ps- a specific law, and Johnson has the power to get that law passed or not. So behind everything, when Johnson is talking to you, and he puts his arm around you, and he leans into you, it's not just the force of his personality that he's bringing to bear on you. Behind that personality, you know he has the power to do things to you or for you, uh, that you better be aware of.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel34:38

      Hmm. Means of Ascent, the book about the election with Coke Stevenson, the 1948 Senate election.

   10. RCRobert Caro34:46

       Yes.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel34:47

       That is my favorite book perhaps ever, and you paint such a compelling portrait of this, um, person, Coke Stevenson, you know, governor of Texas. They called him Mr. Texas.

   12. RCRobert Caro35:00

       Yes.

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel35:01

       As you were writing his profile and writing this book, did part of you wish that he had won the Senate election?

   14. RCRobert Caro35:09

       You, you couldn't help, uh, I'm not su- you couldn't help feel... You... Well, I'll answer you directly. The answer is yes. I think Coke Stevenson, although he was an idealist, he knew how to get things done. When he was governor of Texas, he really accomplished things, okay? I think if he went to the Senate, he would have been a great senator and accomplished things. So you wish that he had, um, won. Uh, you, you feel the tragedy that he lost because of the way he lost, you know? The thing about Coke Stevenson, he really didn't realize someone could do all the things to him and in the election that Lyn- that Lyndon Johnson did. He didn't come to grips with that.

8. 36:08 – 41:00

   Could Kennedy have passed Johnson’s laws?

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel36:08

      Suppose that Kennedy wins in '60, but Johnson refuses the vice presidency, so he's still majority leader. How different do you think the bills that Kennedy would pass under Johnson as majority leader would be from the laws that Johnson as president was eventually able to pass? That is to say, the things that happened in '64 and '63 and '65, would they have just happened earlier?

   2. RCRobert Caro36:38

      No, because Kennedy w- Kennedy did not have the overriding desire-

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel36:47

      Hmm

   4. RCRobert Caro36:47

      ... to change America We see no-- John Kennedy was utterly charming. He was a good president. He was good in p- foreign policy, where Johnson certainly was not. But what he did not have was this vision, this desire to change America that Lyndon Johnson had. Lyndon Johnson comes back from his year teaching the poor kids in Cotulla determined to change the education system to help poor people more, to do all these other things to help poor, poor people. That determination is something that's really unique. It's what made him domestically such a great president, that we have all these civil rights laws, these anti-poverty laws that we wouldn't have had without Lyndon Johnson. Uh, his presidency ends in tragedy because of foreign policy, because of Vietnam. But he has this, this, this ideal-- this desire to get things done to help people in America that's almost unique. You say he's-- gee, he's determined to do this, you know. He's gonna find a way to do it. You watch him doing it. Um, then you say he was doing it. When he s- his attention turns to Vietnam, and everything falls apart, and he makes it, you know, it's all... His presidency is ruined.

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel38:41

      Hmm.

   6. RCRobert Caro38:42

      The things he started out to do domestically don't get done in the way he would've done them. But he starts out in, a-after the election with the education laws, with the anti-poverty bills to change the country, and he's on his way to doing it. That's the great tragedy of Johnson and Vietnam.

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel39:03

      Hmm. If I can ask about that, and it's okay if you don't wanna talk about this because it's in the next book, um, but if, if you're willing to talk about it, fundamentally, why did Johnson keep escalating-

   8. RCRobert Caro39:19

      Oh

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel39:19

      ... even when-

   10. RCRobert Caro39:20

       Oh, you, you know, and the answer to your question is I'm still trying to figure that out-

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel39:26

       Hmm

   12. RCRobert Caro39:26

       ... right now, so I'm [laughs] not gonna-

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel39:28

       That's fine.

   14. RCRobert Caro39:28

       I can't-

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel39:28

       That's fine. Um-

   16. RCRobert Caro39:29

       'Cause that's quite a mystery.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel39:31

       Yeah.

   18. RCRobert Caro39:31

       You know?

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel39:32

       Yeah.

   20. RCRobert Caro39:32

       Okay.

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel39:33

       One of the things that's true of both Johnson and Moses is this inexhaustible energy, you know, working sixteen hours a day, sometimes even more than that, and I wonder how much you think that is the fact that they had a different constitution, that they were just-- had different reserves of energy. Or do you think it was just their will was so strong?

