Hoping to gain some perspective on the dynamics holding back progress, I began reading up on the project’s history, building a spreadsheet that tracked all the erstwhile attempts to answer Moynihan’s call to action. I began reaching out to people who had been involved in various schemes, many of which had been abandoned years, if not decades, earlier. I spent hours listening to frustrations narrated by disillusioned representatives of City Hall, of the state’s economic development agency, of both the national railroad that owned the station (Amtrak) and the state-owned railroads that delivered commuter trains from New Jersey and Long Island, of Madison Square Garden executives, and of the megadevelopers hoping to erect skyscrapers in the surrounding neighborhood. I soon came to accept that everyone had a legitimate interest in the project—and most had good intentions. But they simply couldn’t divine a way forward because not everyone’s interests were aligned. (Location 224)
Tags: pink
Nearly every player involved in the negotiation had something significant to lose if the redevelopment took any certain turn. And while nearly everyone was willing to show some flexibility in pursuit of the greater good, no one was willing to abandon their own interests too severely. The result was an impenetrable Rashomon, with everyone laying blame at the feet of some purportedly intractable partner. If only federal bureaucrats had approved more funding. If only Amtrak had been more flexible in scheduling track construction. If only the preservationists had approved demolishing a hidden wall. If only a peevish governor had exerted his leverage over the Dolans. If only the Dolans had relented. If only, if only, if only. (Location 233)
They simply believed it was time to install someone with sufficient authority to drive projects to their completion—someone who could cut through all the “if onlys.” (Location 245)
Penn Station was caught in the flip circumstance: Power had been so diffused that any minor objection would upend the whole thing. This wasn’t a shift in personality—it was a transformation in the architecture of power itself. (Location 252)
Tags: blue
What the researchers uncovered about the voters they termed “liberals” was noteworthy. Policies separating immigrant children from their parents, banning abortion, and preventing Muslims from entering the United States turned out to be more salient than policies increasing the minimum wage, providing Medicare for all, or capping carbon emissions. The issues that resonated most powerfully painted government as a menace—as an institution poised to rip families apart, rob women of their bodily autonomy, and discriminate on the basis of religion. Issues that framed government as a salve—proposals to raise family incomes, expand access to health care, and save the earth from a climate catastrophe—were less heartrending.14 In essence, a movement that’s purported to be bent on growing government appears, upon closer inspection, more driven to paring it back. (Location 306)
our individual politics are brewed up from some combination of emotion and rationality, nature and nurture, logic and values, such that we come to issues of policy through narrative.15 We develop stories to help us make sense of reality—the famed journalist Walter Lippmann termed these the “pictures in our head”—and we then use those frames to make sense of politics. (Location 323)
Tags: pink
The first of the two is framed by the misery born of chaos—a narrative steeped in our images of tenement-dwelling immigrants, of the “Okies” making their way west in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, of New Orleanians stranded after Katrina, of children starving in refugee camps, of polar bears trapped on melting icebergs. In the face of these privations, progressives rue the absence of authority—they long for a heroic figure equipped to save the day. Set amid various tragedies of the common, progressivism’s first narrative dreams of pulling power up and into a node of authority equipped to make things better from above. (Location 328)
The second narrative is born not from chaos but from tyranny. Centralized authority, in this frame, is less a salve than a menace. King George. The slave driver. The bureaucrat requiring a rape victim to bring her pregnancy to term. The cop with his knee on George Floyd’s neck. Robert Moses. In these circumstances, the progressive impulse isn’t to push authority up—it’s “to speak truth to power,” to cashier the tyrant and shield the victim. (Location 336)
Alexander Hamilton, leader of the Federalists, worried primarily about chaos. He wanted to place more authority in the hands of centralized officials and financiers capable of developing America into an industrial dynamo—a “Hercules” on the global stage.22 His worry was that America would remain too disorganized, too divided, too chaotic to make the most of its opportunity.23 Pulling power into a leadership class would deliver more for the public. (Location 347)