访谈卡洛与权力的机制
我最近采访了罗伯特·卡洛。他花了过去 50 年的时间撰写一部四卷本的林登·约翰逊传记，在此之前，他又花了 7 年时间撰写纽约建设巨头罗伯特·摩西的传记。他的著作被公认为对政治权力最深刻的探索之作，恰好也是我个人最喜欢的书籍。
每当我结识新朋友时，他们经常问我的第一个问题往往是：“在尚未采访的人中，你最想采访谁？”在这 6 年里，我的回答始终如一：罗伯特·卡洛。
为了促成这次采访，我付出了大量努力。我联系过他的经纪人，致电过他的出版商，还联系过存放其档案的博物馆，甚至给他寄过亲笔信。最终我终于得以与他促膝长谈，对采访的效果也非常满意。
访谈内容将于明天发布。与此同时，在为这次采访做准备并重读这些传记的过程中，我梳理了书中关于如何积累和运用权力的种种经验法则，而这部视频短片正是这些思考的成果。
英文原文
I recently interviewed Robert Caro. He's spent the last 50 years writing a 4-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, and he spent another 7 years before that writing the biography of Robert Moses, who was the master builder of New York. His books are widely regarded as the best explorations of political power that have ever been written, and they also happen to be literally my favorite books ever. Whenever I meet somebody new, one of the first questions that they often ask me is, "Who's the person you most want to interview that you haven't yet?" And for 6 years, I've answered that question in the same way: Robert Caro. I've spent a lot of time trying to make this interview happen. I've chased down his agent, I've called his publisher, I've contacted the museums which are hosting his archives. I've even sent him handwritten letters. I finally got to sit down with him, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. It'll be out tomorrow. In the meantime, as I was preparing for this interview and rereading all of these biographies, I was writing down all the lessons that they laid out about how to accumulate and use power, and this video essay is the result.罗伯特·摩西：未获选举的城市主宰
罗伯特·摩西是纽约的城市建设主导者。我们尊贵的嘉宾正是全美首屈一指的城市规划师罗伯特·摩西先生。他在实体城市建设方面的体量超过了前人与后人。
他主持修建了三区大桥（Triborough Bridge）和韦拉扎诺海峡大桥（Verrazzano Bridge）、跨布朗克斯高速公路（Cross Bronx Expressway）、琼斯海滩（Jones Beach）、林肯中心（Lincoln Center）、谢亚球场（Shea Stadium），以及纽约上州的 2 座巨型发电大坝，此外还有数百处公园和游泳池。截至 1964 年纽约州建成的 899 英里高速公路中，有 672 英里出自摩西之手。按今天的货币价值计算，他的工程项目总成本达数千亿美元。
在超过 30 年的时间里，罗伯特·摩西始终是纽约最具权势的人物，其影响力超过了任何民选的市长或州长，尽管他本人从未担任过任何民选职务。正如过去三十多年里无数次听到的那样，人们总说：“你根本不是选出来的。”而我对他们惯常的回应则是：“你们也没这个必要。”
那么，他是如何获取如此庞大的权力，又是如何维持它的？
英文原文
Robert Moses was the master builder of New York. Our distinguished guest was Mr. Robert Moses, the nation's foremost city planner. He built more of the physical city than anybody before or since. He built the Triborough and Verrazzano bridges, the Cross Bronx Expressway, Jones Beach, Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium, 2 giant power dams upstate, in addition to hundreds of parks and pools. Of the 899 miles of highways completed in New York State by 1964, Moses had built 672 of them. His projects collectively cost hundreds of billions of dollars in today's money. For more than 30 years, Robert Moses was the most powerful person in New York, more powerful than any elected mayor or governor, despite the fact that he was not elected to anything. As I've heard it, ad nauseam, for the last 30-odd years, they say, "You don't have to be elected." My stock reply to them is, "You don't have to be, either." How did he get that much power, and how did he keep it?公共机构与债券法案的制度漏洞
部分原因在于，摩西亲自起草了用来约束他自身的法律。他曾被称为奥尔巴尼（Albany，纽约州府）最出色的法案起草人，并利用这一专长，为自己写入了立法者在表决通过法案时根本未曾意识到的各项权力。
罗伯特·摩西的政治智慧或许在他对公共机构（public authorities）的运用中体现得最为淋漓尽致。这些是由政府设立、负责兴建城市基础设施的法人实体。公共机构通过发售债券为特定工程（比如一座新桥梁）筹措资金。一旦大桥建成，该机构便向通行车辆收取过桥费，直至筹集到足以偿清债券的款项。按照最初设想，随后该机构将拆除收费站，将大桥移交市政，机构本身随之解散。
至少最初的设想是这样。这也是奥尔巴尼在纽约州议会通过《1933年三区大桥管理局法案》（Triborough Bridge Authority Act of 1933）时的预期。然而，在该法案最终版本那连篇累牍的法律条文深处，埋藏着几处由罗伯特·摩西亲自起草、看似微不足道的修改。
该法案第 1 条明确规定，债券一旦清偿完毕，该管理局即告解散。既然债券期限最长为 40 年，而大桥的收费收入偿还初始成本的速度要快得多，管理局似乎有着非常明确的存续期限。
然而，在第 9 条的一个分款中，摩西添加了一句表述：管理局可以“不时”通过发行新债券来清偿旧债券；并且这些新债券可以用于“任何其他法人机构宗旨”（for any other corporate purpose）。
如此一来，在原债券即将到期之前，管理局便获得了发行一笔全新 40 年期债券的权利，且资金可用于完全不同的其他用途。
英文原文
