A governor’s defeat can doom the reform program the defeated governor championed

Evidence

For a while, dreams had seemed near to realization. Genuine accomplishment had seemed close. Moses had, after all, been the moving force in the drafting of a plan to remake the machinery by which more than ten million people were governed, and he had watched the bills that embodied a substantial portion of that plan move tortuously but steadily along the road to reality. But without at least the sixteen-department constitutional amendment, the statutory changes were meaningless, and, in 1921, Miller opposed the amendment’s repassage and the Legislature never let it, or the executive-budget and four-year-term proposals, out of committee. The Citizens Committee on Reorganization in the State Government—with its “extra office at the home of the secretary without expense to the committee”—was disbanded. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 483

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the governance-reform literature: state reorganization plans are hostage to the electoral fortunes of their executive sponsors. — connects to: Apparent political defeats can conceal the seed of a lasting personal victory — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 484
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the pattern (from prior chapters of this book) of idealistic programmatic plans collapsing when their political patron leaves office — reform rides on personalities.

Broader Connections

• Apparent political defeats can conceal the seed of a lasting personal victory #complicates (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 484