Saturday, December 4, 2010

What's Wrong With New York?

I've written about political corruption in Albany a few times in these pages. See here and here.

Mostly I concluded, and continue to conclude, that the issue is very complex, politicians' approaches to the issue have tended to infantilize it, and that no approach will succeed until the issue is taken seriously. Stricter rules, by themselves, are not an attempt to take the issue seriously. They are window dressing, at best, distractions at worst.

That corruption is rampant in Albany is something of a cliché at this point. Usually corruption is, like dysfunction, a code word for “the system didn't produce the results I wanted, therefore there must be something wrong with it.” Few, however, would disagree that the New York State Legislature has been corrupt and dysfunctional even apart from any results it has, or has not, produced! But I have to say I think there is a degree to which I didn't realize just how corrupt Albany was until I heard about the plight of now-former (as of Friday December 3, 2010) State Senator Vincent Leibell. See here and here.

From everything I have read and every insider I have spoken to (or listened to when it appeared I was not listening), Vincent Leibell would have stood an excellent chance of winning a “State Senator least likely to be corrupt” award, had such an award existed. If there were any indications until now that he was corrupt, I didn't see them in anything I read about him, and no one I ever spoke to or listened to had any inkling.

Did I miss something, I wonder? Did those whom I spoke to or listened to miss something? Perhaps. Maybe this wasn't a surprise to everyone, like it was to me.

Or, perhaps, things have gotten so bad in Albany that even whose who appear honest aren't.

After Leibell's troubles have come to light, the cliché that Albany (and the New York State Legislature in particular) is corrupt to the core seems to me to be less cliché than fact. I do not mean to say that every politician, or even every State Legislator, whose feet have ever touched Albany is corrupt; that would be a statistical implausibility. (I am no longer prepared to call anything impossible, but calling it implausible seems safe.) But I do mean that, after Vinnie Leibell's troubles came to light, I no longer feel safe in assuming that most of New York's public servants are honest, keep their noses as clean as the savage nature of political life will allow, and want to do good. I no longer believe that corruption isn't the norm. I no longer believe that Albany's “culture of corruption” is the product of too many bad apples whose actions have a very large ripple effect. Such beliefs, which I once considered realistic, now seem naïve.

In brief, after the revelations about Vinnie Leibell, I'm way more inclined to think that corruption is the norm.

Through a lot of reading on political ethics, I've realized something interesting and disturbing: The corruption in the New York State Legislature breaks many key expectations Political Scientists have about corruption in State Legislatures. Alan Rosenthal, a scholar from New Jersey, suggests we can expect State Legislatures to be less corrupt if they are professionalized, which New York's Legislature surely is. He also writes that by and large State Legislatures are less corrupt today (though technically when he wrote this it was in the 1990s) than they were in the 1960s. If this is true in New York I dread to think of the 1960s.

So what's going on? What's wrong with New York? What's going on that makes Alan Rosenthal, who has devoted a career to studying State politics, wrong in some of his key expectations (at least when it comes to New York)?

Another Political Scientist, Joseph F. Zimmerman (who teaches at SUNY Albany and, like Alan Rosenthal, has been investigating state politics for many years), suggests that an “individualistic” political culture, like New York's, promotes political corruption. While this may be true, he also suggests, rightly, that alternative political cultures can't be set up easily. And I would like to think that there are ways to stem corruption other than wholesale alterations of a State's political culture. New York State's individualism has had many positive effects which I would hate to lose.

Zimmerman also wrote that political corruption was “limited only by the ingenuity of the human mind.” Surely, and sadly, this is one way in which Political Science's expectations are not broken by the New York State experience.

From what I have heard and read of baseball during the 1980s and 1990s, if you were a baseball player back then, you faced a stark choice between using steroids and accepting a second-class status. Maybe that's the issue here as well. Maybe after seeing “everyone else” get away with so much, one feels stupid for not being corrupt.

Maybe the New York State Legislature, despite having a pretty large staff (the State Senate alone is a $100 million a year business and surely a good amount of that is staff), doesn't have the right kind of staff. Perhaps the staff is too politically minded, is too focused on finding problems that need to be solved and not focused enough on finding solutions to known problems, and perhaps telling the boss what he doesn't want to hear. (Another Political Scientist, Michael Malbin, describes a similar dynamic among Congressional staff. Now that I think about it, he's written about ethics too. And now that I think about it a little more, he teaches at SUNY Albany, along with Joseph Zimmerman).

One would think that someone on staff should have told Vinnie Leibell to not do whatever it was he was doing. Maybe no one felt comfortable saying no to the boss. Maybe he kept whatever he was doing to himself. Even had Leibell's actions not risen to the level of a federal crime, surely they would've looked bad. And I should think that, as a politician, Vinnie Leibell understood that he had to mind his image. And if he didn't, someone on staff should have. Or, perhaps Leibell just didn't listen.

Perhaps it's simply the fact that New York State doesn't take ethics seriously. Alan Rosenthal and Joseph Zimmerman both agree that ethics needs to be taken seriously as a policy issue. There are no easy answers. Attempts at easy answers fail. New York's current ethics law is alone proof of that. The pathetic “mocha protocol” has done nothing to stem the rising tide of legislative corruption.

No matter how much more there is to say on political ethics, I find myself returning again and again to my shock. Vinnie Leibell, who from what I can tell was known for his honesty and integrity and intelligence, is, it would seem, corrupt.

If Vinnie Leibell is corrupt, as far as I am concerned, all of them probably are, to one degree or another.

So, what's wrong with New York?

Perhaps Leibell's troubles will serve as a wake-up call? No, I don't think so. Joe Bruno's conviction wasn't a wake-up call for the Democratic Senate leadership. If it had been, surely the AEG scandal wouldn't have happened.

So, what's wrong with New York? How many wake-up calls does the New York State Legislature need before it finally wakes up? How does New York so-completely break the expectations of people who have spent a career studying politics?

I have cited three Political Scientists in this article. Any one of them, or all of them together, could help to inform a new ethics policy, one which would surely be literate and realistic and deal with the issue in an intelligent way. And they may even have insights into what makes New York so unique, or at least makes it seem so unique, on this front, why New York breaks expectation. Two of them work in walking distance of the New York State Capitol. The other works in New Jersey, which isn't all that far away. Pick up the phone, send staff to the library.

What's wrong with New York?

More words fail me.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Paranoid Prince: Carl Paladino and Two of America's Darkest Political Traditions

Carl Paladino is many things, but going away is not one of them. First of all he's said he isn't going away. And secondly, nothing about his personality that we've seen in public suggests that he'd go away, even if he hadn't already said he wouldn't.

So, no, as much as we might like, Carl Paladino isn't going away. As a present and potentially future political power, Paladino warrants further consideration despite his crushing loss. His defeat at the hands of Andrew Cuomo was so crushing that it's easy to forget his rout of Rick Lazio to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the first place.

Carl Paladino, I argue, can be understood in part as belonging to two dark American political traditions. Referencing these two traditions is not the only appropriate way to understand Paladino, but they are a way to do so.

One of these traditions is described by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince, one of the most famous books about politics ever written (and deservedly so). Among many other observations, much of Machiavelli's work can be seen as describing politics as a kind of fetishized violence. Politics, as Machiavelli described it, is the imposition of one's whims on the unwilling. Politics is rape.

The other tradition is what Historian Richard Hofstadter called the “paranoid style.” The political paranoid tends to see his political enemies as part of a great conspiracy, against the paranoid and against the paranoid's way of life, which typically is seen by the paranoid as representative in some way of the best American traditions and values.

Neither of these traditions are exclusive to America, of course, but we'll mostly be considering them in their American forms.

The Would-Be Prince: Machiavelli and Paladino

In 1513, Niccollo Machiavlli wrote The Prince as in essence a job interview for a gig as a political consultant or adviser. In this work, Machiavelli more or less by accident changed the face of political analysis, and arguably at once made himself into the first modern political scientist and the first modern political consultant, both at once.

The term “Machiavellian” has become something of a political slur, implying a total, amoral ruthlessness. However, legitimate interpretations of Machiavelli do not stop at the famous formulation of “the ends justifies the means.” Machiavelli is much more complex than that, and can alternately be described as either “better” or “worse” than his famous restatement. Better in the sense that there's some evidence that Machiavelli's real ambition was to find a kind of patriot-king to unify Italy and lead it out of a dark spot in its history. Worse in the sense that, if the ends justify the means, that assumes there's some objective moral criteria by which both can be judged. Whereas Machiavelli might suggest that no such moral objectivity exists, and that all we really have is the ends and the means.

As political scientist Hanna Pitkin put it:

Machiavelli's thought is as problematic as politics itself, presenting a different face to each observer. Thus, he is also one of the most misunderstood political theorists, or at any rate the most subject to conflicting interpretations. Some see him as a tough-minded advocate of raison d'etat, others as a romantic who idealized Ancient Rome; some see him as a passionate patriot, others as a cynic; some as a detached, objective observer, others as a teacher of evil; some as a republican, others as worshiping strong leaders and military might. (Hanna Pitkin, Fortune is a Woman, 1984, page 3)


Pitkin is right even if one only reads The Prince, and neglects his second most famous work, The Discourses on Livy, or his various lesser-known works. If you read those, the picture grows ever-more complex and ambiguous. Machiavelli understood his subject matter well, and arguably the ambiguities in his thought reflect the ambiguities of politics.

