The Power Broker

On May 30, 1940, “Boss” Tom Pendergast, the dynamic political scoundrel of Kansas City, emerges from prison after a one-year sentence for the only rap that would stick: tax evasion. Aged and financially depleted, the kingmaker returns to his ill-gotten mansion to find that his wife and adult children have abandoned him in disgrace. Onto the scene comes a young woman, a graduating journalism student who promises to tell the truth—as related by Pendergast—if he’ll consent to an interview. Since he’s despondent and convinced that he’s been “railroaded” by the authorities, he consents. Over the course of the evening the gregarious Democratic Party leader celebrates, exaggerates and fulminates upon his bigger-than-life career.

    Interspersed with calls to gamblers are frenetic calls to FDR and Boss Tom’s own protégé, Harry S. Truman. In the end, the young woman receives an education in reality far removed from the classroom. She determines that the toll taken on the former political giant has addled his mental stability. But it has also taught him—and her—an important lesson in compassion and forgiveness.