   22. RCRobert Caro39:58

       I think it's just their will.

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel39:59

       Hmm.

   24. RCRobert Caro40:00

       I mean, l- a lot of people have their energy. You know, when you see, um, Robert Moses sleeping very little, showing that he'd do anything to get his, his way, to get th- to get things done, being tired or something doesn't even seem to figure in-into the equation. Sometimes I'm looking at, you know, uh, at-- I can't remember one off the top of my head, and you say, "He's making this call," and Johnson's making this call at two and three o'clock in the morning. He's up making these calls to get his way. I-- it-- in fact, there's a funny anecdote. One senator, uh, Johnson calls him at, uh, five AM to ask him for his vote on something, and the senator says, "Oh, Lyndon, I was just lying here waiting for your call." [laughs]

   25. DPDwarkesh Patel40:57

       [laughs] So it's, it's their will.

   26. RCRobert Caro40:58

       [laughs]

9. 41:00 – 46:21

   Getting a book down to one sentence

   1. DPDwarkesh Patel41:00

      Um, I wanna ask you a little bit about writing biography now.

   2. RCRobert Caro41:04

      Okay.

   3. DPDwarkesh Patel41:06

      One question I have is you spend five years, ten years writing a single book, and through that process, maybe your editor and your wife are the only people who have seen the manuscript. So how do you make sure you're on the right track? Because, you know, you gotta wait so long from when you start to when you get public feedback. How do you make sure that everything's gonna hang together and you're pursuing the message-

   4. RCRobert Caro41:37

      Well-

   5. DPDwarkesh Patel41:37

      ... the way you want to?

   6. RCRobert Caro41:38

      Well, well, well, part of your question is how do you be sure you're on the right track? The answer to that is you're not, okay?

   7. DPDwarkesh Patel41:47

      Hmm.

   8. RCRobert Caro41:47

      But how do you try to stay on the right track? I do have a device for that.

   9. DPDwarkesh Patel41:52

      Hmm.

   10. RCRobert Caro41:53

       Before I start a book, I learned this the hard way with The Power Broker, 'cause I didn't do it with The Power Broker. Before I start a book, I think through what I want the book to be, the whole book.

   11. DPDwarkesh Patel42:11

       Hmm.

   12. RCRobert Caro42:11

       People say, "You mean you think it through to the end?" Well, the answer is yes. And then you say, "Well, what is this book about?" And I sit at that desk sometimes for a long time before I start writing. When I'm thinking about the book, just asking myself in one way or another, "What is this book about?" You gotta get it down to one sentence. You say, "Well, you can't get it down to one sentence." Then you say, "Yeah, but Bob, you learned you better get it down to one sentence, or three years from now you're gonna be writing-

   13. DPDwarkesh Patel42:47

       [laughs]

   14. RCRobert Caro42:47

       ... and you're gonna be saying, 'What am I trying to do?'" So before I start a book, I try to get it down to, I start a sentence or at most a paragraph and say, "Really, what is this book about?" And I try to make everything hang together around that point.

   15. DPDwarkesh Patel43:09

       Hmm. Back in August, my sponsor, Jane Street, released the design files for a mystery chip and challenged my audience to figure out its true purpose. The challenge is over and Jane Street has released a blog post highlighting some of their favorite submissions. They also revealed the ASIC's purpose. I won't spoil it here, but if you're curious, I've linked to it in the show notes. Anish, who helped design the puzzle, walked me through some of the best write-ups.

   16. SPSpeaker43:33

       I think my favorite submission was probably this insane visualization made by Kjartan Vandril and Leander Post, who started by showing in 3D how a chip is made from standard cells, how all of the metal layers fit together to actually comprise the logic of the chip, and then showed each component of our puzzle design, what it does, and how they reverse engineered it before then showing how it all fits back together into the puzzle.

   17. DPDwarkesh Patel43:59

       Don't worry if you missed this challenge. There's a new one live right now.

   18. SPSpeaker44:02

       So the goal with this new challenge is we want people to design a hardware protocol emulator chip that can be used to analyze and emulate different communication protocols. And as a bonus, we're going to pay to fabricate our favorite submissions and you'll actually get your chip back mounted on a board ready for you to test in real life.

