"Robert Moses wasn't elected to anything. We're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected. He had more power than anyone, and he held it for 48 years"
About this Quote
Power, Caro reminds you, is rarely as civics class advertises it. The jab lands because it punctures a comforting fable: that democracy neatly contains power inside ballots, terms, and public accountability. Robert Moses is the counterexample so oversized it becomes an indictment. “Wasn’t elected to anything” isn’t just trivia; it’s a moral setup. If legitimacy is supposed to flow from voters, then Moses’s legitimacy came from something darker and more durable: appointments, authorities, patronage, and the legal machinery that lets power reproduce itself without ever asking permission.
Caro’s phrasing is doing two things at once. First, it separates “power” from “office,” suggesting that the real government often happens offstage, in boards and agencies designed to be boring. Second, it frames longevity as its own form of domination. “He held it for 48 years” isn’t a flex; it’s an alarm. Elections are periodic interruptions. Moses’s reign was continuous.
The context matters because Caro is the great anatomist of bureaucratic power, and Moses is his exhibit A: the master builder who reshaped New York through bridges, parks, highways, and “public” authorities insulated from direct oversight. The subtext is that infrastructure is politics made permanent. Concrete outlives administrations, and the people displaced by a highway don’t get a rematch every November.
Caro’s intent is not nostalgia for strongmen or a gotcha about “unelected officials.” It’s a warning about how democracies can be structurally outmaneuvered by technocracy, procedural complexity, and institutions built to evade the very accountability we’re taught to equate with freedom.
Caro’s phrasing is doing two things at once. First, it separates “power” from “office,” suggesting that the real government often happens offstage, in boards and agencies designed to be boring. Second, it frames longevity as its own form of domination. “He held it for 48 years” isn’t a flex; it’s an alarm. Elections are periodic interruptions. Moses’s reign was continuous.
The context matters because Caro is the great anatomist of bureaucratic power, and Moses is his exhibit A: the master builder who reshaped New York through bridges, parks, highways, and “public” authorities insulated from direct oversight. The subtext is that infrastructure is politics made permanent. Concrete outlives administrations, and the people displaced by a highway don’t get a rematch every November.
Caro’s intent is not nostalgia for strongmen or a gotcha about “unelected officials.” It’s a warning about how democracies can be structurally outmaneuvered by technocracy, procedural complexity, and institutions built to evade the very accountability we’re taught to equate with freedom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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