Part of the answer is that Moses wrote the laws that governed him. He was called the best bill drafter in Albany, and he used that skill to write himself powers that the legislators voting on his bills didn't know they were granting. The political genius of Robert Moses is perhaps best illustrated by his use of public authorities. These are government-created corporations that build city infrastructure. Public authorities sell bonds to pay for a specific project, say, a new bridge. Once the bridge is built, the authority would charge drivers a toll until it had collected enough money to pay off its bonds. Then the authority would tear down the toll booths, hand the bridge over to the city, and go out of existence. At least, that was the idea. That's what Albany assumed would happen when the New York State Congress approved the Triborough Bridge Authority Act of 1933, whose final version included, buried within pages and pages of legalese, a few seemingly minor alterations that were drafted by Robert Moses. Section 1 of this act clearly stated that the authority would dissolve once the bonds were paid off. Since the bonds could run at most 40 years, and the revenues from the bridge would pay back the initial cost far sooner, it seemed like the authority had a clear built-in expiry date. However, in a subsection of Section 9, Moses added a single sentence that said that the authority could, "from time to time," pay off its old bonds by issuing new ones. And those new ones could be "for any other corporate purpose." So just before the original bonds were about to expire, the authority now had the right to issue a totally fresh 40-year note for a potentially totally different use.无限扩张的工程权限与资金池
那么，管理局可以用这笔巨资建造什么？
最初的法案只允许其修建 2 座大桥及其引道。三区大桥管理局主席罗伯特·摩西称这项工程远不止是一座单纯的桥梁。他说：“它将成为位于城市心脏地带的一条庞大交通主干道。”
第一辆车辆从岛上穿过收费站驶出。车上的乘客是身着租来无尾礼服的年轻男子，他们在此停靠等待了一整周，只为争夺首辆通行的荣誉。
摩西的修正案还赋予了该管理局建设连接道路以及“与项目用途不相抵触的设施”的权利。如果按照摩西预想的创造性方式去解读，这些权利足以允许摩西改建纽约的大部分道路、公园和住宅。因为如果某条路连接着通往另一条路的道路，而后者又连接着通往大桥的道路；或者某个公园恰好位于通往大桥的某条连接路沿线，那么三区大桥管理局便理所当然有权对其进行改造和改建。
所有这些工程都可以依托大桥产生的巨额通行费收入，以及三区大桥管理局据此进行举债融资的权利来支持。
对比之下可以看出悬殊：1946 年，整个纽约市政府在触及法定举债上限前最多只能借入 1.5 亿美元；而就在同一年，三区大桥管理局能够借入 3.6 亿美元。也就是说，摩西名下的大桥管理局所能动用的资金，是全美最大城市可支配额度的两倍以上。
英文原文
And what could the authority build with all this money? The original act let it build 2 bridges and their approaches. Triborough's chairman, Robert Moses, called this project more than a mere bridge. "It will be," he said, "an immense artery of travel in the very heart of the city." From the island, through the toll gate, rides the first vehicle. Young men in rented tuxedos, the passengers. They parked here all week for the honor of being first to cross. Moses' amendments also gave this authority the right to build connecting roads and "facilities not inconsistent with the use of the project." These rights, when interpreted as creatively as Moses intended, would allow Moses to alter most of the roads, parks, and housing in New York. For if a road connected to a road which connected to a road which connected to the bridge, or if a park lay along the road that connected to the road that connected to the road that connected to the bridge, surely the Triborough Authority was entitled to improve and change it. All this construction could be financed by the bridges' enormous toll revenues and the right of the Triborough Authority to borrow against them. To give some perspective, in 1946, the entire New York City government could only borrow $150 million before hitting its legal debt limit. That very same year, Triborough could borrow $360 million. So Moses' bridge authority had access to more than double the amount of money as the largest city in America.宪法契约保护与权力的不可撤销性
如果未来的某位州长或市长最终察觉到下放给该管理局的庞大权力和收入，并决定收回这些权力，又会如何？
摩西对此同样早有预谋，他的解决办法极其高明，奥尔巴尼的任何律师或立法者事前均未察觉。
美国宪法规定，各州不得通过任何“损害契约义务的法律”，而政府实体订立的契约亦受其保护。公共机构发行的债券正属于此类契约。摩西在法案中悄然加入了一项条款，允许他在这些债券契约中补充“任何具有类似或不同性质、以任何方式影响债券安全或保障的事项”。
这些事项包括：三区大桥管理局可以按其意愿自行决定收取多少过桥费，收取任意长时间，并可以留存由此产生的盈余资金。
这意味着，摩西只需将各项权力写入自己发行的债券合同中，便能将其彻底固化。从债券售出的那一刻起，无论是州立法机构、州长还是市长，事实上除了召开制宪会议之外的任何手段，都无法剥夺这些权力。
摩西所拥有的权力在债券的整个存续期内都获得了保障，而这一存续期又可以随时通过再融资无限期延长。
仅凭几处细微的修改，摩西就将一项原本只为修建 2 座大桥的法案，演变成了一个能在纽约任何地方建造任何项目的机构根基，且该机构行使权力的合法性还受到美国宪法的保护。
英文原文