Today, I would like to highlight an aspect of Machiavelli that isn't written about as often as other aspects are, and that is his emphasis on politics as fetishized violence, as sexual aggression. Pitkin's book touches on this. She writes about Machiavelli as an advocate of masculine autonomy, as incorporating the various contradictions of masculinity.

One element of masculinity Machiavelli surely does not neglect in The Prince is that of sexually aggressive violence; of politics as a violent imposition of will on another. I have always seen the violence Machiavelli writes about in The Prince as something more than a sad consequence of pursuing politics as the situation requires. Every time I read The Prince, and I've read it a lot, I cannot escape the feeling that there is something fetishized about Machiavelli's violence. Something that suggests maybe the violence itself is a kind of end, as much as it is a means. To be crude about it I can rarely help but wonder if Machiavelli's Prince isn't getting off on the horrors he has to perform.

Doubtlessly, the rawest example of what I'm talking about is this oft-neglected quote, used by Pitkin for the title of her book:

Fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled; and we see that she suffers herself to be more readily mastered by those who so treat her than by those who are more timid when she approaches. And always, like a woman, she favors the young, because they are less scrupulous, and fiercer, and command her with greater audacity. (Machiavelli, The Prince, end of Chapter 25)


I am informed that the more literal translations of this passage actually make the rape image rawer and more horrifying, “beaten and roughly handled” becoming “it is necessary to beat her down, and strike her down.” The closer we get, in other words, to Machiavelli's original words in his own language, the more politics is like rape, the greater the sick horror of the image.

And, indeed, even in the present day, when politics ends with shattered careers and shattered lives rather than a broadsword through the heart or breaking on the wheel or rack, there is an element of fetishized violence in politics, an element of the violent imposition of will of one upon another. Some politicians find it convenient to not compromise, not deliberate, but rather to attempt to steamroll over their enemies, because they see their enemies as true enemies, not as colleagues and honorable opponents.

There is surely an element of fetishized violence in every politician. However, those such as Eliot Spitzer who are so open and public about it are to be feared, because it shows that they likely aren't capable of the other elements of politics, especially democratic politics: deliberation, compromise, negotiation. If the politics they pursue in public is one of violent imposition of will, imagine what they are capable of doing in private. It is scarcely possible to imagine that in private, they deliberate and compromise. It is one thing to compromise after a strongly-worded ideological or policy debate. That's hard, but it's doable. When the imposition of will itself becomes the important thing, however, compromise and deliberation would seem to be nearly impossible.

Carl Paladino can fairly be said to have made his prowess a centerpiece of his campaign. He hard-balled nearly everything. Perhaps the most ridiculous example of this was a bizarre E-Mail exchange with some random fellow who sent him a rude E-Mail about the gay marriage issue. Then, of course, there's the E-Mails that first brought him to prominence (take care with that link by the way, it's "not safe for work"), which included sexually violent images alongside the racist ones. (And, I'm sorry, but a horse having sex with a human woman is violent by definition, even if she wanted it with every fiber of her being.) He threatened to take a baseball bat to Albany, he referred to a sitting United States Senator as a “little girl”
(an obvious attempt to belittle her). He showed us an even-darker side of his violent politics of imposition in an incident involving Fred Dicker of the New York Post (I almost mis-typed and referred to Dicker as a “reporter”). Cal Paladino put his sexual prowess on such display that he in essence, as I have argued here, begged to make it a political issue. And when he succeeded, he then whined.

I haven't even gotten into one quarter of the obviously sexualized moves Paladino made before and during this campaign, for example I haven't cited his numerous exhortations to Andrew Cuomo to debate “like a man.”

These moves will continue for as long as Paladino is in politics, and as I stated he isn't going away. The only question will be whether or not anyone listens anymore.

Machiavelli's aggressive, hyper-sexual politics, as emulated by Carl Paladino, can be seen in stark contrast to the ideal model of how politics in the United States, and by extension in New York State, is supposed to work. That model, best described by James Madison, is a politics of deliberation, compromise, pluralism, and institutions, a politics of laws and informal rules, not men, not personalities. James Madison knew very well that there would be personalities, Princes, in politics. The Madisonian system is designed to both channel and restrain a Machiavellian Prince's ambitions (see Federalist Papers numbers 10 and 51). Madison still feared that sometimes the “mild voice of reason” would be drowned out by a Prince's passions (Federalist Papers number 42). He was right to so fear.

In an American context, you can see this aspect of Machiavelli's politics, the violent and fetishized imposition of will, in the presence of such figures as Newt Gingrich, Carl Paladino, and Eliot Spitzer. These people look at the institutional constraints on them, and laugh and scoff, and decide they will do what they want. Typically, the system constrains them, forces Machiavelli's Prince into a Madisonian hole. Sometimes they are destroyed by the constraint, sometimes they are smart enough to work within Madison's system and get what they want anyway. It all depends on the Prince and his political skill. Either way, however, the intimate relationship between politics and sex is played out on the political battlefield.

The only thing that made Carl Paladino less successful than the other examples I have presented was, to be crude about it, that he couldn't keep it in his pants. Ever. Paladino apparently, for whatever reason, had to be hyper-aggressive all the time. He made his fetishized, violent anger the sole focus of his campaign, the only thing he had going for him. When he attempted to lose it, to avoid making himself look totally ridiculous, he came across as weak and ineffectual. In the gubernatorial debate, for example, Paladino's failures were so obvious that even he had to acknowledge them, though he ridiculously blamed his poor performance on the format. (Which of course was his idea to begin with.) Another example would be Paladino's last-minute, rambling video, recorded in a diner.

Neither the debate nor the diner video allowed Paladino much opportunity to show off his swaggering, aggressive sexuality. Lacking that, he had virtually nothing, and came across badly.

To be Machiavellian in the sense of being ruthless is one thing. Andrew Cuomo is surely Machiavellian in that sense, I know of no one who would dispute that. Paladino's brand of Machiavellianism, however, is something different entirely. Cuomo's Machiavellianism is, if handled properly, the kind that gets things done. Paladino's is chiefly conducive to self-aggrandizement.

There is another American political tradition to which Paladino belongs.

The Paranoid Style

Historian Richard Hofstadter may well have produced the best and most relevant works of academic history ever written. In 1965's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, he, I am sad to say, captured much of the present political era, perhaps more of our present era than the one he wrote during.

American politics, Hofstadter wrote, “has served again and again as as an arena for uncommonly angry minds,” some of which are prone to “qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness [sic], and conspiratorial fantasy.” (Paranoid Style, page 3.) Hofstadter outlined many examples of the paranoid style in American politics. These examples raged from a few now-unknown people who complained that the fluoridation of the water supply was an attempt to institute socialism; to other now-unknown people who complained that a bill introduced in Congress to ban gun sales through the mail was an attempt to institute socialism; to the Black Panthers; to Joseph McCarthy. Outside of an American context, it's led, Hofstadter told us, to such diverse figures as Hitler and Stalin.

Fortunately, at least at the time Hofstadter wrote, the paranoid style was not preferred on American shores by majorities, merely by minorities. In an American context, the paranoid style in Hofstadter's day was and is now primarily, but not exclusively (as the Black Panthers case shows) found on the right. (Paranoid Style, pages 5-10.)

Hofstadter was careful to state that political paranoids were not necessarily paranoid in the psychological or clinical sense. The political paranoid, in the sense of a political actor using the paranoid style, is I suspect rarely, if ever, actually mentally ill. The paranoid style is, after all, a style above all else. The political paranoid is a political persona some present, the same way that Machiavelli's sexual aggression is a persona, and the heroic “white knight” is a persona.

The political paranoid often forgets the distinction between saying that there have been conspiracies in history, and that history is, itself, a conspiracy. The political paranoid holds that there is a vast and sinister conspiracy, somehow both gigantic and subtle, to undermine and destroy our way of life. This conspiracy is a primary, or the primary, force in historical events. Only an all-out-crusade can stop this conspiracy. The end is always just around the corner, and time is forever running out. The crusade against the conspiracy is as-military in nature as it is political in the traditional sense. There can be no compromise, no negotiation, none of the traditional stuff of politics. The enemy is usually personified in some way. The personified enemy is portrayed as moral-less, both politically and sexually. The latter, Hofstadter pointed out to us, has been of particular and surprising importance to political paranoids. It seems to be important to them that their enemies have no sexual morality. The renegade from the enemy, an informant figure, typically is featured prominently. The arguments of the paranoid have a peculiar mix of verifiable and unverifiable proof, with wild extrapolations being made from what is verified to what is not, and in many cases cannot be, verified. (Paranoid Style, pages 29-38.)

As described by Hofstadter, the paranoid style of his day, in America, consisted of the following claims: There is a long-standing conspiracy to undermine capitalism, bring the economy under the control of the federal government, and pave the way for socialism or communism, and high levels of government have been infiltrated by communists. The communists infiltrators in government are supported by a vast network of communist agents throughout the country. Unlike some perpetrators of the paranoid style, American political paranoids often seem to de-emphasize distant, unseen enemies such as the Illuminati, Jews, and the Roman Catholic Church, in favor of then-more-recent, public figures such as Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman (Paranoid Style, pages 23-29.)

There is very little that Hofstadter has described that is not seen in Glenn Beck today. Indeed, Glenn Beck's 2009 book Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, the cover of which features Beck in a Soviet military uniform, can be seen as a veritable tribute to the paranoid style, were it not clearly intended to be taken as serious political commentary.

