Skip to main content

He did it his way




I remember listening to Mario Cuomo's keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 1984 and wishing he was running for President and not Walter Mondale.  I was sure he would run in 1988 and again in 1992, but Cuomo ducked out both times.  My father felt he had too many skeletons in his closet, but it seems that Cuomo preferred Albany to Washington.

His tenure finally ran out in 1994 when he was upset by George Pataki in what proved to be a watershed year for Republicans.  George Bush similarly scored a surprise victory in Texas over the well-liked Ann Richards.  They both had a great sense of humor about it, but I have to think that loss hurt.  His once formidable political clout was gone and he was relegated to a periphery figure in American politics.

It was his good fortune to father a son who would restore his dynasty in New York, but it isn't the same. Andrew is not the great speechmaker his father was and he struggles to place himself at the center of national politics, which Mario was.

Mario Cuomo was that rare political animal, one who had an inner being.  He took time to read, to digest information and form intelligent opinions, not just play off emotions the way most politicians do.  It is hard to say whether he would have made a good president but the way he was able to balance rival political interests in New York should serve as a model for any executive.

It is hard to think of him as a liberal, as he adopted many Republican concerns like spending cuts and a balanced budget.  I remember a Village Voice article commenting on whether he was a "Closet Republican."  Somehow, he managed to keep just enough social programs intact to make liberals relatively content while convincing moderates he was fiscally responsible.  Call it "progressive pragmatism" if you like but it was a  recipe that earned him three terms as governor.

One can't really say he will be missed, as his political career ended 20 years ago and he kept a relatively low profile since then.  He returned to law and authored a handful of books including Why Lincoln Matters.  Given the outcome of the 1994 gubernatorial election, one can't help but think he missed his moment in 1992, when he could have very much won the Democratic nomination.  Just the same, Mario Cuomo will certainly be remembered.

Comments

  1. Good guy who was well liked by folks from both parties. He loved NY and, truth be told, had no business even thinking of running for national office. I'm glad he stayed home.

    ReplyDelete
  2. He was one of my favorites. I coudn't understand his losing to empty suit Pataki for governor, but some of the folks were convinced that there should be "change."

    ReplyDelete
  3. It was too bad that he disappeared from the national scene after his loss in 1994. He was one of the most intelligent politicians we have had and really missed his perspective. Seems he was content to let Andrew carry his mantle.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...