Book Review: The Path to Power by Robert Caro
Performative Idiocy and the Path to Power
03-15-2025 • Ryan Prendergast
Recently i watched "Mickey 17". It's an objectively good movie with an objectively great premise. Robert Pattinson and Naomi Ackie are extraordinary. It falls flat, though, by insisting on over-the-top grotesque, idiot villains. This movie isn't alone: Don't Look Up, Triangle of Sadness, White Lotus, Succession, Homelander, are some other examples from the past five years. What does it mean that so many movies cast the rich and powerful as obscene grotesque iditos?
The thesis I have is "leaders and rich people are grotesque idiots" should NOT be read as a descriptive claim on what power is. Rather, it should be read as a prescriptive claim on what power should be. Convincingly performing the idiot is a necessary prerequisite before the people accept you as powerful. It's the ritual an aspiring 20 something must do before his claim to power can be accepted. Truisms like "the administration doesn't care about us" and "they're all a bunch of idiots at the top" are fairy tales for the other smart, rich people who don't have power, and they demand a comforting story in exchange for the legitimization of your power. You either need to be an idiot, evil, or both, and if you don't choose one, it will be chosen for you. It's the crowning ceremony for people with brownstones in Manhattan.
I've been reading Robert Caro's Lyndon B Johnson series, and it has me wondering: What, if any, is the "path to power" in the 21st century? Performative idiocy is the answer. If you are a 20-something striver who intends to amass power and influence through one of the avenues--business, influencer, politics, corporate ladder, etc--you should start idiocy-maxxing as soon as possible. Stop thinking before you speak. Publicly ask a question that someone in your field should have learned in Intro 101. Put out the first draft and get 10 comments how that's wrong; you need to do X instead of Y. You will get your work done much faster and with less effort. Nothing is more powerful than an over performing idiot.
Beware the curse of the promising young executive who refuses to be an idiot, until finally the people relent and declare him evil instead.
For each position of power and influence, there are tens of thousands of capable people with the necessary qualifications. Their approval of your powerful is important, because their collective disapproval can veto your power by preference cascade.
If they believe you are smarter than them, you will meet an organization guided by the CIA Manual for Sabotage. They'll see it as a challenge to find your limits, and won't back off until they find it, happily convinced you're an idiot.