The paranoid style among the contemporary right isn't limited to Glenn Beck; Newt Gingrich has been practicing it for awhile. Note these passages from Gingrich's 1995 book To Renew America:

Since 1965, however, there has been a calculated effort by cultural elites to discredit this civilization [American civilization] and replace it with a culture of irresponsibility that is incompatible with American freedoms as we have known them. (To Renew America, page 7)


In the mid-1960s, this long-held consensus [on American values] began to founder. The counterculture began to repudiate middle-class values . . . “Situational ethics” and “deconstructionism” –the belief that there are no general rules of behavior– began to supplant the centuries-old struggle to establish universal standards of right and wrong.

All this has led to a collapse in our own ability to teach ethical behavior to our own people. Traditional history has been replaced by the notion that every group is entitled to its own version of the past. (To Renew America, page 30)


It is sad indeed if a centuries-old moral consensus had, by 1994, collapsed as a result of a conspiracy that had begun as recently as 1965. Sadder-still is the irony that, to the degree to which Gingrich is correct, the true beneficiaries of deconstructionism have been the American right, as I have outlined here. What else does Glenn Beck do, after all, if not attempt to create his own version of history in the manner suggested by Hofstadter?

Moreover, at least one conservative thinker, Leo Strauss (a teacher and inspiration for many on the contemporary right), seems to date the decay of American values earlier than Gingrich did.

Does this nation [the United States] in its maturity still cherish the faith in which it was conceived and raised? Does it still hold these 'truths to be self-evident?' (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, page 1.)


Strauss went on to suggest that the decay of American values, indeed the questioning of the very notion of values, can be traced back to Nazi Germany, and that the idea's import to America was in essence a form of Nazi political revenge on America.

It would not be the first time that a nation, defeated on the battlefield and as it were annihilated as a political being, has deprived its conquerors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them the yoke of its own thought. (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, page 2.)


The contemporary rejection of natural rights leads to nihilism – nay, it is identical with nihilism. (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, page 5.)


Strauss wrote these words in 1953, a full 12 years before the date Gingrich gave for the start of the conspiracy. The American right has been practicing the paranoid style for a very long time, and the degree of consistency has been remarkable.

Carl Paladino is in this political tradition too, along with the tradition of Machiavelli's political-sexual aggression.

For the first example, we return to Carl Paladino's last-minute campaign appeal, recorded in a diner, a place of "normal" Americana if ever there was one. At about the 7 minute, 38 second mark of that video, Paladino begins to stray from a message of tax cuts, spending cute, and economic development into the following conspiratorial fantasy, wherein he incorporates an impressive variety of events which someone else might think are, more or less, unrelated. Andrew Cuomo is corrupt, he does not understand honor (presumably the way normal people like Paladino do), and is connected with a corrupt political conspiracy that includes AEG and "Obamacare."

Government corruption is just rampant. My opponent's been the chief prosecutor of a state for three years, a state that has the most corrupt government in America, and now he wants to be a Governor. I don't understand those things. I don't understand why he doesn't respect honor. Honor. You make a promise, you keep the promise. He said at the debate anybody that does anything wrong will go to jail. But at the same time he cut a deal with Hevesi to allow Hevesi to walk! He cut a deal so he could make a political announcement to advance his own political career, so he could say he convicted Hevesi, who he knows won't be sentenced until after, after election day, and he made a deal that the man doesn't have to go to jail. A public official is held to a higher standard, and if we don't put them in jail, we're not sending the right message out for every other public official. And you saw what happened with Aqueduct. Aqueduct. That stunk six months ago. And who's involved. Sampson. Smith. Our Governor's secretary . . . 'Cos in the end, the people today are un-grounded. They don't trust the government. The government is corrupt, the government doesn't do their work, the government gives 'em the worst possible lives in the world, there's nothing on the horizon except it getting worse, Obamacare's gonna lay a million, five hundred thousand new people onto the taxpayers, of the State of New York. My opponent won't speak to the issue. That's what he's afraid of. But the people, they want a government that's gonna cut back on its size.


In the context of a political campaign, with vitriol on the one hand and rational fears of government corruption and incompetence on the other, these remarks weren't necessarily taken as paranoid in the political sense. They were surely not given the same level of scrutiny that Hillary Clinton's oft-quoted "vast right wing conspiracy" remark was given. (And, it should be noted, when talking about New York State's politics, all bets are off and sometimes conspiratorial fantasies can seem true. Or, at least, truer than they probably are.)

Now that a little distance has passed however, granted not much distance, I can hope that Paladino's remarks will be seen in light of the paranoid style, because that's the light in which they make the most sense.

Paladino's use of the paranoid style wasn't limited to election eve. Note his blaming of the now-infamous release of his pornographic E-Mails on Andrew Cuomo's people hacking his computer. The cute thing about that accusation is that when you send an E-Mail, messages by definition leave your computer, and thus no one needs to hack someone your computer to get it. It's already left your computer, because you deliberately sent it out.

Despite his own non-mainstream tastes in pornography and his close association with Roger Stone, a self-described “libertine,” Paladino follows the paranoid style even to the point of questioning his opponents' morality, their connection to the culture's commonly held moral values. (Including, but not limited to, matters of sexual morality.) Here, some will recall, he stated the following about Governor David Paterson.

I'm telling you that Paterson is not your friend. Paterson is, Paterson's a drug addict, he's been a drug addict his entire life.


Paterson has not just used drugs, which presumably any number of otherwise-normal people may experiment with, but he's an "addict." Addicts deviate from our values in a way mere users may not. And, in this video, Paladino made the following now-famous remark:

For weeks the media has badgered me about affairs because, unlike a career politician, I was honest enough to acknowledge she was my daughter when I announced my candidacy. “Are you having an affair now?” “How many have you had?” “When was your daughter conceived?” What I meant to express in my anger was simply this: Does the media ask Andrew such questions? Andrew's prowess is legendary! No! This campaign must be about bigger issues, not affairs or divorces.


Paladino admits his own affairs, but Andrew's, which he to this day has presented neither proof nor even specific allegations about, are “legendary.”

Finally, note the following outburst to the Buffalo City Council, recorded in the Summer of 2010.

Our city has the renown of being known as the second poorest city in America. We worked very very hard to get there, to have that distinction. We've done everything just the opposite of the way things should be done. And now we're, we're drifting over into a socialistic environment. The people that wanna bring to us a community benefit agreement. What is it? ACORN? Sam Hoyt and Sheldon Silver giving us the same old stuff?


The conspirators identified, as is the nature of the conspiracy. The specter of socialism, this time not a world away but very, very close at hand. And, Paladino states, it's been a long time in coming. Luckily, he is there to save Buffalo, and then New York State after that, if only the conspiracy would allow him.

It is very difficult, at least for me, to listen to or read Carl Paladino without the lingering figure of Joseph McCarthy coming up in the corner of my eye. Note McCarthy's rant on Edward Murrow's television program and how it incorporates many elements of the paranoid style which we now see are also reflected in Carl Paladino, and others on the American right. In particular note the use of the accusation presented as fact.

Conclusion

Carl Paladino, New York's paranoid would-be Prince, is not going away. His personality alone probably dictates that much, but more importantly he's not going away because he represents two long-standing tradition in American politics. Those of his ilk have, in fact, obtained prominent roles in the Republican party, and their post-modern, paranoid rants have become mainstream. This is no longer the stuff of secret meetings or Internet message boards. Glenn Beck makes millions of dollars, Sarah Palin is considered a serious presidential candidate, and Carl Paladino defeated the mainstream Rick Lazio to become the official candidate of the Republican party to be Governor of the State of New York.

At the end of the day, as has been shown, in this article and by political experience, Paladino has little if anything save for the paranoid style fused with a fetishized politics of imposition.

It is not to America's, or New York's, credit that he was taken seriously at all, let alone that he's very unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The State Senate Democrats: Dysfunction Defined

I read today of the deep campaign debt the New York State Senate Democratic Conference have found themselves in, and the many problems they have had raising money.

How could this happen, I thought....Every Majority Conference can rake in money, surely, and even a Minority Conference can rake in money if they're smart.

Then, the obvious occurred to me: The Senate Democrats have almost literally nothing to raise money on.

Assuming a lack of flat-out, quid pro quo corruption in the process, legislative conferences bring in money by pointing to their agenda, to their accomplishments, and sometimes to the legislative process itself.

As to agenda, I can't even remember what the Senate Democrats' agenda was, outside of a few matters which were specifically NOT enacted into law, gay marriage or “marriage equity” being the primary example. I'm trying to remember more, and I can't. And for present purposes, understanding the Senate Democrats' fund-raising issues, the fact that I can't remember what the Senate Democrats' agenda was is more important than is the content of that agenda.

As to accomplishments? Same. This Legislative Session is notable chiefly for things that were specifically NOT enacted into law. Gay marriage wasn't enacted. A property tax cap wasn't enacted. Corrections to the ill-considered Spitzer-era political ethics reform were enacted, but the corrections were about as ill-considered as the original bill was, and were vetoed by Governor Paterson. In a unique twist, the Senate tried an override vote on ethics, and it failed.

As to the legislative process, the Senate Democrats managed to straddle multiple dichotomies of dysfunction. Until the 2009-2010 New York State Legislative Session, I didn't know a legislative process could be both inefficient and corrupt, both secretive and messy, and both violent and ineffective. It is fitting that, at the close of 2010 the potential limbo of 2011 looms so large that it's squeezed out fixing the current budget. The Session began, and now ends, in limbo.

