Moses’ reform zeal evaporated the moment he lost Smith’s protection.

Evidence

His aggressiveness had, after all, turned out to be not the hostility of the radical, idealistic reformer to property and power but something quite the opposite, an expression of his regard for power, an acknowledgment of the fact that he had on his side, in the person of that uneducated, practically illiterate demagogue from the Fulton Fish Market, the one man in the state with power equal to theirs and therefore did not have to compromise with them. As soon as he no longer had this power behind him, he had changed, suddenly, dramatically and, to them, satisfyingly. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1774

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ch17’s ‘The acquisition of power transformed Moses’ character’ and the earlier theme that idealism lasted only while a powerful patron backed it. — connects to: Moses by 1945 had become the practical politician he once condemned — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 2980; Al Smith despised the uncompromising idealist that Robert Moses once was — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 573