Governor Smith neutralized legislative opposition through social charm and fait accompli

Evidence

And when they protested to the Governor, he bourbon-coated the pill he was making them swallow. Inviting them to see for themselves what Moses was doing, he suggested they come to New York City first, sleep over at the Biltmore and then go on to Long Island in the morning. At the Biltmore, as Moses would later recall, “the Governor got Hewitt and Hutchinson to stay overnight in his apartment. They were drinking bozos, you know, and they were really putting it away. As the evening wore on, the Governor put some records on and he was teaching these two fellows to dance. I left at 2 A.M. [Henry] Lutz [a Moses aide] stayed until five and he told me that it was about then that the Governor and he and Hewitt put Hutchinson to bed. Hewitt got up at seven the next morning and ordered a big breakfast for himself and the Governor and they went in to ask Hutchinson what he wanted and Hutchinson sort of groaned, lying there in bed, and said, ‘Governor, go away. The stomach revolts at the thought of food.’ ” During the tour, Smith was at his friendliest. “You see,” Moses would say, “in so many cases, things come down to personalities, to the human factor. And they loved the Governor.” And even if they hadn’t, what, after all, could they do? The Highway and Conservation Department budgets had already been approved. Money was being spent under them. If they tried to reopen the budgets, it would be a mess. And what would the press say? After all, there was the election coming. They decided not to interfere with the program. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 935

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Illustrates how powerful actors neutralize opposition through personal charm, timing, and creating unstoppable fait accomplis — a mechanism of power relevant to how entrenched infrastructure projects in the grafting article become effectively unopposable.
• XREF: connects to: Governor Smith orchestrated instant counter-persuasion against hesitant park reformers. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 881