Why are the Senate Democrats having trouble raising money? Because they have substantial negatives and few, if any, positives. They did nothing with the Majority, which they barely managed to hold during 2 years and seem likely to lose in the immediate future. Any positives they had were easily drowned out by laughable dysfunction.

What, exactly, would the Senate Democrats raise money on? Their agenda was forgettable; their accomplishments negligible; and their process combined ethics that would make both Joe Bruno and Eliot Spitzer blush and the efficiency of a kindergarten class.

To say Albany is dysfunctional is a cliche. What it usually means is "the process did not produce results I approve of. However, after years of Albany being called dysfunctional, finally we have a good, working definition of that term. Political dysfunction is the worst of both worlds: A bad process, and bad (or no) policy. The State Senate, in the Democratic Conference's hands, was a messy, unhealthy sausage factory that made bad-tasting sausage nobody wanted to buy.

Now here's another thing: Isn't it sad that the process has gotten bad enough that whether or not a legislative conference brings in money can be taken as a good measure of their success, or lack thereof?

-The Albany Exile

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Paladino and Dicker

I don't like Fred Dicker, and I don't like the New York Post. The fact that Carl Paladino called the Post his favorite newspaper is, as far as I'm concerned, yet another point against him. I agree with what Paladino's aide said during the attack (for want of a better term for it) about Dicker being a “terrible reporter.” To this I will add that Dicker is also a terrible writer and (at best) a second-rate intellect.

OK, now that we got that out of the way, let's make a few assumptions favorable to Carl Paladino, in order to better frame the incident between Paladino, Paladino's aide, and Dicker.

Let's assume, first of all, that Fred Dicker and the Post did send a “goon” photographer “after” the daughter Carl Paladino had with his mistress. Let's say the photographer took a picture of her, or tired to, through a window, thus making the girl upset, and frightened, and making her cry. Assume it happened just the way the candidate says it did. For the moment, never mind that there's no particular reason to believe this. Some reason might emerge later.

Let's further assume that his daughter's welfare is Carl Paladino's true concern. Never mind, for now, that Paladino seemed friendly to Dicker until Dicker asked a tough question, and only became hostile after the question was asked. Never mind that Paladino's daughter's existence is not a secret. Never mind that Paladino and his aide spent more of their time accusing Dicker of being biased against Paladino and in favor of Andrew Cuomo than they did expressing anger over what might've happened to Paladino's daughter. Never mind that Paladino has, as I've discussed elsewhere, tried very hard to simultaneously make himself into the “conservative values” candidate and deliberately project an image of dangerously aggressive sexuality, this in effect opening up his own bedroom, and the potential products of what goes on in there, to public scrutiny.

Let's go a little further. Let's assume that Carl Paladino has a moral right to seek some kind of retribution against Dicker, assuming all the above-stated facts are true. (And, I stress again, at the moment there's no particular reason to believe they are.) Not a legal right, which is a separate concept. But let's for now assume that he has that moral right.

I am in brief giving Paladino every benefit of the doubt, for argument's sake.

Then, New York, let me ask you this: Do you want a Governor who capable of behaving in such a volatile, thuggish manner in public and on camera? Comparisons with Senator Kevin Parker, similarly volatile and often accused of being thuggish, are easily made. Does anyone think Kevin Parker should be Governor? Probably not.

Do you like this idea, New York? Or, maybe, have you maybe gotten tired of Governors who make such obvious errors in judgment and make themselves look stupid?

Sadly, thuggery is, always has been, and always will be part of New York State's grand political tradition. Theodore Roosevelt admitted that his first election to the State Assembly was in part due to thuggery. I'm not asking for an end to political thuggery in the State of New York. I know that's, sadly, too much to ask. But, does New York want a Governor who drags such things out into the open, then further boasts of it and defends his right to do it? When Roosevelt wrote about the political thuggery undertaken on his behalf it was years after the fact and was spoken of with a sad regret, not with a swagger. For Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps the King of Swagger, to not swagger over something is I think significant.

What happens to someone else, to just a regular everyday person, who given a similar set of circumstances responds similarly to how Paladino did? That person would probably be in jail. I've seen people go to jail for a lot less.

Personally, I like the thought of a Governor of New York State who is capable of showing enough discretion to take revenge privately, if he does it at all.

This, to me, can be seen as a matter of judgment. Sure it can be a moral or legal issue too. But let's give Paladino the benefit of every doubt and focus on the incident solely as a matter of executive judgment and discretion. Let's perform the most cynical analysis possible. When you do this Paladino still comes out in the wrong.

If candidate Paladino reacts this way toward Fred Dicker, a mere reporter with no power (per statements made by Paladino's own aide), how will a Governor Paladino react to legislative leaders? Legislative leaders do have power. They have the power to persuade their members to pass a budget that is not the Governor's, and then to get their members to override the Governor's vetoes. And they may not, after this campaign, be inclined to enact Governor Paladino's proposals should he win.

How will Paladino react to someone who accidentally hits his gubernatorial SUV in traffic, as once happened once to George Pataki? How will he behave at press conferences? (Remember that, even if we assume Carl Paladino's primary concern is with his daughter's well-being, he didn't react angrily until he was asked a tough question. I think that's telling.)

What good has New York done for itself if it elects a Governor who's arrested for assault while in office? Was Eliot Spitzer not enough?

I'm not naive I'm not asking for a New York Governor who is any kind of saint. There are no saints in politics, not anymore, if there ever were.

But the Governorship of New York State is important enough that it warrants someone who can keep his temper in check in public.

That really isn't too much to ask. We all have to do it.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Why Carl Paladino's Adultery Matters

Periodically, the issue of whether or not politicians' sexual improprieties should be a factor in judging them comes up. Typically one camp suggests these are private matters that should stay private. The other camp, arguing that politicians' sexual improprieties should and do matter, typically advance one or more of four distinct arguments.

The first argument isn't really an argument at all, and it doesn't really deserve consideration beyond mentioning that it's out there. There's a degree to which some people will use a politician's sexual improprieties simply as a vehicle to attack him, but it's not the real reason for the attack. The relentless, sex-based attacks on Bill Clinton throughout his Presidency, even before credible allegations of adultery finally emerged, are an excellent example. Unfounded rumor at one point, as I recall, even had him hooking up with actress Sharon Stone.

This isn't really an argument per se. By definition it means you'll care about the sexual improprieties of a politician you disagree with, and not care about the sexual improprieties of a politician you agree with.

But, there are there arguments for caring about politicians' sexual improprieties that I, for one, consider perfectly legitimate.

First is what I call representational morality. This is the idea that our elected leaders should represent the best of us, including exemplifying the moral ideals that we hold more often than we live up to. Reason two comes to us from the Biblical saying that he who can't be trusted in small matters can't be trusted in great ones. In other words, if a man will betray the trust of his family he might also betray the trust of his people.

Applying these two arguments is a personal matter, depending on each voter's values and expectations.

The third reason is what will be mostly considered today. Whereas the other two reasons to care are essentially private, this one is essentially public.

A politician's first duty is to remain true to the political persona he creates, and that persona is also the first thing we have to judge him by, even before he enacts a single policy. Politicians, wrote Political Scientist Richard Fenno, spend a lot of their time engaging in the “presentation of self.” When they do this, by definition they are playing a character. Sometimes that character is a version of the real person, sometimes it's not, but sincerity isn't the issue here. The issue is that when a politician creates a public political persona to play, it's fair to judge him by how well he can hold do it. To thine own self-created image be true. Or else why bother creating it at all. And further, it's fair to judge him by the logical consequences of that persona.

By this standard, sexual improprieties might matter a lot more for some politicians than for others. David Paterson, for example, has not made his happy marriage part of his political persona. Therefore, shocking allegations of public “necking” with a lady not his wife at a New Jersey steak house were shocking chiefly for their undeniable stupidity; it was stupid of the Governor to allow himself to be seen this way even if there was nothing going on between him and the woman. We may not want David Paterson to be cheating on his wife (though we know he's done it in the past, as he's spoken about it), but if he were still cheating and it became known, no one would be terribly surprised. He hasn't put his own personal morality into play as a political issue.

John Edwards, on the other hand, made his happy marriage part of his political persona. And, thus, his adultery was genuinely shocking in a way it wouldn't be for David Paterson. If a politician cannot be true to his own political persona, what's left for him to be true to? There are excellent reasons why sexual improprieties have likely ended his political career. He put the issue out there.

Eliot Spitzer's sexual improprieties were particularly easy to judge. He violated both his own political persona, and the law. Bill Clinton's were harder, as his persona was as ambiguous as the legal status of many of his actions to cover up his affair.

Some politicians, when caught, can plausibly make the excuse that their private lives are entirely private and we shouldn't judge them by it. Whether or not we agree is another matter, but some can plausibly make the case. And some politicians can not plausibly make this case. Either they have put their values or their own domestic bliss front and center, or in some (seemingly rare) cases they present a persona that's so hyper-sexual in nature you can't help but look.

Carl Paladino is perhaps the rarest case of all. His weirdly contradictory persona, not ambiguous like Bill Clinton's but openly contradictory, is both hyper-sexual and values laden. Either way, he's in effect put his own bedroom front and center. His adultery should matter, and matter a lot.

