Sublime

He was offended by someone campaigning on the ground that he could get more money—in the form of federal projects—for Texas. “The best job is going to be done for Texas in the United States Senate by sending there a man of individual courage, personal convictions and moral stamina to do what he believes is right.… Not political pull but personal in

Moynihan Report,

Robert Moses was a pioneer in the fields of parks and highways, he was also a pioneer in McCarthyism, twenty years before McCarthy.

In 1932 FDR broke the conservatives’ hold on the Democratic party and made it the instrument of liberal reform.

It came from Dallas—from anti-New Deal oilmen who didn’t care what Lyndon Johnson’s politics were so long as he protected their profits. In 1941, the specter of federal regulation by the hated Ickes was becoming more and more of a possibility, and they needed protection in Washington more than ever, and their trusted advisor, Alvin Wirtz, assured t

A humane government looking out for the powerless or less powerful was a necessary counter to business interests that thought primarily about the bottom line. In 1947, Jack did not think of himself as a New Deal liberal, but the housing fight was a first step in that direction. Additional steps were sometimes small, as the struggles over the power

It was his tactics and personality, not national attitudes toward the New Deal, that persuaded tens of thousands of potential supporters to vote against him.

The white working class exists in a world of received, not constructed, morality.

And to the amazement of reporters who had smiled skeptically at the time, La Guardia kept his promise, slashing thousands of nonessential jobs from city payrolls, slashing the salaries of the employees who remained, balancing the city’s budget—and raising the moral tone of government in New York to new heights.