Proximity to raw deal-making can teach the mechanics of destroying opponents

Evidence

Moses was close enough to Jimmy Walker—physically if not spiritually—to learn from him, too, as he coached the mercurial Beau James on the technical aspects of the administration proposals that the floor leader had to steer through a Senate in which the Democrats had a bare one-vote majority. When Ellwood Rabenold, a reformer who had been elected to the Senate on the Democratic ticket and whose independence was continually imperiling the one-vote majority, not only refused Walker his vote on one crucial measure but rose on the Senate floor to chastise the floor leader for “undue pressure,” Moses, kneeling beside Walker, heard the dapper little man snarl under his breath, “I’ll ruin him, I’ll ruin him”—and he watched as, in succeeding months, Walker remorselessly drove Rabenold out of politics. Kneeling there on the burgundy carpet, Moses heard the deals by which other Democrats—and Republicans, when needed—were kept or brought into line: the judgeship traded for a senator’s vote on a crucial issue, the “campaign contribution” promised for an alteration in a legislator’s stand. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 612

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail of a senator being ruined on the floor as an aspiring reformer kneels beside the ruiner is the kind of grim anecdote a political-history buff would savor.
• XREF: connects to: Understanding an enemy is a precondition of fighting it

Broader Connections

• Understanding an enemy is a precondition of fighting it #expands (0.75)