First of all, he has expressed his political persona in values terms. His verbal assaults on President Obama as not being Christian “in his heart” are one example. Especially when one considers that, in context, Paladino's statements went beyond answering the question he was asked. Paladino was clearly attempting to to cast himself as a values candidate. To refer to someone as being “not Christian in his heart,” as Paladino did to President Obama, is clearly to imply that you're qualified to judge. Paladino's website, and his recent Daily News interview, also reference Paladino's staunch Catholicism. In Catholicism, adultery is a serious sin. Paladino and his supporters have openly touted the candidate's “conservative values.” Typically, the phrase “conservative values” implies a lot more than cutting taxes, at least to the voters if not to the political class.

Values are clearly part of Paladino's political persona. And his adultery violates his own publicly-held, much-trumpeted values.

Another part of Paladino's political persona, which has surprisingly been little-commented on in the mainstream media, is sexual potency, especially as contrasted with that of Andrew Cuomo's It seems very important to Paladino that he show he's bigger than his opponent (and I think we all know what I mean by that). A picture on Paladino's Internet site, for example, contrasts the two candidates by presenting Paladino as a big, masculine looking dog, and Cuomo as a small, feminine looking dog (named Fifi). Paladino's repeated threats of physical violence and his expression of political matters in violent, physical terms are surely also proof of a man showing off his testosterone count, as is his repeated references to the political contest as a fight. Almost all American politicians to some degree engage in this kind of hyper-masculine discourse. In fact it's almost impossible to avoid, to some degree even for women in politics. But Paladino's put hyper-sexuality front and center, deliberately and intentionally.

Paladino's public persona thus presents us with a strange paradox: morally righteous and devout Christian on the one hand; sexually aggressive, baseball bat wielding, street fighting overman on the other.

Paladino's adultery, especially as ongoing, secret, and child-producing as it was (this was not the openly “libertine” sexual impropriety of a figure like Roger Stone), is a violation of the first half of his persona, and a logical and necessary consequence of the second half.

And, thus, it's fair to judge him by it. He's put it out there, for all to see.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Personal Politics: Charlie Rangel and Andrew Cuomo

As most readers doubtlessly know by now, Andrew Cuomo, self-styled reformer and Democratic candidate to be Governor of New York State, was seen recently at Representative Charlie Ranger's birthday celebration, which in good political fashion doubled as a fundraiser for the embattled Representative.

Cuomo's opponents have taken his attendance as an opportunity to question Cuomo's reform credentials, to paint Cuomo as politics as usual.

There's surely a grain of truth to the accusation that Cuomo is, or at least has been, an insider. Cuomo doesn't actually seem to deny this. For example, on the campaign trail he talks openly about his time working in the gubernatorial administration of his father, Mario Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo appears to base his reform credentials not on a complete lack of insider status, which if he tried to claim it would be a lie for sure, but because but because as Attorney General he hasn't directly been part of the political game as it's currently being played.

But why would any would-be reformer, even a would-be reformer who's also an unapologetic once-insider, want to be seen with a politician like Rangel, who's rarely referred these days to without being described as “ethically challenged” or “disgraced?” Especially since Rangel's career appears to be the ultimate American political cautionary tale. Rangel replaced the famous Adam Clayton Powell in the U.S. House of Representatives after the latter's ethical problems, only to now face ethical problems of his own.

Andrew Cuomo himself provided one answer:

“Let’s get the facts and then we’ll make the decision once we have the facts,” Cuomo said. “I think we have to be careful jumping to conclusions before we have all the facts and we get both sides of the story. But I’ve been at this long enough to know there’s always two sides to a story—and sometimes there’s a third side.”


And while his statement is surely correct, I don't think anyone believes that was the only reason for Cuomo's attendance. There's two or three sides to every story, but not everyone who has a story has Andrew Cuomo in attendance at his or her birthday party. Not even every politician, or every Democratic politician, does.

Another answer of course is that provided by radio commentator Alan Chartock:

Because, clearly these people [politicians] know that he's highly popular, Rangel, within a certain community [the Black community], and he [Cuomo/generic politician] doesn't want to lose those votes.


Chartock wasn't talking exclusively about Andrew Cuomo, but did clearly mean to include him.

Andrew Cuomo in particular cannot take the Black vote for granted, as he faces a challenge from fringe candidate Charles Barron. Barron is a current Member of the New York City Council, and a former Black Panther, whose campaign is explicitly based on race and racial issues. Indeed, the candidacy was founded over Barron's unhappiness with Cuomo's White running mate. Though considered a fringe candidate, Barron did manage to get nearly 45,000 petitions for his candidacy, in contrast with Carl Paladino's 28,000.

As far as I'm concerned, that means that if Paladino is a viable candidate, necessarily so is Barron. Therefore, Andrew Cuomo can't take the Black vote for granted.

There is, however, potentially another, more personal, reason for Andrew Cuomo's attendance at Rangel's birthday party.

The relationship between Rangel and the Cuomo family, it seems, goes back awhile, to an early run by Mario Cuomo to be Mayor of New York City. Then-incumbent Mayor Ed Koch had rankled the city's substantial Black population rather badly. Rangel and Percy Sutton (another Harlem-based Black political leader) were looking for a reason to endorse anyone other than Koch, and Cuomo first seemed viable. Cuomo, however, didn't meet Rangel's and Sutton's hopes or expectations. As Rangel described in his book, And I haven't Had a Bad Day Since,

When we [Sutton and Rangel] met with Cuomo, he took great pains to explain that he was color blind, and therefore could not promise a certain number of positions for blacks in a Cuomo administration. He said that he himself wasn't even Italian; he was just an American. The very idea that blacks would need particular political support was racist, Cuomo told us. (And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since, page 206)


This simply wouldn't do, especially as contrasted with Ed Koch's more accommodating stance. “What do you want,” Koch asked Rangel and Sutton. “How can we work this out?” Interestingly, and tellingly about how politics is done in Harlem, Rangel also complained bitterly about how “a handful of blacks,” without his approval, endorsed Cuomo on the steps of City Hall. (And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since, page 207.)

Rangel also related how he was upset about Mario Cuomo becoming nominated by then-Governor Hugh Carey to run to be Hugh Carey's Lieutenant Governor in the election of 1978.

In my opinion, Mario Cuomo had done nothing to merit getting on the very short line to the governor's chair. What had he done? He arbitrated a nasty dispute between residents of Forest Hills [a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens] and advocates seeking to build public housing there.

Meanwhile, we in the African-American community believed State Senator Basil Patterson [sic] deserved consideration. The whole idea that [Mario] Cuomo was slam-dunked for the governor's chair while Patterson [sic] was overlooked didn't sit well with us. Twenty-four years later, Andrew Cuomo didn't do much to redeem his dad when he challenged our Carl McCall in the 2002 [gubernatorial] primary. (And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since, page 210, emphasis added by me.)


Sometimes, politics in New York State is personal. Could it be that Andrew Cuomo showed up at Rangel's birthday party in part because he feels the need to redeem his father in the eyes of Representative Rangel?

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Dear Glenn Beck: Regarding Carl Paladino....

Dear Glenn Beck:

I hope this letter finds you well.

I write you today because you are America's leading expert on the ongoing threat of Nazi Germany. Your efforts to expose the Nazi influence in American political life have been tireless. You have exposed things as diverse as the Peace Corps, President Obama, Al Gore, the concept of empathy, and Rockefeller Center as being secretly, or even overtly, Nazi in origin.

Oh wait, sorry, Rockefeller Center wasn't Nazi, it was Communist. You'll forgive the error, I'm sure. What's the difference anyway. After all the full name of the Nazi party was National Socialism, right?

At any rate, I am simply dumbfounded by your apparent lack of attention to the race for the Republican nomination to be New York State's Governor. A source close to one of the two candidates, Carl Paladino, recently described, to the mainstream media, the candidate's upcoming pre-primary ad buys as a “wall to wall blitzkrieg.” As I am sure you are aware, blitzkrieg is a Nazi military term roughly meaning "lightning war."

Further, the Paladino Blitzkrieg was announced on or very close to the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, wherein the Nazis used blitzkrieg techniques. Unless he was the source himself, Paladino I guess didn't actually use that term himself. (Though, really, there's no evidence that he wasn't the source, or that he didn't use the term in private even if he wasn't the source.) But neither has he repudiated such an explicit Nazi reference being used on his behalf. I mean, President Obama wasn't even necessarily aware of his making a Nazi reference when he described a Supreme Court nominee of his as having “that quality of empathy,” yet surely he should have repudiated that statement once you pointed out to him how Nazi he was being! So shouldn't Paladino explicitly repudiate such an overtly Nazi statement being made on his behalf?

Surely, Mr. Beck, your tireless attempts to expose the Nazi threat in American political life should be extended to include this. Unlike the other Nazi threats you've exposed, this one isn't even subtle. It's explicit.

Perhaps you just didn't know about it? When you spend all the time looking for the subtle, sometimes you miss the obvious; I understand that. Happens to me too. In fact I almost didn't catch this one. Those Nazis sure are crafty.

You know, maybe, Glenn (do you mind if I call you that?), you have spoken out against the, explicitly, consciously Nazi-like activities of Carl Paladino and I just missed it. Sorry if that's the case.

If you haven't noticed this one yet, however, you may now consider yourself informed. You should surely devote a two-hour special to this one.

Maybe you're already planning one?