And what if a future governor or mayor eventually learned about all this power and revenue that had been delegated to this authority, and they decided to claw it back? Moses had planned for this, too, and his solution was so clever that no lawyer or lawmaker in Albany saw it coming. The United States Constitution says that no state shall make "any law impairing the obligation of contracts" entered into by a government entity. A bond issued by a public authority is such a contract. Moses snuck a clause into the act which allowed him to add "any other matters of like or different character, which in any way affect the security or protection of the bonds" into these bond contracts. These matters included that Triborough could charge whatever tolls it wanted and for however long it wanted, and it could keep the surplus thus generated. That is to say, Moses could now entrench his powers simply by writing them into the bonds that he issued. From the moment those bonds were sold, those powers could no longer be revoked by the legislature or by the governor or by the mayor, by anything, in fact, short of a constitutional convention. The powers that Moses now had were guaranteed for the bonds' entire lifetime, a lifetime which could always be extended simply by refinancing. So with just a few minor tweaks, Moses had turned an act meant to allow for the construction of 2 bridges into the basis of an institution that could build basically anything it wanted anywhere in New York, and whose authority to do so was protected by the United States Constitution.头衔叠加与行政不可撼动性
这些债券契约将三区大桥管理局的权力铸成了坚不可摧的磐石，但其中没有任何条款保证罗伯特·摩西本人能始终担任其主席。
那么，摩西是如何将这一职位稳坐长达 30 年之久的？
部分答案依然在于法律。摩西在起草《三区大桥法案》时明确规定，其委员在任期内只有在“经过正式听证并提出指控”后才能被解职。然而，他与市长或州长之间的分歧，更多在于他决定建什么以及在建设过程中拆迁了谁，而非其个人操守问题。正如卡洛本人所写：“罗伯特·摩西本人并不腐败。事实上，正如任何在世的公职人员一样，他对为自己谋取私利毫无兴趣。用政客们的话说，他在金钱上是一清二白。”因此，根本没有任何正式指控可以提出。
但这只能解释他为何没有在任期中途被免职。为何他能每隔 6 年都获得连任？
在鼎盛时期，摩西犹如一头拥有十余个头颅的九头蛇。他同时兼任 12 个不同的政府职位：纽约市建设协调员、州公园委员会主席、州电力管理局主席等等。这些职位中，有的由市长任命，有的由州长任命，没有任何一个人能够同时将他的头衔全部砍下。而罢免他的任何一个职位，都意味着你将彻底得罪这位依然掌握着纽约最高实权的人物。
英文原文
These bond covenants had turned the Triborough Authority's powers into granite, but nothing in them guaranteed that Robert Moses would remain its chairman. So how did Moses retain this position for 30 years? Part of the answer is, again, the law. Moses drafted the Triborough Act so that its commissioners could be removed midterm only on "stated charges after a formal hearing." But any differences he had with the mayor or governor were more about what he decided to build and whom he displaced to build it rather than his personal conduct. As Caro himself writes, "Robert Moses was not himself corrupt. He was, in fact, as uninterested in obtaining payoffs for himself as any public servant who ever lived. In the politicians' phrase, he was money honest." So there were never any formal charges to bring. But this only explains why he wasn't fired in the middle of his term. Why was he reappointed every 6 years? At his peak, Moses was a hydra with a dozen heads. He held 12 different government posts at the same time: city construction coordinator, chairman of the State Council of Parks, chairman of the State Power Authority, and so on. Some of these positions were appointed by the mayor, some of them by the governor, and so no single person could cut off the heads simultaneously. And removing him from any one position meant that you were making an enemy of the man who would still be the most powerful person in New York.民意基础与政绩速度
更重要的是，没有哪位市长或州长真想解雇他。
今天我们对罗伯特·摩西的记忆，主要基于 20 世纪 70 年代固化的公众印象，当时《权力的经纪人》（The Power Broker）刚刚出版，而纽约正经历着犯罪率激增、去工业化和白人群体外迁的黑暗年代。摩西为此承担了大部分指责，毕竟《权力的经纪人》副标题就是“罗伯特·摩西与纽约的衰落”。但依我之见，那场危机更多与更宏观的结构性因素有关，与摩西本人关系不大；像底特律和圣路易斯这些与他毫无瓜葛的城市，经历的衰败反而剧烈得多。
在他职业生涯的绝大部分时间里，摩西享有极高的声望。在 20 世纪 30 年代和 40 年代，纽约的高中生评选摩西为最令人钦佩的纽约人。这是因为他接连不断地交付了数百万纽约市民可以切实使用和享受的公共设施：海滩、公园、游泳池。他们过去只能从码头跳进浑浊的河水里，而现在却能在宏伟现代的高档露天泳池里嬉戏。耗资整整一百万美元，孩子们都说物有所值。
而且他的建设速度和规模是前所未见的。在担任该市公园专员的头 4 个月里，他让施工队伍日夜轮班，完成了 1,700 处公园的翻修，而这一切期间没有爆出丝毫个人丑闻。正如卡洛在《权力的经纪人》中所写：“在公园和游乐场开幕式上，经常能看到孩子们在家长的引导下齐声欢呼：‘2，4，6，8，我们感谢谁？摩西先生！摩西先生！摩西先生！’”
关键在于，摩西能够在一个选举周期的时限内交付这些庞大且深得民心的公共工程。如果市长授权罗伯特·摩西建造某个项目，他完全可以预期在自己争取连任之前，就能站在剪彩仪式现场。罗伯特·摩西、瓦格纳市长和斯佩尔曼枢机主教等显要人物一同出席了大桥布鲁克林一侧的剪彩仪式。
在今天，政府如果能在短短一两年内建起大型工程，几乎是不可想象的。例如，纽约第二大道地铁于 1972 年动工，第一期路段直到 2017 年才正式通车；仅这最初的 2 英里就耗费了纳税人 45 亿美元。
公共工程的大量资金来自华盛顿特区。能够获得最多拨款的城市，往往是那些已经完成了最终蓝图设计、一旦联邦推出新政策就能立刻破土动工的城市。摩西拥有全美规模最大、最优秀的规划师与工程师团队。正因如此，到 1936 年，纽约市获得了联邦政府为大萧条时期全国以工代赈所预留总资金的七分之一。而这些资金所支持的项目，全部是由摩西挑选的。
如果市长对该建什么有不同想法，他就必须自己绘制方案，但他缺乏独立的技术专业力量支持。因此，他要么建摩西想建的项目，要么什么也建不成。
英文原文
