Definition
A political feud is a durable personal conflict between two political figures that survives changes in office, party, and circumstance, and shapes policy outcomes long after its original cause is forgotten. Feuds are usually rooted in a moment of perceived disrespect or betrayal; once formed, they become a permanent feature of the political landscape, routed around by allies and exploited by enemies.
The Power Broker is full of feuds. The longest and most consequential is Robert Moses's with Franklin Roosevelt, which began in Albany in the 1920s and continued, with public and private skirmishes, until Roosevelt's death in 1945. The most personal is the cold campaign Moses ran against his own brother, Paul.
Why it matters
How it works
A feud is generated when two ambitious, proud people share an institutional space too small for both of their egos. The original conflict is usually small — a snub, a memo, a missed appointment — but each party reads the slight as a moral statement about character and refuses to back down. Each subsequent encounter retransmits the original insult; bystanders pick sides; the dispute calcifies into a fixture of institutional life.
Once entrenched, a feud creates a parallel decision-making process. Memos must be checked against the question of which side they help. Appointments must be vetted for personal entanglements with the rival. Money must be routed around contested terrain. The administrative cost is large and largely invisible to outsiders, which is why the same feuds keep recurring across generations and institutions.