Sincerely,
-The Albany Exile

Sunday, August 22, 2010

The Era of Making Things Up: Postmodernism, Conservatism, and the Assault on Reality

A very popular conservative blogger recently wrote the following, about the so-termed Ground Zero Mosque project (which, by the way, as we all know by now, is not quite a mosque and isn't quite at Ground Zero either):

Yes it will take years and years but that did not stop Bloomberg and "Big Brother" Obama making it national issue in under 1 minute.


Except that this isn't true. It was Republicans, that party's New York State gubernatorial candidates in particular, who made the project a “national issue.” Republicans well outside of New York State were making it an issue well-before President Obama's remarks. (I'm not counting Bloomberg, because he's the Mayor of New York City, last I checked, and he of course addressed the issue in that capacity. Any Mayor of New York should have addressed it.)

Note the headline of this Fox News story, and note the date, 11 days before President Obama's remarks.

Other mosques, nowhere near Ground Zero and not in New York State, have also caused controversies. Note the date of that story too. The project (Park 51, Ground Zero Mosque, whatever you want to call it) was clearly a national issue well-before Obama's remarks.

On a probably not-unrelated note, a growing percentage of Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim. But he isn't. Not that a Muslim President would be a bad thing in and of itself. But, Obama is not Muslim.

I keep reading about how Andrew Cuomo wants to shut down local governments and the people will reject it. But when you actually read Cuomo's plan, which mirrors very closely one pitched by his father in 1994, you'll see (I should hope) that it isn't at all like it's sometimes portrayed.

That last example isn't as extreme as the others. Distorting your opponent's position is a long-standing tradition in American politics, as long as you remain more or less within the confines of reality. Ok, fine. One would expect Andrew Cuomo's opponents to distort his plans and ideas. If a plan of his would cost, say, $2 Billion, you'd expect his opponents to say it would cost "nearly $5 billion." 2 is nearly 5, right?

Fine.

But Barack Obama being a Muslim, when he isn't? Or him making the mosque a national issue, when it clearly already was one before he spoke? Those go beyond being distortions. Oh, let's try the one about the drapes in the Oval Office being switched to a Middle Eastern color. Nope, that one's not true either.

It's easy to say what you want when you, in essence, construct reality as an opinion. Opinions can be freely rejected, and everyone is entitled to one. Dinosaurs walked the Earth with humanity, and humanity domesticated dinosaurs, right down to putting them in English saddles for Dinosaur shows. (See Charles Pearce, Idiot America 2009, pages 1 to 12.) Except that neither of those things is true.

When you recast fact and analysis as opinion, all bets are off.

Al Gore wrote a book called The Assault on Reason (2007) wherein he outlined....Well, look at the title. But in fact what's going on, I would suggest, isn't an assault on reason, but on reality itself. The assault on reason is simply a technique. It makes the assault on reality easier. Without reason, reality becomes an opinion, and everyone's entitled to one.

Andrew Cuomo should investigate the funding stream for the Ground Zero Mosque (which again is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero). But we now know publicly what, it seems, has been known privately for a long time: There is no funding stream to investigate.

The project could not yet have been funded in an illegal, or even morally questionable, manner because it hasn't been funded yet at all, not to any substantial degree. This doesn't stop Rick Lazio from saying he should investigate that funding stream, even after the revelation that it didn't really exist.

Political Theorist Sheldon Wolin wrote in 1989 about how the conservative Philosopher Allan Bloom, who was extremely influential in conservative intellectual circles, was defined largely be a rage against Postmodernism (Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the Past 1989, pages 47-65). Postmodernism is an academic movement that has sought over the years to challenge some very fundamental things about reality, about science, about reason. As Wolin put it:

Although the postmodern mind, as yet, hesitates to provoke a head-on confrontation with modern science . . . the subversion of the supporting culture of science is clearly under way. The postmodern individual has pretty much renounced the objectivist view of scientific knowledge, indeed all forms of knowledge. (Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the Past 1989, page 70.)


Postmodern Philosopher Richard Rorty, exactly the kind of thinker against whom Allan Bloom was raging, once wrote that abandoning Western rationalism “has no discouraging political implications.” Society can abandon rationalism, the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment, and retain the Enlightenment's politics of human dignity and liberation. (Richard Rorty, Truth, Politics, and 'Post-Modernism' 1997, pages 36-42.)

But there's an important thing Rorty and other Postmodernists didn't think of, and thus didn't account for. And that is that when the sources of reality and the very nature of empirical observation are questioned, when you can no longer accept the results of an empirical test (like dropping 2 objects at the same time to see if 1 falls faster than the other) all that you have left is power. Someone with the power to enforce his or her vision can ram it down the throats of everyone else. To use an exaggerated example from literature, if Big Brother says that 2 plus 2 is 5, then it's 5, even if it's not. Who are you to say otherwise?

In the absence of thought or reason or empirical observation, all that's left is power. Who has it, who doesn't, and how those with it can enforce their ideas upon those who don't.

The Federalist Papers repeatedly remind us that, in the American system, the base of power is with the people. Federalist Paper # 46 (attributed to James Madison) reminds us, for example, that a reliance on the people as the ultimate source of authority means that the American system can get away with having both a national government and state governments, and yet expect the two layers of government to work together and not against each other. The more-famous Federalist Paper # 51 (attributed to either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton) reminds us that, in a system where the people are the ultimate base of power, the people are also a source of potential oppression.

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.


In later years, this concept would come to be known as “the tyranny of the majority.”

Outside the offices of the Minority Leader of the New York State Assembly there once sat (and for all I know still does sit) a plaque with a quote:

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."


The quote is variously attributed to either John Adams or Samuel Adams; I forget which one the Assembly Minority's plaque attributes it to. At first, this sentiment may sound healthy. And in fact in many circumstances the sentiment has been as healthy as it sounds like it could be. An irate minority can be a check against the potentially tyrannical majority feared by the authors of The Federalist Papers. Black people fighting for Civil Rights were nothing if not an "irate minority."

The dark side of the sentiment, however, is that you might not need a majority to do something horrendous. Sometimes an irate minority can do the trick. Majorities, after all, can be expensive and time-consuming to achieve. But an irate minority is pretty easy to come by these days, now that reality itself can be called into question so easily. Reality is expensive, almost as expensive as majorities are. But an irate minority that's been spoon-fed semi-plausible falsehoods? Cheap. And effective.

There were no death panels in the Obama health care bill. To bring things back to New York State politics, David Paterson is not “a drug addict,” any more than Carl Paladino is “addicted” to bestiality porn or “addicted” to fathering children out of wedlock.

These are two flawed men, who did what they did, and we judge them according to our wit and our expectations. But neither is, so far as we can reasonably know, addicted to anything.

“As far as we can reasonably know.” Reasonably know. Quite a concept there.

It even comes close to an objective fact that Thomas Jefferson is an excellent example of an important political philosopher. Indeed its hard to imagine someone whose political philosophy has been of greater importance in practical politics. Jefferson more or less invented what we now call American political values.

The Texas Department of Education, however, disagreed,

and agreed to replace Thomas Jefferson as an example of an influential political philosopher in a world history class.


Thomas Jefferson's thought, it seems, also didn't influence any important revolutions:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)


I can't think of any revolutions Thomas Jefferson inspired, can you? If you can, E-Mail the Texas Department of Education.

Reason has made America great. Our country was founded on reason, and New York State led the way for a very long time. Reason helps us deal with reality rather than bury our heads in the sand.

But now, New York State, and the nation as a whole, are losing reason, and reality along with it, and, while I suppose I could find some examples of liberal irrationality (in fact, with the crowd that's currently in charge of the New York State Senate I'm all-but-certain I could), conservatives are clearly leading the way. Fortunate for them that the abandonment of reality ensures they won't have to admit that they're abandoning reality.

Soon, we'll have conservative Christians turning the Bible into a wiki, editing their own Holy Book according to their preconceptions, rather than reading it, or hiring a professional to do a professionally done translation that's more to their liking. (There's plenty of conservative Bible scholars, after all.) Oh wait, that's already happening.

Thomas Jefferson wasn't an important political philosopher, it's President Obama's fault that the Park 51 project is a national issue, David Paterson is a drug addict, and the Holy Bible is a wiki.

Welcome, readers, to a new political era: The era of making things up.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Every Petition Tells a Story

Gubernatorial petitions, like pictures, tell stories.

In New York State, 15,000 petitions, it seems, are required to run for Governor without the endorsement of a major party. 15,000 to launch a third party or independent bid, and to force a major party primary. (Unfortunately, I can't find where in the State Election Law it says this, so I have to go off of press accounts. The State Board of Elections Internet site doesn't seem to have a “how to run for Governor” pamphlet or anything, which is regrettable, if unsurprising.)

Further, the conventional wisdom seems to be that one really needs 3 times the required number, or 45,000. Challenges to ones petitions are seen as almost inevitable, and 3 times the required number should render one about challenge-proof.

There's several high-profile, or at least medium-profile, gubernatorial runs going on that are reliant upon petitions rather than upon major party endorsement.

Charles Barron, a former member of the Black Panthers, has gathered 44,500 petitions to run for Governor on his new Freedom Party line. Libertarian Party candidate Warren Redlich filed 34,000 petitions.