   19. DPDwarkesh Patel44:19

       The competition is open till January 18th. Go to janestreet.com/dwarkesh to get started. A lot of your books you've written before we had digital archives and the internet and all the resources that made available. How much of a difference have those resources made?

   20. RCRobert Caro44:42

       Well, they're making a big difference right now.

   21. DPDwarkesh Patel44:45

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RCRobert Caro44:45

       The book I'm doing now, I'm writing about Vietnam. Um, let's say the, I wanna do a battle. I wanna write in detail. Well, this just happened. I wanna write about it. I picked a battle that I wanted to do in detail. It's called the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley. Nobody's written about it in detail. But I could go to my computer and I could look up where are the oral histories from soldiers who fought in that battle. Uh, and you just... Where, what, what colleges are the oral histories at? Uh, what documents are available? In a way you couldn't do it before.

   23. DPDwarkesh Patel45:31

       And do you... So do, do you think it would've made a big difference when you were writing the earlier volumes?

   24. RCRobert Caro45:36

       No. Bec- no, well, well, it would've, might've made things faster, but it would've made it... It wouldn't... Just the way I am-

   25. DPDwarkesh Patel45:46

       Mm

   26. RCRobert Caro45:46

       ... I would look at the documents anyway. I, I... Things would, things would go faster now. But it... I think about what you just asked, I was thinking about it the other day, and it's difficult for me to explain it, but I don't think it would've been any, I don't think it would've gone any faster. I, I can't quite tell you why, but, um, certainly you could find the documents faster. But finding them is a small thing-

   27. DPDwarkesh Patel46:18

       Mm

   28. RCRobert Caro46:18

       ... compared to reading them.

   29. DPDwarkesh Patel46:19

       Mm.

   30. RCRobert Caro46:19

       You know?

10. 46:21 – 52:59

    All the material that never made it into the books

    1. DPDwarkesh Patel46:21

       A, a question just occurs to me, and I'm, I'm curious to get your answer. If, if we were to time travel back to '75, and I could tell Robert Caro then that this new three volumes on Lyndon Johnson he's about to embark on will take more than 40 years, how do you think 40-something-year-old Robert Caro would have reacted to that? Would he, would he have been happy? Would he have been afraid?

    2. RCRobert Caro46:54

       You ask terrific questions. Well, you know, the realization came to me when I was thinking about Johnson. You know, the power... I, I'll give you a long answer, but this is the, the accurate, accurate answer. I had to cut so much out of The Power Broker. And I cut out, I... So much stuff that shouldn't have been cut out, that I didn't know. Like, I gave Bob Gottlieb, my editor, a manuscript that it was one million and fifty thousand words long. And the most they could fit in, and he really worked at this, into one volume, 'cause I was determined to, it would only be one volume, was seven hundred pages or like, uh, about, uh, about seven hundred thousand words instead of a million and fifty thousand words, which meant we had to cut three hundred and fifty thousand words. And he has said I cut a lot of the best stuff I ever read. And I felt a lot of the stuff that I cut out, it's tragic that no one knows it. To this day, people ask me about things and I said, "Oh, I wrote that." And then they say, "Well, no one ever read it." But the way I am, I don't know that I would've changed anything because as I'm writing the book, I'm saying, "Oh, this is too long. This is gonna be too long. I'm gonna have to cut so much." But I don't seem to have the ability not to write the stuff that I s- think should be written even though I know so much of it is h- gonna have to be cut.

    3. DPDwarkesh Patel48:54

       Hmm. Well, speaking of which You have, in the other room here, cabinets and cabinets of notes on interviews, notes as you're working, things which have never been published before. Eventually historians, other historians will be able to study those notes and those documents that you have compiled-

    4. RCRobert Caro49:17

       Yes

    5. DPDwarkesh Patel49:17

       ... over your career.

    6. RCRobert Caro49:18

       Yes.

    7. DPDwarkesh Patel49:19

       What is it that you hope they do with it? What is, what is it that you hope-- What kind of scholarship do you hope?

