The most successful politician we have right now, and that means anywhere, isn’t running for higher office, at least not yet.
Andrew Cuomo just continues to run the state of New York the way he does, making his government work at a time when the country thinks government is hopelessly broken.
Look at where this state was two years ago. Or four years ago. Or even 10. Look where it is now with Cuomo in charge. Maybe the recovery to talk about isn’t the economic recovery President Obama keeps talking about, it is the one we see from a governor’s office in Albany, one diminished the way it was by Cuomo’s most recent predecessors.
Plenty of smart people think that Cuomo runs for President in 2016, whatever happens in November. Good. At a time when every single poll taken anywhere shows that American people have less confidence in government than at any time in recent history, and maybe all history, look at the way Andrew Cuomo does his job.
Here is what Cuomo said about all that yesterday:
“Government is not supposed to be a debating society, or a popularity contest. It’s not thinking about the next step up the ladder. We run a service bureau here. It’s my job to make the government perform, to deliver for you. That is what I tend to focus on, not things that don’t matter.
“I know what I told the voters I would do. The election, to me, is a handshake. I look you in the eye, I say something, we shake hands. I said I would get up there to Albany and make the government work, that I would focus on that job, that I would be straight with them and do my best. That’s what they would get, win, lose or draw. I am executing on that handshake, nothing more and nothing less. Whatever happens, I am honoring my word.”
Somehow Cuomo, who came to Albany behind Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson, is a big, modern, American politician who believes his job is supposed to be about performance, and not performance art. Somehow Cuomo makes his state work, after all the polls over all the years when people said it could not. A son of a politician doing that at a time when so many Americans think most politicians are just phony, worthless SOB’s.
And you know Cuomo, even being the son of the great Mario Cuomo, has learned so much of this the hard way, learned from his mistakes and being banged around by politics the way he was when he was young.
“I’ve made all the mistakes there were to make in this business,” he said yesterday. “In so many ways, this is the second time around for me. Maybe that’s why I have no time for the politics. The politics are a distraction from me doing my job, and an obstacle. Once the politics start, with Democrats and Republicans, once the political game is being played, that hurts my ability to talk to them as public officials.”
Then he was talking about the ideologues, from both parties, which make so many in this country think government is hopelessly broken:
“Extremists on both sides have ruled the day for too long. So my coalition is simple: Reasonable progressives on both sides of the aisle. I purposefully cultivate them and pay no mind to extremists, on right or the left. Oh, I know, that’s where the heat is in political debate. But that’s where the gridlock is, too.
“Almost everything we’ve passed, we’ve lost with both extremes. And I am totally okay with that. (The current Republican) campaign is being conducted totally on the extreme. That’s the dialogue people are hearing. But what they’re thinking is this: This is not America. They’re not talking to me.”
Cuomo continues to talk to his reasonable progressives, work with them. Look what they have all done in such a short time, with statewide teacher evaluations that were going nowhere, and a balanced budget and gay marriage, and a tax cut for the middle class.
Now he tries to save the state billions by changing pension laws and at this point, you have to say it is a bad bet going against him.
Andrew Cuomo is not just the son of a former governor, and somebody who might be President someday the way his father should have been President. He is also the son of an old St. John’s baseball player.
“I told people that if they elected me governor, I would be the best governor I can possibly be,” Andrew Cuomo told me yesterday. “And you know what? That doesn’t mean hitting home runs all the time. Put the bat on the ball. Singles and doubles. Bat on the ball. That’s what we’ve been doing the past year.
“Our state is so complex. So diverse. Talk about extremes! It’s why reasonable people must be organized. We keep showing they can be. We’re not changing the world. Just putting the bat on the ball. Advancing the runners. And that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Swinging for the fences even when he says he’s not. Running his state the way people want the country run.
