The Candidate (Part 2 of 3)

Core idea

The second part of The Candidate recounts specific campaign moments in painful detail. Caro is unsparing: Moses proposing a sales tax in the conservative-Republican heartland; Moses attacking Lehman's campaign chair Jack Murray by dredging up Murray's deceased father's old political associations; Moses sneering at upstate concerns about taxation. Each episode reads as deliberate self-sabotage. Caro's interpretation is that Moses, at some level, did not want to win — running for governor would have forced him to give up the Parks Department, the Triborough Authority, and the entire Long Island operation. He preferred to lose.

Why it matters

The Binghamton tax speech

Moses chose Binghamton — a conservative, upstate, manufacturing town with a vocal anti-tax Chamber of Commerce — to advocate a state sales tax. The speech was technically defensible and politically suicidal. Reporters and voters could not believe what they were hearing. Caro presents it as a near-perfect example of a candidate sabotaging himself.

The dead-father attacks

Lehman's campaign committee included men whose deceased fathers had been linked to old political controversies. Moses attacked the men on the basis of their fathers' decades-old associations. The attacks were widely viewed as low even by 1930s political standards. The press cited them as evidence of Moses's contemptuous temperament.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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Practical application

Example

Various reluctant candidates in modern politics show the pattern: they run because they were drafted; they sabotage their own message because they preferred the day job. Moses, in 1934, was almost certainly in this category.

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