NEWS
Editorial Cuomos Not Great Embarrassment
In this Friday's edition of the Mountain Eagle.
You’ve seen the video by now. Governor Andrew Cuomo told a crowd that America wasn’t ever that great. The next day he backtracked and said the exact opposite. His primary opponent Cynthia Nixon said, “"I think this is just another example of Andrew Cuomo trying to figure out what a progressive sounds like and missing by a mile.” Republican nominee Marc Molinaro said “‘Inartful’ isn’t an apology, it’s a cop-out,”
I’m not going to spill a lot of ink refuting the Governor’s first statement, even though it’s one that I fervently disagree with. There’s plenty of state and national writers that could do so better than I could.
However, I would like to talk about the context of the Governor’s flubs. We don’t write a lot about national politics but Governor Cuomo has made it a point to be a prominent figure in our entire coverage area.
Governor Cuomo’s statement doesn’t make sense. However, it makes perfect sense that he would say it.
Andrew Cuomo is the embodiment of why America is great. Not because of his actions, but because of how the country has treated his family.
His father Mario was born to two Italian immigrants and grew up in Queens. He went to public school, then St. John's Law, and played in minor league baseball. In one generation, the United States took a poor son of immigrants, sent him to a private law school, made him governor, considered by Bill Clinton for the Supreme Court, and allowed him to flirt with the presidency several times.
Andrew grew up in the shadow of his father's political rise, attending the private Fordham University and Albany Law School. He founded a charity for the homeless, married (and divorced) the niece of President Kennedy (and daughter of Senator and likely-future-president Robert F. Kennedy), served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, NYS Attorney General, and now may win a third term as Governor. His brother is a prominent CNN anchor.
What other nation would allow such a rapid rise? For all of America’s faults, it provided the crucial backdrop for political success that Andrew Cuomo does not appreciate. He is a child of privilege and his 2018 statements are far from his immigrant grandparents’ small shop in Jamaica, Queens.
Power-- from the way he governs in Albany-- is a means to its own end rather than a way to improve public welfare. His waffling on just about every issue-- gay marriage, taxes, fracking, pipelines, the tax cap, and even the ethos of the United States show why he’s being challenged from the left by Cynthia Nixon for having no true political moorings and from the right by Marc Molinaro for acting in a way that earned him the popular Upstate moniker of “King Andrew.”
His father used a similar line of thinking in his keynote address supporting Walter Mondale in the 1984 Democratic National Convention. He jabbed at Ronald Reagan: “Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill.” The speech did as little good for Mondale as Andrew’s did last week. President Reagan carried 49 states compared to Mondale’s 1.
Politicians triangulate and pander from local boards to state houses and DC. That’s nothing new. It’s the cold political calculus that makes Governor Cuomo different. America is great-- and the Governor should start taking notes instead of potshots he thinks will get him applause.
You’ve seen the video by now. Governor Andrew Cuomo told a crowd that America wasn’t ever that great. The next day he backtracked and said the exact opposite. His primary opponent Cynthia Nixon said, “"I think this is just another example of Andrew Cuomo trying to figure out what a progressive sounds like and missing by a mile.” Republican nominee Marc Molinaro said “‘Inartful’ isn’t an apology, it’s a cop-out,”
I’m not going to spill a lot of ink refuting the Governor’s first statement, even though it’s one that I fervently disagree with. There’s plenty of state and national writers that could do so better than I could.
However, I would like to talk about the context of the Governor’s flubs. We don’t write a lot about national politics but Governor Cuomo has made it a point to be a prominent figure in our entire coverage area.
Governor Cuomo’s statement doesn’t make sense. However, it makes perfect sense that he would say it.
Andrew Cuomo is the embodiment of why America is great. Not because of his actions, but because of how the country has treated his family.
His father Mario was born to two Italian immigrants and grew up in Queens. He went to public school, then St. John's Law, and played in minor league baseball. In one generation, the United States took a poor son of immigrants, sent him to a private law school, made him governor, considered by Bill Clinton for the Supreme Court, and allowed him to flirt with the presidency several times.
Andrew grew up in the shadow of his father's political rise, attending the private Fordham University and Albany Law School. He founded a charity for the homeless, married (and divorced) the niece of President Kennedy (and daughter of Senator and likely-future-president Robert F. Kennedy), served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, NYS Attorney General, and now may win a third term as Governor. His brother is a prominent CNN anchor.
What other nation would allow such a rapid rise? For all of America’s faults, it provided the crucial backdrop for political success that Andrew Cuomo does not appreciate. He is a child of privilege and his 2018 statements are far from his immigrant grandparents’ small shop in Jamaica, Queens.
Power-- from the way he governs in Albany-- is a means to its own end rather than a way to improve public welfare. His waffling on just about every issue-- gay marriage, taxes, fracking, pipelines, the tax cap, and even the ethos of the United States show why he’s being challenged from the left by Cynthia Nixon for having no true political moorings and from the right by Marc Molinaro for acting in a way that earned him the popular Upstate moniker of “King Andrew.”
His father used a similar line of thinking in his keynote address supporting Walter Mondale in the 1984 Democratic National Convention. He jabbed at Ronald Reagan: “Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill.” The speech did as little good for Mondale as Andrew’s did last week. President Reagan carried 49 states compared to Mondale’s 1.
Politicians triangulate and pander from local boards to state houses and DC. That’s nothing new. It’s the cold political calculus that makes Governor Cuomo different. America is great-- and the Governor should start taking notes instead of potshots he thinks will get him applause.