More importantly, no mayor or governor wanted to fire him. The way we remember Robert Moses today is based on a reputation that was calcified in the 1970s, when The Power Broker came out and when New York was experiencing a dark age of crime, deindustrialization, and white flight. Moses got much of the blame for this. After all, the subtitle of The Power Broker is Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. But in my opinion, this crisis had more to do with larger structural factors that had nothing to do with Moses himself. Cities that he had nothing to do with, like Detroit and St. Louis, experienced a much more dramatic collapse. For the vast majority of his career, Moses was incredibly popular. In the 1930s and 1940s, New York high schools voted Moses the most admired New Yorker. This was because he had delivered, over and over again, public works which millions of New Yorkers got to use and enjoy: the beaches, parks, pools. They used to dive off a dock into the murky river, but now it's splashing deluxe in a grand up-to-date lido. It cost a cool million, and the kids say it's worth it. And he did so at a speed and a scale that nobody had seen before. In his first 4 months as the city's park commissioner, he kept crews working round the clock and finished 1,700 park renovations, and he did this all without a whiff of personal scandal. As Caro writes in The Power Broker, "It was not unusual at park and playground opening ceremonies for children prodded by their parents to break into the cheer." 2, 4, 6, 8. Who do we appreciate? Mr. Moses. Mr. Moses. Mr. Moses. Importantly, Moses could deliver these enormous and popular public works within a timeframe that fit into a single election cycle. If the mayor gave Robert Moses the power to build something, he could expect to be standing at its ribbon cutting before he was up for re-election. Robert Moses, Mayor Wagner, and Cardinal Spellman join other dignitaries in a ribbon cutting at the Brooklyn side of the bridge. Today, it's almost unimaginable that the government could construct big things in a year or 2. For example, construction on the 2nd Avenue Subway in New York began in 1972, and the first section was opened in 2017. Just these initial 2 miles have cost the taxpayers $4.5 billion. A lot of the funding for public works comes from Washington. Cities that receive the most money are the ones that have finalized their blueprints and can start breaking ground as soon as a new federal initiative is announced. Moses had the largest and best team of planners and engineers in the entire country. Because of that, by 1936, New York was getting 1/7 of the money that the federal government had set aside for Depression-era work relief for the entire nation. And the projects that this funding was going towards were the ones chosen by Moses. If the mayor had some different idea about what should be constructed, he'd have to draw up his own plans, which he didn't have the independent technical expertise to do. So he could either build the projects that Moses wanted to build or he could build nothing at all.辞职威胁与利益联盟
凭借办事效率、大众声望以及对资金的掌控，摩西握有极大的筹码，且毫不掩饰地加以利用。
摩西非但不担心被免职，反而在事情未能如愿时不断以辞职相威胁。在瓦格纳市长任内，一名助理曾表示，“他似乎每天都会因为这样那样的事情提出辞职两回左右”。他对拉瓜迪亚（La Guardia）市长以辞职相要挟的频率之高、涉及的事项之琐碎，以至于拉瓜迪亚的律师特意印制了一沓空白表格，上面写着：“我，罗伯特·摩西，特此辞去某某职务”，以此省去摩西每次手写的麻烦。
但这一玩笑背后蕴含着真实的恐惧。市长如果真的批准辞呈，不仅意味着放弃摩西正在推进的工程及其拨付资金，还意味着与全纽约最受敬重的官员公开树敌撕破脸。
或许最关键之处还在于纯粹的固执。摩西耗费多年与城中各大报业老板交好。他经常在掌控《纽约时报》的苏兹贝格（Sulzberger）家族的乡间别墅度周末。市长心知肚明，如果摩西辞职，次日所有报纸的头版都会讲述同一个故事：一个超脱于政治之上的能人，因拒绝在城市利益上妥协而被卑劣的政客挤走。
而摩西从大众声望中获得的权力，与他通过勾连纽约强大的私人利益集团所获得的权力相比，根本不值一提。
今天我们对“邻避效应”（NIMBY，别建在我家后院）非常熟悉，即尽管某些项目广受欢迎，但少数组织严密的集中利益群体却能将其阻挠。而摩西建立的却是一个高度集中的“迎邻”（YIMBY，欢迎建在后院）阵营。
他打造了一台分肥机器，确保在启动新建设时，全州最有权势的人物都能从中分一杯羹：
- 银行无需竞标即可低价折价包销他的债券；
- 工会获得了更多就业岗位；
- 具备政治背景的律师拿到了丰厚诉讼代理费；
- 政党头目则通过为绝无倒塌风险的桥梁代理保险赚取佣金。
每当有人试图阻挡某个项目时——不论此人是区长还是州长本人——摩西都可以依赖这些既得利益者去施压干预。
英文原文
