“Oops, Sorry”

Robert Moses, adored by the press. From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

The media, whose amplification of his statements without analysis or correction played so vital a role in making the public susceptible to the blandishments of his policies, carried out the same effective if unintentional propaganda for his personality. Continually, in five- or six-part series or Sunday-supplement feature stories or long interviews, it said he was totally honest and incorruptible, tireless in working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days for the public, and it allowed him to repeat or repeated itself the myths with which he had surrounded himself — that he was absolutely free of personal ambition or any desire for money or power, that he was motivated solely by the desire to serve the public, that, despite unavoidable daily contact with politicians, he kept himself free from any contamination by the principles of politics. His flaws reporters and editorialists made into virtues: his vituperation and personal attacks on anyone who dared to oppose him were “outspokenness”; his refusal to obey the rules and regulations of the WPA or laws he had sworn to uphold was “independence” and a refusal to let the public interest be hampered by “red tape” and “bureaucrats”; his disregard of the rights of individuals or groups who stood in the way of completion of his projects was refusal to let anything stand in the way of accomplishment for the public interest. If he insisted that he knew best what that interest was, they assured the public that was indeed the case. If there were larger, disturbing implications in these flaws — they implied that he was above the law, that the end justifies the means, and that only he should determine the end — they ignored these implications or joked about them; columnist Westbrook Pegler dubbed Moses’ technique of driving stakes without legal authorization and then defying anyone to do anything about them, the “Oops, Sorry” technique.

Westbrook Pegler? He has been called “one of the godfathers of right-wing populism.” Caro notes that Pegler called Moses “one of the greatest administrators of public office that we have ever had” and thought he’d make a good president.

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