American biographer Robert Caro’s quasi-memoir of the same title reads like an extended interview done by Terkel in his ownWorking. Caro’s subject is his work process,his labour as a reporter,biographer and historian,with all its attendant astonishment,meaning and more than occasional spiritual violence. Via the entry points of urban planner Robert Moses and President Lyndon Johnson,Caro’s work has produced the books that not only defined how those two momentous figures are understood,but in so doing has shaped how many across the globe understand the acquisition and functioning of real,actually existing power.
What does Caro mean by power? He has no interest in modern theoretical debates or the birth of this or that subject,no desire to engage with the hip theorist du jour. For Caro,power is the ability of a single person to wave a hand and build hundreds of miles of roads and bridges. To provide tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in profits to chosen allies in the process. To dislocate hundreds of thousands of people,raze entire neighbourhoods,destroy communities and change the geography of one of the world’s largest metropolises. To pass a Civil Rights Act that was a political impossibility for nearly a century. To enact the kind of social legislation only dreamt of by previous generations of Americans (and given much of this legislation’s more recent decimation,many of us today as well).
And,of course,to make the decisions that led to the deaths of probably about 2 million Vietnamese – civilians as well as soldiers fighting for their independence – and nearly 60,000 Americans,along with the 490 Australians who died fighting beside them. The person who holds this kind of power holds in their hands the livelihoods,life courses and lives of millions.