Between his ability to get things done, his popularity, and his control over money, Moses had a lot of leverage, and he was not shy about using it. Far from being worried about getting fired, Moses would constantly threaten to quit whenever he didn't get his way. Under Mayor Wagner, one aide said that "it seemed like he was resigning about one thing or another about twice a day." He threatened resignation to Mayor La Guardia so often and over such small things that La Guardia's lawyer got a stack of forms printed that read, "I, Robert Moses, do hereby resign as so-and-so," to save Moses the trouble of writing it out every single time. But behind that joke was real fear. If a mayor accepted that resignation, not only would he be forfeiting the completion of whatever projects Moses was working on, along with the money that was apportioned for those projects, he'd also be picking a public fight with the most respected official in all of New York. Maybe this is the most important thing: it's just sheer stubbornness. Moses had spent years befriending the owners of the city's newspapers. He spent many weekends at the summer home of the Sulzbergers, the family that owns the New York Times. The mayor knew that if Moses resigned, the next morning all the front pages would tell the same story, about how a man above politics was driven out by a craven politician because he refused to compromise the city's interests. And the power that Moses derived from his popularity with the masses was nothing compared to the power that he derived from his connections with New York's powerful private interests. We are very used today to NIMBY, not in my backyard, where powerful but concentrated interest groups manage to stymie projects despite their raw popularity. Moses built a concentrated faction for YIMBY, yes in my backyard. He built a graft machine that ensured that the most powerful people in the state would all benefit when new construction happened. The banks got to buy his bonds at a steep discount without competitive bidding, the unions got more jobs, politically connected lawyers got legal fees, and party bosses got paid to broker insurance policies on bridges that had no plausible risk of falling down. Moses could then rely on these beneficiaries to call up anyone who stood in the way of one of his projects, whether that was a borough president or the governor himself.从理想主义者到权力成瘾者
在卡洛的笔下，摩西最初是一个理想主义者，而非从一开始就渴望权力的人。
在 20 世纪 10 年代，摩西是一名才华横溢的年轻改革者，加入了当时新兴的良好政府运动，试图以廉洁高效的行政管理取代坦慕尼协会（Tammany Hall）的分肥政治。他花了数年时间与这台政党机器抗争，但他的改革方案遭到扼杀。政党机器取得了胜利，而摩西也从中明白：没有实现理想的权力，理想便毫无用处。
卡洛写道：“最初，以及在他职业生涯的数十年里，罗伯特·摩西所积聚的权力是服务于他梦想的工具，积累权力是为了实现梦想，好让他那重塑城市的宏大愿景变为现实。但权力并非占有者可以毫无代价地任意使用的工具。它就像一种毒品，会让吸食者产生渴求更大剂量的依赖，而摩西正是一个沉溺其中的成瘾者。”
英文原文
Caro paints Moses as somebody who began as an idealist, rather than somebody who craved power from the very start. In the 1910s, Moses was a brilliant young reformer who joined this new good government movement, which was trying to replace Tammany Hall's patronage with honest and competent administration. He spent years fighting this machine, but his reforms got killed. The machine won, and Moses learned that ideals are useless without the power to realize them. Caro writes: "In the beginning, and for decades of his career, the power Robert Moses amassed was the servant of his dreams, amassed for their sake, so that his gigantic, city-shaping visions could become reality. But power is not an instrument that its possessor can use with impunity. It is a drug that creates in the user a need for larger and larger doses, and Moses was a user."林登·约翰逊：机会主义与权力的逆向路径
相比之下，林登·约翰逊的轨迹则截然相反。
在他职业生涯的大部分时间里，几乎没有迹象表明他拥有前后一致的政治意识形态。他是一个冷酷的追逐权力者，无论当时采取何种做法最有利，他都会顺势而为。
当约翰逊初入美国参议院时，他意识到那里最有权势的人是保守的南方民主党人（Dixiecrats），而展现在他们面前的约翰逊则完全顺应了对方的期待。在撰写约翰逊传记第 3 卷《参议院霸主》（Master of the Senate）期间，卡洛采访了佐治亚州前参议员赫尔曼·塔尔梅奇（Herman Talmadge）。他向塔尔梅奇求证，初任参议员的林登·约翰逊对于白人与黑人之间正当关系的态度究竟留下了怎样的印象。
以下引述卡洛对这段对话的回忆：“‘主仆关系。’于是我，”也就是卡洛，“追问：‘难道约翰逊对黑人就没有任何同情心吗？没有任何改善他们境遇的意愿吗？’我的笔记记录当时出现了一段长时间的沉默。接着我记下了塔尔梅奇简短的两个词答复：‘毫无迹象。’又是片刻停顿，随后他说：‘他内心里是与我们站在一起的。我相信他，我相信过他。’”
当然，我们都知道，一旦成为总统，约翰逊就主导推进了《1964年民权法案》和《1965年投票权法案》，这是自重建时期以来最重要的民权法律。
因此，在卡洛的讲述中，摩西始于天真的理想主义，但最终变成了为了权力本身而追求权力的人；而约翰逊从一开始就是一个机会主义者，只有当他掌握了实权之后，他才将这些权力用于几乎无人知晓的他内心深处的理想。
英文原文