    8. RCRobert Caro49:25

       Uh, you know, I cut out so much stuff from the books that I wish people knew, okay? I mean, sometimes, or you're reading something and you're saying, "Oh, if I had written about that-

    9. DPDwarkesh Patel49:39

       Mm

    10. RCRobert Caro49:39

        ... the newspapers wouldn't be covering it the same way. There'd be a different understanding of it." I'll give you a, an easy example. Sam Rayburn.

    11. DPDwarkesh Patel49:52

        Mm.

    12. RCRobert Caro49:52

        Now, I have a brief chapter on Rayburn in my books, but Rayburn is a great figure in American history. There's no good biography of Sam Rayburn, yet he controlled, he ran the House of Representatives. He passed so many of Roosevelt's bills and other bills. He did so much for America that it's a tragedy for me that nobody knows it. And the material to know it is in those cabinets.

    13. DPDwarkesh Patel50:24

        Mm.

    14. RCRobert Caro50:24

        Okay? And there's a lot-- Th- there happened to be a lot of e- e- examples of things I said, "Whoa, that didn't make it," stuff into the books, but they're there. Like I have hundreds of interviews, you know? I think I have 700 interviews for The Power Broker alone. The notes for those interviews are in the file cabinets, detailed, you know, they're detailed typed up notes. So the material there, there's a lot there that I think would, uh, help people understand how New York evolved the way it did. And with Johnson, a lot-- Well, I'm writing about it now, uh, things that happened under his presidency. There's more understanding of it, and it's not gonna make its way into my books, but they're going to be there. That's why I gave my archive to the New-York Historical Society. Now, I have to say, I was offered a lot more money by other places, okay? I took a lot less money, a great deal less money, an amount that mattered a lot to me, because I wanted them to be easily accessible. I wanted them to be in New York. E- you know, I, I didn't want them to be at the University of Texas, where you have to fly, you know, fly down there. I want it to, to be in New York. The material is there for a lot of stuff that I never got to put in my books, but it's there if somebody wants it.

    15. DPDwarkesh Patel52:06

        Mm.

    16. RCRobert Caro52:07

        I'll give you an example. Uh, I wrote so much more, and I have so mu- I interviewed so many senators, so many assistants to senators to try and write about the Senate, and then I had to cut out or not write or even go into the vast, I don't-- want to say ninety percent, but I don't really know what percent, of what I learned is not in the books, but they are in the file cabinets.

    17. DPDwarkesh Patel52:38

        Mm.

    18. RCRobert Caro52:38

        So they are there for someone to look at. That's why, uh, my archives are in New York.

    19. DPDwarkesh Patel52:44

        It's great to know that that research will pay dividends-

    20. RCRobert Caro52:47

        Well, I hope so

    21. DPDwarkesh Patel52:48

        ... through many generations of scholars. Because obviously it will not be possible to interview the folks you interviewed in the '70s and '80s and '60s again.

11. 52:59 – 1:01:04

    Loneliness

    1. RCRobert Caro52:59

       Yes.

    2. DPDwarkesh Patel53:00

       This makes me wonder, you know, i- in order to paint a picture of the era that you're writing about, and the eras which shaped Moses and Johnson, you talk about in The Power Broker, the, the Gold Coast in New York and the tenements, and the Johnson biographies, you talk about what the Hill Country was like when the frontier was being settled.

    3. RCRobert Caro53:22

       Yes.

    4. DPDwarkesh Patel53:23

       And one thing that's interesting is that even if Johnson had not become president, it would still be fascinating, the story of what the-- what was happening in the Hill Country. And so it, you know, it's a, it's an odd thought, but it makes me wonder if you could spend 10 years or 20 years writing the biography of a totally ordinary person. Because in doing so, you'd still-- A lot of what was true about Johnson would have still been fascinating, even if his career didn't end up where it did.

    5. RCRobert Caro53:51

       Well, the, the example that you give, uh, what was the Hill Country like, you know. We see all these Western movies and all. But when I started to learn about the people who settled Johnson City, Lyndon Johnson's ancestors, but only the generation before him, or at most two generations before him, you say, "God, is this fascinating," what it was like. What was it like-- I mean, I wanted to do this book. What was it like to take your family and move them to the frontier, to move them nu- on, uh, one level to Indian country, where [chuckles] you might f- find your family massacred one day? Uh, and if even w- the, all these other difficulties and all. Well, that's sort of in my books because peop-- in my notes, because when I was talking to people, they would talk about their grandfathers or what their grandfathers told them, you know? And when I'm talking to them about Johnson, I'm learning all about what life was like in that era. I say, "What an amazing, amazing story this is." And you say, "Well, there, there's a lot of books on it." I happen to think there are not enough.

