“There is evil and injustice that can be caused by political power, but there is also great good. It seems to me sometimes that people have forgotten this.

”They‘ve forgotten, for example, what Franklin Roosevelt did: how he transformed people’s lives. How he gave hope to people. Now people talk in vague terms about government programs and infrastructure, but they‘ve forgotten the women of the Hill Country [where LBJ grew up] and how electricity [which LBJ brought once he became a congressman] changed their lives. They’ve forgotten that when Robert Moses got the Triborough Bridge built in New York, that was infrastructure. To provide enough concrete for its roadways and immense anchorages, cement factories that had been closed by the Depression had to be reopened in a dozen states; to make steel for its girders, fifty separate steel mills had to be fired up. And that one bridge created thousands of jobs: 31,000,000 man hours of work, done in twenty states, went into it.

“We certainly see how government can work to your detriment today, but people have forgotten what government can do for you. They‘ve forgotten the potential of government, the power of government, to transform people’s lives for the better.”

— Robert Caro, “Working.” Cf., Michael Lewis. The good writers are showing us the way. This is the left finding its voice after 40 years.