Lyndon Johnson's story, on the other hand, is the opposite. Through most of his career, there's little evidence that he had a coherent political ideology. He was a ruthless power seeker who embraced whatever happened to be the most expedient thing to do at that time. When Johnson first entered the US Senate, he realized that the most powerful men there were the conservative Southern Dixiecrats, and the Johnson that they encountered was one who molded himself to their form. While writing Master of the Senate, volume 3 of his Johnson biographies, Caro interviewed former Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge. He asked Talmadge what impression he got from freshman senator Lyndon Johnson about the proper relationship between white people and Black people. Now quoting Caro's recounting of this exchange: "'Master and servant.' So I," Caro, "asked, 'Well, didn't Johnson have any sympathy for Blacks? Any desire to improve their lot?' My notes say, long pause. And then I wrote Talmadge's 2-word reply, 'None indicated.' Another pause, and then, 'He was with us in his heart. I believed him. I believed him.'" Of course, we know that once he became president, Johnson spearheaded the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most important civil rights laws since Reconstruction. So Moses began as a naive idealist but, in Caro's telling, became somebody seeking power for its own sake. Johnson, on the other hand, was an opportunist from the very start, and it was only once he had real power that he used it for ideals few knew that he had.重塑多数党领袖：无实权职位的制度反转
在担任总统之前，林登·约翰逊曾任副总统；在担任副总统之前，他是参议员，并且是美国历史上最有权势的参议院多数党领袖，甚至可以说是这个国家历史上最具实权的立法者。
卡洛这样评价道：“他是参议院的主宰，是一个此前从未有过主宰的机构的掌控者，而在近半个世纪后本书写作之际，也再未出现过第二个人能够做到这一点。”
在约翰逊之前，没有任何领袖掌握过这种权力，因为开国元勋们在设计参议院时，就是刻意为了让其不受单一意志领导。当约翰逊向国会图书馆索取一份多数党领袖法定职权清单时，他发现上面仅仅记载着唯一一项权利：在会议厅内享有优先发言权。
在约翰逊之前，多数党领袖与其说是领袖，不如说更像一个避雷针。参议院未能通过的任何事项，在全美媒体及领袖自己的家乡州都会归咎于他，但他却没有任何实际权力去解决这些失职问题。处于这种两难处境在政治上危害极大，以至于约翰逊之前的两任多数党领袖最终都丢掉了各自的参议员席位。
约翰逊年仅 44 岁便在平均年龄约 60 岁的参议院中成为党派领袖，很大程度上是因为几乎没有其他人愿意接下这份吃力不讨好的差事。在其他人手里，这份工作仍会是一纸空职，但他们都不是林登·约翰逊。
立足于这个职位，约翰逊将自己打造成了全美仅次于总统的第二号实权人物，而他为此采取了三种策略。
英文原文
Before he was president, Lyndon Johnson was vice president, and before he was vice president, Lyndon Johnson was in the Senate, and Lyndon Johnson was the most powerful Senate majority leader, perhaps the most powerful legislator, period, in the history of this country. Here's Caro: "He was master of the Senate, master of an institution that had never before had a master, and that at the time almost half a century later, when this book is being written, has not had one since." No leader before Johnson had wielded this kind of power, because the Senate had deliberately been set up by the founders to not be led. When Johnson asked the Library of Congress for a list of the majority leader's formal powers, he found that there was exactly 1: the right to be recognized first on the floor. Before Johnson, the majority leader was less a leader and more a lightning rod. He'd be blamed in the national press and in his home state for everything that the Senate failed to do, yet he had no actual power to do anything about those failures. Being in this predicament was so politically toxic that Johnson's 2 predecessors as majority leader had both lost their own Senate seats. A big part of the reason that Johnson became his party's leader at just 44 years old, in a Senate whose average age was around 60, was that hardly anybody else wanted this thankless and useless job. In their hands, the job would have remained useless, but they were not Lyndon Johnson. From this position, Johnson turned himself into the second most powerful person in America, right after the president, and he used 3 different tactics to do so.策略一：构建全面筹码与委员会分配权
第一，他获取了充分的筹码。他确保自己手中既有可以承诺的奖赏，也有能够威慑的手段。
约翰逊改造了参议院的规则、制度与惯例，使得只有他一人有权向同僚施予重要的关照：
- 如果某位参议员需要通过某项法案，只有约翰逊能将其排入议程并说服委员会主席提交报告；
- 如果该法案在众议院需要推动，约翰逊是唯一与众议院议长萨姆·雷伯恩（Sam Rayburn）拥有直接沟通渠道的人；
- 如果某位参议员在下届竞选中需要竞选资金以保住席位，约翰逊能够向其家乡得克萨斯州的石油巨头们代为引荐美言。
约翰逊还将自己置于控制委员会席位分配的位置上，而委员会席位正是决定一位参议员整个职业生涯的最关键因素。
在大约一个世纪的时间里，席位分配始终基于资历顺位原则。几乎是一夜之间，约翰逊改变了这一制度，许多席位不再按资历决定，而是由约翰逊掌控的党派指导委员会协商确定。如果想要获得优渥的席位，就必须顺从约翰逊的意图。
1957 年，埃斯蒂斯·基福弗（Estes Kefauver）参议员在一场重要表决中投票反对约翰逊。就在同一周，基福弗原本十拿九稳的外交关系委员会空缺席位，被转而交给了资历远不如他的年轻参议员约翰·F·肯尼迪。
林登·约翰逊真正的政治天才之处，在于找出并掌控针对其同僚的所有可能筹码。无论参议员维持政治生存需要什么——资金、委员会席位，还是事关家乡利益的法案通过——约翰逊既能赐予，也能扣留。
英文原文
