 Good day, May 40 here. So I'm listening to the classic Robert Caro biography, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses who was a New York City Parks Commissioner and influential New York City power broker from 1920s to about 1960 and in around 1934 Robert Moses decides to run for governor of New York and he has the support of the old guard, the people with all the money, even though he's pretty much a progressive candidate, he's running as a Republican and he just does everything wrong. So the book is called The Power Broker because Robert Moses was so good at how he wielded power but even people who are incredibly good at wielding power, they get in an unfamiliar situation, one that's maybe not conducive to their success and he just bollocks everything up. It's so funny. So until this point Robert Moses had only received the glowing treatment from the news media but now he's running for major political office for the first time. He receives the kind of skeptical probing treatment that the news media dishes out to someone who is a nominee for one of the two major parties and he reacts really badly. Like he starts lecturing the press. I don't know about you but I don't like to be lectured. So just the other day someone asked me about my resolutions for the new year. I said, oh yeah I want to lose three kilograms, about ten pounds. And the bloke said, oh you want to know how to do that. I said no but he didn't care. He just went on lecturing me about how to lose weight and I didn't want to hear it. And so people don't like to be lectured but Robert Moses would just berate and lecture at the press. So the press had always given him really positive, laudatory coverage but now he absolutely blows it with them. And then he goes to many of his friends who he'd worked with who tended to be leaders of the Democratic Party and he just assumes their support. He goes to dinner with them and says, oh I assume I can count on your support. And these are Democrats. He's running as a Republican and they say, no I'm a Democrat and he won't speak to them again for decades afterwards. Or he announces he's got the support of New York City's mayor when he doesn't. So he just misplays everything. He doesn't take any advice about how to be a politician and the situation of being a politician is very different from being a bureaucrat or a pundit or a businessman. At different situations, different tasks, different roles require different skills. And just because you're good in business or a good power broker behind the scenes or a powerful bureaucrat doesn't mean that you're going to make a great politician. So he just completely misreads the situation. Someone is just so incredibly canny about power. So you're looking out at Boine Island here at low tide, incredibly good with power but gets himself in an unfamiliar situation and he just does everything wrong. So Robert Moses obviously is Jewish but he gets really angry whenever anyone mentions that he's Jewish. He says, no I'm not Jewish. So that kind of inauthenticity is not appealing. He would start his speeches by saying, now I'm not here to represent the old guard and he complained about the news media as always portraying him as the representative of the moneyed interest. And that hadn't happened. There had been barely any news media coverage of this but even the hint of impropriety, even the hint of being in someone's pocket and Robert Moses would just go off and he'd make the very thing that he wanted to deny he'd make that front and center as a major issue. It's like when people say, oh Joe Blow is irrelevant. Well if Joe Blow really was irrelevant you wouldn't need to waste your breath saying that he's irrelevant. Bush administration officials would say that Yassir Adrafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization that he was irrelevant. Well he was really irrelevant. You wouldn't need to say so. So Robert Moses so skilled in the exercise of power in so many areas but just completely misread the situation. Others wouldn't take advice. I just assumed that he knew how to do things because he'd been successful in some areas of politics as a bureaucrat and behind the scenes player. Just assumed that he'd know how to do it in running for major political office and he was an absolute disaster. So being so sure that you know how things work and you enter a new realm is not very wise. It's like the under owner who doesn't really like to work very much and just wants to surf the internet on work time and just tells himself, oh I can get away with it. Well if you can get away with it, now why have you been fired 20 times? If you can get away with it, why have you been humiliated and embarrassed so many times? If you can get away with it, why do you have so many poor performance reviews? So as a 12 step sponsor, I love to hear my sponsors and my own excuses and then have my sponsors or I will sit down and write about, okay this is the lie that I tell myself, oh I can get away with it. How's that working out? What events, what humiliations, what disasters disproved my assertion that I can get away with it? Or I can just skate by here on my charm of personality and good looks, right? So how many humiliations have I suffered with that kind of attitude?