Timing an intervention for the decisive moment requires knowing what the beneficiary truly needs

Evidence

For weeks, Alfred E. Smith’s friends had been urging him to issue a statement on Moses’ behalf. Time and again they had told him that he must delay no longer, that Moses could not hold out without help. But while the old warrior was unhappy now and terribly bitter, he had lost none of his wiliness. Wait, he told his friends. The time wasn’t right yet. Moses didn’t need him to hold out. The newspaper editorials and civic association resolutions would enable him to do that. Moses needed him to win. The moment when he should step in was the moment at which the President and the Mayor had been driven to the edge of a decision to give in to Moses and a single push could plunge them over the edge into surrender—if the push was delivered by someone with more influence than a newspaper or a civic association, someone whose name was still a potent force throughout the United States and particularly potent as an influence with La Guardia, who knew that if Smith ever became angry enough to go after his job, he would probably be unable to keep it. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1920

Categorization

• XREF: Al Smith as the older power broker who held his lever in reserve — an echo of the theme of judicious timing seen in other chapters of this book and in any study of political craft.