First, he gained leverage. He made sure that he had things to promise and things to threaten with. Johnson transformed the Senate's rules, institutions, and norms so that he alone had the power to grant important favors to his colleagues. If a senator needed a bill passed, Johnson was the one who could get it scheduled on the floor and persuade the committee chairman to report it out. If the bill needed help in the House, Johnson was the one who had a direct line to Speaker Sam Rayburn. And if the senator needed money for his next campaign so that he could make sure he remained a senator, Johnson was the one who could put in a good word with the oilmen from his native Texas. Johnson also put himself in a position to control committee assignments, which are the single biggest factor that shapes how a senator's whole career plays out. For about a century, they had been handed out based on seniority. Practically overnight, Johnson changed the system so that many seats were no longer settled by seniority, but rather negotiated by the party steering committee, which Johnson controlled. If you wanted a good seat, you had to do what Johnson wanted. In 1957, Estes Kefauver voted against Johnson on an important motion. That very same week, the highly coveted open seat on the Foreign Relations Committee, which Kefauver was expecting to get, was instead handed over to a far more junior senator named John F. Kennedy. The real political genius of Lyndon Johnson was identifying and then gaining control over every possible source of leverage over his colleagues. Whatever a senator needed to survive, whether that was money, committee seats, or the passage of bills that mattered to his home state, Johnson could give and Johnson could withhold.策略二：利用“一致同意协议”掌控议程
第二个重要策略是制定议程。
一项通过的法案具体表述如何，取决于最终交付表决的是哪个版本以及进行了哪些最终修改。谁能制定这一议程，谁就能控制最终结果。因此，由谁将自己推上这一位置便不言而喻了。
约翰逊控制议程的主要工具是“一致同意协议”（unanimous consent agreement）。
默认情况下，参议院的辩论是没有时间限制的。一名参议员可以就一项法案发表任意长时间的演说；而在发言过程中，他还可以提出与该法案毫无关系的修正案，每一项修正案都可能进一步拖延法案的审议。而一致同意协议针对单一法案暂停了这些程序自由，它明确限定了辩论的分配时间，并限制了提出修正案的机会。
早期的领袖很少使用此类协议；即便偶尔使用，也往往是在某项法案经过数周辩论、各方已筋疲力尽之后才动用。约翰逊则将此类协议的运用变成了参议院的常规做法。在达成此类协议之前，他甚至不允许法案进入大会辩论程序。
原因在于，约翰逊希望完全掌控哪些法案能够交付审议，并防止大会辩论改变任何人的既定主张。他希望每一次投票都在私下预先达成协议，而在私下的交易斡旋中，他的筹码能够发挥最大功效。他最不愿看到的，就是因公开漫长的法案辩论在最后一刻改变某位参议员的主意，或是某项突如其来的修正案破坏了他耗费数周艰苦达成的妥协方案。正如保罗·道格拉斯（Paul Douglas）参议员所言，在约翰逊治下，所有好戏都在大幕拉开前的后台上演完毕。
英文原文
The second important tactic was setting the agenda. What is said by a bill that passes depends on which version actually comes up for a vote and with what final modifications. Whoever gets to set this agenda controls the outcome. So you won't be surprised by who put himself in this position. Johnson's main tool for controlling the agenda was the unanimous consent agreement. By default, Senate debate is unlimited. A senator can talk about a bill for as long as he likes, and as he does so, he can also offer amendments that have nothing to do with that bill, each of which can stall the bill even further. A unanimous consent agreement sets those freedoms aside for a single bill. It fixes the allotted time for debate and constrains the opportunity to amend it. Earlier leaders had rarely used such agreements, and even when they had, they'd only used them after weeks of debate on a bill that had already been exhausted in its deliberations. Johnson made their use the norm in the Senate. He wouldn't even allow a bill to reach the floor until such an agreement was in place. The reason was that Johnson wanted to control which bills reached the floor and to keep the floor from changing anybody's mind, because he wanted every vote settled in private beforehand through the wheeling and dealing where his leverage worked best. The last thing he wanted was for a long public debate about the merits of some bill to change a senator's mind at the very last minute, or for a surprise amendment to unravel a deal that he had spent weeks painstakingly brokering. As Senator Paul Douglas put it, under Johnson, all the action takes place offstage before the play begins.策略三：信息垄断与《1957年民权法案》的利益撮合
约翰逊运用的第三个策略是促成所有对自己有利的交易。
约翰逊确保参议院的内部信息尽可能全部汇总到他一人手中：
- 他让每个委员会指派一名工作人员，向他汇报法案起草的实时进展；
- 他的助理紧盯每一位参议员的一举一动；
- 他自己整天泡在休息室和走廊里，对同僚施以哄劝并倾听诉求。
因此，他确切掌握每一位参议员的真实意图，以及为了达成目标他们愿意和不愿意放弃什么。
在任何一届会期中，参议院都会面对数百个潜在法案和修正案。某位参议员在一项法案上的投票，可以用来交换另一位参议员在另一项法案上的选票；而任何一项法案都可以通过十几种不同的修改方式来争取支持。因此，可供达成的交易组合几乎无穷无尽。约翰逊确保自己成为大多数交易的发起人和撮合者；如此一来，他便能确保每一次交易的最终结果都能让自己占据上风。