Redlich and Barron can fairly be described as fringe candidates. However, the much-ballyhooed Carl Paladino, who is considered a serious candidate, has filed only 28,000 petitions, less than double the required amount, and well under the preferred “3-times what's required” standard. In fact, Paladino's petition numbers are most comparable to those of Kirsten Davis (22,000), the Eliot Spitzer-affiliated madam-turned-candidate. And even Davis's highest-profile supporter, Republican operative Roger Stone, referred to Davis as a “protest candidate,” and expressed support for Paladino, the 28,000-petition man.

In polls, Paladino scores about as well against Cuomo as Lazio does. (Which, it must be said, isn't a great showing.)

Interesting that Roger Stone's “protest candidate,” Davis, and his other favorite, Paladino, who in his words “has a chance” to win, managed to garner a comparable number of petitions. The other fringe candidates, by contrast, managed to garner noticeably more than either Paladino or Davis.

So who really has a chance here?

Petitions tell stories. They tell stories about who has some degree of popular support, and who has the ground operation that's necessary to rally that support. To get people to openly support a candidate on record. Sure, someone might sign a petition in the name of having an open process, and not intend to vote for the candidate. But I think, and the press seems to agree, that signing a petition is really a display of support for a candidate. (One day I should see if any studies have been done on that, actually.)

What stories do these petitions tell us? Well, let me tell you what I think.

I think either Paladino's ground operation is horrid and ineffective, or that he has more support in the context of an anonymous poll than he does when people actually have to stand behind their views. Fewer people will support Paladino in public than in private. And voting, perhaps even in a primary election and definitely in a general election, is, secret ballot regardless, ultimately a public act.

And I think that, either way, Paladino remains a fringe candidate. If Lazio loses the nomination to him it will far more speak ill of Lazio than it speaks well of Paladino.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Identifying, and Addressing, New York State's Local Government Problem

New York State has a local government problem.

I think that's a fair statement. Almost more important than the statement being fair is that most of New York's political class would appear to agree. New York has a lot of local governments. No one really knows how many, but Andrew Cuomo, several times in his policy book The New NY Agenda, cites a figure of roughly 10,000.

This plethora of local governments has various consequences, few of which good. Political accountability is too-difficult to establish, because it's too difficult to know who answers to whom, who is supposed to do what, and who did what. Certain important political and governmental decisions are in effect subject to no scrutiny whatsoever, because few know who is making them. Further, all these layers of government get expensive. It doesn't take a Tea Partier, or any kind of conservative, to understand that.

I suppose all these local governments might make increase the points of access to citizens. If the citizens know where to look for that access, of course.

New York State has a local government problem. And it isn't new. Look at the following quotes.

The term “county government,” as applied in the commonly accepted sense of a single governing body for county affairs, is misleading. There is no such thing in New York State as a single, or a unified, government for an entire county. Instead, there are for each county several independent governing departments and officials, the functions of each being territorially coextensive with the county boundaries in general. (County Government, Page 85)


And:

For the purpose of government, which means for purpose of raising and expending money for the advantage of the people, we have in this State and within its counties many units or districts. Many of these districts are included within others and many overlap each other. Each has certain officers and certain powers of local government and support. Consider a typical New York county, my own [Oneida County], containing 2 cities, 26 towns, 19 incorporated villages, 23 special districts and 355 school districts outside of the cities. (County Government, Page 27)


The book those quotes are from, County Government, was published in 1915.

The Oneida County official who made the second statement, the one from page 27, went on to point out how all of the 400 or so governments within Oneida County had the power to tax the citizens. In 1915, there were roughly 400 taxing entities within Oneida County alone. It's undoubtedly more now.

79 years later, in 1994 (the year of the so-called Republican Revolution) the situation had not improved. Then-Governor Mario Cuomo raised the issue in his Message to the Legislature (State of the State message).

Trading the unaffordable luxury of autonomy for the substantial economies of consolidation is one of the most constructive steps communities can take to lighten their tax load . . . I propose giving local voters the power to insist that the merits of consolidation be studied—not by politicians with a personal interest in the outcome but by forming Citizens' Restructuring Initiatives (CRIs) . . . The people would have the power both to launch a CRI and to determine, in the voting booth, whether to go forward with its recommendations. (1994 Message to the Legislature, pages 119-120)


It's scarcely deniable that one of the reasons local taxes are so high in New York State is that there are so many entities that can, and do, tax the State's citizens. Even if reducing the number of entities would somehow not reduce taxes, then at least the people would know who was taxing them, and what for.

Mario Cuomo lost the 1994 election to George Pataki, who rode the wave of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution and entered office spouting a lot of Reagan-era rhetoric about reducing the size and cost of government. Pataki uttered the phrase “the heavy hand of government” again and again during his administration.

One indicator, not a perfect one of course, of reducing the size of government is reducing the size of the government workforce. It's even better if this can be done without layoffs (and State layoffs did not happen under Pataki) because layoffs hurt local economies more than high taxes.

By this measure, during the Pataki era the size of State government did indeed shrink. According to an annual Rockefeller Institute of Government publication called the New York State Statistical Yearbook, the State workforce had approximately 17,419.89 fewer full-time positions on January 1, 2007, when Pataki was replaced by Eliot Spitzer, than on January 1, 1995, when Pataki replaced Mario Cuomo. (The Rockefeller Institute's State workforce data uses a thing called a “Full-Time Equivalent.” 2 half-time workers would count as 1 FTE.)

On the surface, we can congratulate George Pataki on accomplishing one of his policy goals. (Even though this figure doesn't include the public authorities, or the Legislature, or private sector consultants hired by the State.)

However, during that same time period, according to the same publication, positions under the jurisdiction of the County Civil Service agencies, outside of New York City, actually went up by 31,506. And there's a lot besides New York City that this figure doesn't include: certain political appointees; employees of cities; local elected officials; employees of local legislatures such as Town Councils. Somehow I doubt that the increase noted by the Rockefeller Institute was somehow compensated for by a decrease in areas not recorded by the Institute.

New York State has a local government problem.

There are currently 3 major candidates for Governor of New York State. Andrew Cuomo has the Democratic nomination. Carl Paladino and Rick Lazio are currently in a bitter contest for the Republican nomination.

As far as I can tell, neither Rick Lazio and nor Carl Paladino have a plan for dealing with New York's local government problem.

Lazio, in his policy book (entitled Building a Better New York), outlines a plan for a property tax cap (Building a Better New York, pages 4 and 12). He also professes a desire to “end” State unfunded mandates on local governments (Building a Better New York, page 9). But I see nothing there for the problem of there being simply too many local governments and too much overlap between them all. We know that these issues are not simply byproducts of unfunded mandates, because as far as I can tell unfunded mandates were not considered a big issue in 1915, and we know that New York's local government problem goes back at least that far and probably a lot further.

Paladino makes no mention of the local government issue whatsoever in the plan for New York (which consists of 8 bullets) that is posted on his website. The one mention of property taxes on the site appears to come in reference to Medicaid spending.

By contrast, however, Lazio's campaign website mentions the word “mosque” 33 times, and Paladino's 294 times, according to a Google search on both sites.

Andrew Cuomo has, by far, the most detailed plan to reform local government. It's found on pages 82 through 92 of his policy book, The New NY Agenda. The details are available for anyone to read, so I won't get into them, but broadly speaking it revolves around allowing local governments, and local voters, to initiate and lead efforts to cut layers of government and share services. It would ultimately, it seems, be up to the voters to decide if they prefer the unaffordable luxury of autonomy, or not. While he also deals with unfunded mandates (The New NY Agenda, pages 55, 56, 155), and has a fairly detailed property tax cap plan (The New NY Agenda, pages 42-45), it's clear that Cuomo is placing most of his faith in this area in the local government reform plan.

Importantly, Cuomo also appears to have a good handle on the depth and extent of the local government problem.

Our system of local government was constructed hundreds of years ago and is the product of historical accumulation.109 As a result, at the local level there exists overlap and duplication, resulting in high taxes, inefficiency and waste.110 In fact, there are more than 10,500 local governmental entities --- including 62 counties, 932 towns, 555 villages and more than 7,000 special districts --- imposing taxes and fees across New York State. (The New NY Agenda, page 82)


If there's a similar understanding of the issue displayed, or a plan for the issue outlined somewhere in documents on either Carl Paladino's or Rick Lazio's websites, I somehow missed it completely. E-Mail me a link and I will take a look.

It should be noted that Andrew Cuomo's local government reform plan has a lot in common with the one his father outlined in his 1994 Message to the Legislature, as cited above. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it might suggest that Andrew, like his father before him, understands that the local government issue isn't totally the fault of Albany, but rather in part is the fault of the localities themselves, and thus the solutions might also be found locally.

But, I have to wonder if anyone could really solve this problem. It's long-standing, and to the degree to which Andrew and Mario Cuomo are correct, the local government problem is one in-part of local government's making. And therefore, indirectly, of our own.

Andrew Cuomo, at least, appears to recognize that a problem exists, and that it goes beyond the “unfunded mandates,” a term which during the Pataki years was used so often that it effectively lost all meaning.

Whoever wins the Gubernatorial election will have to deal with the issue, one way or another. Andrew Cuomo, it seems, will at least have a head start.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Sins, and Gifts, of the Father: Andrew and Mario Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo is very likely going to be New York State's next Governor.

His father, Mario Cuomo, of course was Governor in his own right some years ago (1983-1994). Radio commentator Alan Chartock in 1995 called Andrew and Mario's relationship “one of closest father/son relationships and collaborations in all political history.” (Me and Mario Cuomo: Conversations in Candor, page 104.) Andrew's likely Republican opponent, Rick Lazio, has attempted to use this relationship against Andrew in a variety of ways. Andrew has attempted to use it in his own favor.