    6. DPDwarkesh Patel55:25

       What's also so amazing is just how different of a country. You know, you think about Johnson growing up in Johnson City, in this tiny little, um, l- lonely town, and even then being o- on a ranch that is tens of miles away from the city versus America in the '60s. You know, it's such a different place.

    7. RCRobert Caro55:49

       Yeah.

    8. DPDwarkesh Patel55:50

       And I wonder if Johnson ever felt some shock of how different his upbringing was from the country he was leading.

    9. RCRobert Caro55:58

       Oh, oh, the answer is yes. Um, he was very aware of the frontier, of what his grandfather, you know, the, the land, what it was like. See, when he grew up in Johnson City, in the outskirts on the Johnson Ranch, which after all was 18 miles beyond Johnson City, what it was like to grow up on a ranch like that. In so many ways, it was different and it formed your character in a different way. Loneliness is a bi- Loneliness is a big deal. I wrote a, a, a, a se- and then I had to cut it down to, like, three pages on, on his mother and how lonely she was, what it was like for people to settle their farms and ranches where there was nobody around you. I think I have a line where, you know, she could walk out in the afternoon and walk up on a hill, and there was nothing to see but more hills. And no one s- there were no other houses near there. I myself was shocked. Sometimes you would go to see, to interview an el- I was trying to interview everybody who grew up with John- Lyndon Johnson, so they were elderly people, okay? So you'd, you'd, you'd, you'd call an el- an elderly woman and she'd say, uh, "You go, you drive out of Austin, uh, 22 miles and you'll come to a-- l- look on your left, you'll find a cattle cross, cattle guard. You turn, and then there's a dirt road there. You turn left on the dirt road and 22 miles to my farm." And you say, "I drove 22 miles. I didn't pass another house. I didn't pass another person." And this woman is living there all her life. So I don't think un- with all the wonderful books that have been written, I'm, I'm not sure that America understands the heroism of just being lo- forgetting Indians and racis- just being the loneliness of what, what life was like for these pe- for, for these people.

    10. DPDwarkesh Patel58:29

        So I wanna close on that, on loneliness, because obviously you're not living in a ranch in the middle of nowhere. You're living in New York City. But you and Ina have together basically been working alone, um, for so long. How, how has loneliness-

    11. RCRobert Caro58:51

        Um-

    12. DPDwarkesh Patel58:51

        ... affected your work and also your life?

    13. RCRobert Caro58:55

        Oh, great question. Well, a lot. Let me think how I, how I can say this. Well, you know, I come here in the, in the morning and I turn off my telephone. Um, I'm not gonna talk to anybody all day. I'm a friendly guy. Sometimes that very fact is hard, as a matter of fact, you know? You'd like to pick up the phone and chat with somebody, but just, you say, "I'm concentrating on the book," you know? "I can't do that. It's gonna break the concentration," you know? And that, well, that's such a, sounds like such a phony, uh, thing. But you say, "I ca- I can't really do that. I'm trying to think about this oth- other thing." And I think that it, you know, it's impacted my entire life, you know? Uh, people don't-- Some people understand, but some people don't understand that you don't call them back, you know? I mean, if people call me, I'm not gonna call them back till the end of the day. So I have friends who understand that, but a lot of people don't understand that. Um, so that's a fact of my life.

    14. DPDwarkesh Patel1:00:44

        Robert Caro, um, I can't tell you how much of an honor it's been. For six years that I've had this podcast, uh, people will ask me, you know, "Who is the person you most wanna have on that you haven't had on the podcast?" And every single time, I've said, "Robert Caro."

    15. RCRobert Caro1:00:58

        Oh. [laughs]

    16. DPDwarkesh Patel1:00:58

        And so it's, it's a huge, huge honor.

    17. RCRobert Caro1:01:01

        Well, it was a-

    18. DPDwarkesh Patel1:01:01

        Thank you so much for doing this

    19. RCRobert Caro1:01:01

        ... it was a terrific interview. Thank you very much.

Episode duration: 1:01:09