一个典型的例子是他如何推动《1957年民权法案》在参议院获得通过。
约翰逊极度渴望确保当年能通过哪怕一部民权法案，即便内容十分微弱。这是因为他志在参选总统，但在 1960 年，一个一贯投票反对民权的南方人绝不可能赢得民主党总统候选人提名。
问题在于，似乎根本不存在这样一部法案：既足够强硬以赢得北方自由派的支持，又足够温和使南方保守派不至于动用冗长辩论阻挠通过。其中的症结在于，由谁来主审南方选举官员被控压制黑人选民投票权的司法案件。南方参议员坚持必须由陪审团审判；但北方参议员对此感到出离愤怒，因为在他们看来，这无异于掏空整个法案的核心。
该法律的全部目的就是打击将黑人公民排除在选民名册之外的行为。但南方各州规定陪审员必须是注册选民，全白人组成的南方陪审团绝不可能认定拒绝对黑人登记的白人登记官有罪。因此，任何一方能够接受的版本，另一方都会断然拒绝。
缺乏创造力的立法者到此往往会退缩。但在长达 7 个月的时间里，约翰逊巧妙构筑了一场涵盖各方不相干阵营的精妙妥协，其附属产物便包括这部民权法律的通过：
- 西部参议员如愿获得了一项他们争取多年、位于爱达荷州与俄勒冈州之间联邦大坝建设的表决权；
- 选区内拥有强大铁路工会的中西部共和党人，获得了将陪审团审判权扩大至罢工工人的条款；
- 温和派获得了一项保障黑人公民能够进入联邦陪审团的条款，从而可以向选民宣称他们创立了一项新的公民权利；
- 与此同时，保障南方选举官员享有陪审团审判权的条款得以保留，这使得法案保持在足够微弱的程度，南方派系因而同意不对其进行冗长辩论阻挠。
爱达荷州的水坝、对工会工人的保护以及联邦陪审团规则，原本与南方的投票权风马牛不相及——至少对于缺乏林登·约翰逊那种内幕洞察与政治创造力的人来说是如此。
英文原文
The third tactic that Johnson employed was brokering all the deals to his advantage. Johnson made sure that as much of the Senate's information as possible ran through him. He had every committee assign a staffer to tell him what was being drafted. His aides tracked what every senator was up to. And he spent his own days in the cloakroom and in the hallways cajoling and listening to his colleagues. So he knew exactly what each senator really wanted and what he would and wouldn't give up to get it. In any session, the Senate faces hundreds of possible bills and amendments. A senator's vote on one bill can be traded for another senator's vote on a different one. And any single bill can be amended a dozen different ways to win somebody over. So there's almost an endless combination of possible deals to be made. Johnson made sure that he was the one instigating and brokering most of these deals. As a result, he would be making sure that any deal left Johnson coming out ahead. A good example is how he got the Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed through the Senate. Johnson was desperate to make sure that at least some civil rights bill passed that year, even if it was weak. That's because he wanted to become president, but no Southerner with his record of consistently voting against civil rights could hope to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. The problem was there seemed to be no bill strong enough to win the Northern liberals, yet weak enough that the Southerners wouldn't filibuster it. The sticking point was who would preside over the court cases where Southern electoral officials were accused of suppressing Black voters. Southern senators insisted on jury trials, but Northern senators were livid because, in their view, this would gut the whole bill. The entire point of the law was to combat the exclusion of Black citizens from the voting rolls. But Southern states required jurors to be registered voters, and an all-white Southern jury would never convict a white registrar for turning away Black voters. So any version that one side could accept, the other would reject. A less creative legislator would have backed out. But over the course of 7 months, Johnson built a masterful deal that brought together wholly unrelated factions and whose byproduct included the passage of this civil rights law. Western senators got a vote on a federal dam that they had wanted for years between Idaho and Oregon. Midwestern Republicans who had powerful railroad unions in their states got the right to a jury trial extended to striking workers. And moderates got a clause guaranteeing that Black citizens could serve on federal juries, so that they could tell voters that they had created a new civil right. Meanwhile, the jury trial guarantee for Southern election officials stayed in, which kept the bill weak enough that Southerners agreed not to filibuster it. A dam in Idaho and protections for union workers and federal jury rules had nothing to do with voting rights in the South, at least not to anyone who lacked the inside knowledge and political creativity of Lyndon Johnson.结语与访谈预告
卡洛的著作是对政治权力运作机制最出色的记录。但这些书写得太引人入胜了，人物比小说更生动，故事比小说更扣人心弦，以至于读者很容易沉醉其中不断翻页，却从未停下来问自己：这些故事揭示了哪些关于权力的经验教训？
我之所以制作这部视频短片，既是为了系统梳理这些经验教训究竟是什么，也是为了让大家具备必要的背景认知，以便在观看我对卡洛的专访时能够像我一样收获良多。
专访将于明天上线。当你们听到这期内容时，采访或许已经发布了。希望你们会喜欢。