There's an aspect of this important father-son relationship that's unlikely to be seriously explored, and that's the way the political similarities between the men could play out in Andrew Cuomo's Governorship, if he wins. I suppose Lazio will try to address this issue sooner or later, but the issue deserves more serious consideration than it can possibly get in the context of a political campaign.

It's widely believed that Andrew and Mario have always been close, which is very near to, but not quite, the truth. According to Robert S. McElvaine's 1988 book Mario Cuomo: A Biography, Mario was working too much during Andrew's early years for the two to be close then. Mario did not, for example, know how well Andrew was doing in High School. When Andrew went to Albany Law School in the late 1970s and early 1980s (he graduated in 1982 and was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1984, according to the State Office of Court Administration), Mario was to be working in Albany as Lieutenant Governor of New York State, and he insisted that the two men live together in an apartment on State Street. They have been close ever since, and Mario has made a conscious effort to make up for his not being around much during Andrew's early years. (Mario Cuomo: A Biography, pages 157-159.)

Andrew was a close adviser to Mario throughout Mario's tenure as Governor, but especially during his first term, when Andrew had an actual job in the administration (for $1 a year). After that, Andrew left to work for the Manhattan District Attorney's office. (Mario Cuomo: A Biography, page 130; “About Andrew Cuomo” from the Cuomo campaign's Internet site.) When Andrew got married, Mario lamented to Alan Chartock about how he would lose the ability to consult his son during the early morning hours. (Me and Mario Cuomo: Conversations in Candor, pages 103-104.) Andrew book-ended Mario's tenure as Governor, by first encouraging him to run after perceiving then-Governor Hugh Carey's position as vulnerable (Diaries of Maruo M. Cuomo: The Campaign for Governor, pages 66-67), and then twelve years later by informing Mario of his loss to George Pataki in 1994 (Andrew Kitzman, Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City 2000, page 139).

The close relationship carried into Andrew Cuomo's 2002 attempt to run against George Pataki. In Andrew's own words:

My race was great political theater. I was running last year in a primary to challenge George Pataki, who had defeated my father, Mario Cuomo. The New York press had choreographed the campaign into an Italian opera in which the son was to avenge the father's death. Unfortunately, the conclusion did not support the premise. [Andrew lost the Democratic nomination to then-Comptroller H. Carl McCall.] There is no romance in the opera: father dies, and then son does. (Andrew Cuomo, Crossroads: The Future of American Politics 2003, page xi.)


Based on this passage, Andrew seems to be well aware of the political importance of his relationship with his father. Note that Andrew in no way implies that the way the press had “choreographed” the race was inaccurate or inappropriate.

The relationship continues into Andrew's current gubernatorial race, as do the potential comparisons. In calling his political program “The New NY Agenda,” Andrew Cuomo in effect invited the comparisons to continue, and intensify. Because, as public radio reporter Karen DeWitt remembered, this slogan was first used by Mario. Karen trotted out a license plate from early in Mario's 1994 campaign that bore the phrase.

Mario Cuomo's use of the slogan went much further than a license plate, however. It also graced the covers of the official printings of Mario's 1993 and 1994 Messages to the Legislature. (Copies were located in the New York State Legislative Library.) That means “New New York” was more than just a political slogan to Mario. It was an attempt at a governing strategy. Andrew appears to view it similarly. After all, the phrase isn't just on Andrew's bumper stickers and buttons; it's the title of his policy book.

In addition to the title, some of the content of Andrew's policy book is also echoed in his father's long-ago Messages to the Legislature. To pick just one example, the embryo of Andrew's proposal for locally-led consolidations of and service sharing among local governments (The New NY Agenda, pages 85-92, also a policy concern of his as Attorney General, see here) is found in Mario's 1994 Message to the Legislature (pages 119-121). The proposals are not identical, but there are more similarities than differences.

The two men also appear to share similar overall political philosophies. In a 1999 speech to the National Press Club, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo argued for a positive role for government, spoke of how part of his role as a government official was to convince the people that government could be a positive solution to a given problem. He had a well-conceived, supportable analysis of why government-based solutions to social problems had or had not worked in the past. His analysis reflected eloquence, intelligence, and (and this is critical) a bureaucrat's appreciation of the necessity for competent public administration. (Andrew Cuomo, “Remarks at the National Press Club,” 28 April 1999, pages 7-9.)

Mario Cuomo has long-held to a similar pro-government philosophy, and by pro-government I mean a firm, anti-Reagenite belief that government can be a positive good. Many of Mario's written works, including 1995's Reason to Believe, 1994's The New York Idea, and 1974's Forest Hills Diary are nothing if not impassioned defenses of that philosophy. If it sounds a bit obvious to say that government “can” be a force for good, it must be remembered that Mario Cuomo's tenure as Governor overlapped with the Reagen era, wherein America's top government official, the President of the United States, paradoxically proclaimed “government is the problem.” Merely to defend the idea that government could do good for people, as Mario did, was to swim against the political tide, and risk drowning.

Much is made of Anderw Cuomo's current anti-tax and “rightsizing government” rhetoric. In this interview with Alan Chartock, for example, Andrew comes out staunchly against both new taxes and new government borrowing. Further, point 3 of Andrew's “New New York” agenda is the following:

Rightsizing Government. Government in New York is too big, ineffective and expensive. We must enlist the best private sector minds to help overhaul our more than 1,000 state agencies, authorities and commissions and reduce their number by 20 percent. We must make it easier to consolidate or share services among our more than 10,000 local governments. (The New NY Agenda, unnumbered page.)


7 out of 10 of the “10 Troubling Facts” described in his policy book relate to government being too big and expensive, and/or to New Yorkers' tax burden. (The New NY Agenda, pages 1-2.)

Some have said that Andrew Cuomo is trying to sound like a Republican, but I think he'd disagree. I think he might suggest nothing in his agenda is specifically Republican, or specifically conservative, and nothing is necessarily inconsistent with a pro-government, liberal philosophy. I can see no evidence that Andrew has ever, or likely will ever, pretend to be anything other than some kind of liberal, along very similar lines to his father.

Mario and Andrew have also both cast themselves as defenders of the downtrodden in society, those usually ignored by the political system and by politicians, those left behind by economic prosperity, progress, and growth.

None of Mario Cuomo's expressions of this are better-known than his 1984 “A Tale of Two Cities” speech.

Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their futures. The President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill." And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.

But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.


In 1999 remarks to the National Press Club, which were also cited earlier, Andrew Cuomo made the following eerily similar statement:

The new American paradigm is the great American paradox.

President Clinton says this is not a story of success and that this nation can do better and that it's not truly a success until the economy is working for everyone, everywhere, and that now is the time to take this great economy, use it as a tool, use the resources to make the economy work everywhere. And he is right.

I have been to the other America, if you will. I have seen the dual reality of the time that we live in. And I can tell you the sense of hopelessness is just as bad as it has ever been. For all the progress we've made, Lord knows we have longer to go.

I also believe that if the American people saw the reality, the other reality, the other America, they would do something about it. If they saw the conditions of poverty that still exist in this nation, they would not allow it to continue. It's not about the America we know. We have to expose that reality, show them the other America, and they won't stand for it.

We also have to show them that we can actually solve it and that government can be an instrument in that solution.


And, finally, one similarity between the two men needs no citation: Their voices. No one could reasonably disagree that Andrew likely learned how to make a speech in large part by listening to his father. Sometimes even the minor differences vanish or lessen, and then the similarities are eerie.

There can be little doubt that Mario Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo have many commonalities that are potentially of great political importance.

New Yorkers have reason to both fear, and look forward to, another Cuomo administration.

Mario Cuomo had many gifts, but also many faults, and his twelve-year administration appears to be regarded by many New Yorkers as a failure. His 1994 defeat at the hands of the then-comparatively unknown George Pataki is surely enough proof that he was seen as a failure at least at the time. Hy Rosen and Peter Slocum's account of the Cuomo Administration in their great 1998 book From Rocky to Pataki paints a complex picture of a gifted Governor constrained by several factors some of which were beyond, and some within, his control. I'll outline three of these factors I saw at work, based on Rosen and Slocum's account.

Firstly, Mario was a liberal Democrat, explicitly in the FDR vein, in a decidedly conservative Republican era, personified by Ronald Reagen. Mario had to spend twelve years straddling the long divide between the FDR and Reagen archetypes. While he may have straddled it well for the most part, he couldn't do it forever. He appears to have in response adapted an incrementalism that he doesn't appear to have been comfortable with, and which had paradoxical effects. Secondly, Mario's tenure coincided with two recessions, and Mario managed to create the perception he, and by extension New York State, were generally anti-business. And thus, it was easy, and in-part true, to blame New York State's economic woes on Mario. From Rosen and Slocum's account, Mario doesn't appear to have ever realized the degree to which he'd helped to create the negative perception. (Andrew has certainly made attempts to paint himself with a pro-business brush.)

Thirdly, and most importantly for our present purposes, is that Mario appears to have just not been that good of a manager. He was part inspirational speaker and part policy wonk, but he failed on translating his principles into policy, into making government match his vision. Lacking that skill, complexity too-often became incoherence. (From Rocky to Pataki, pages 94-136.) It is this third factor that I think of as Mario Cuomo's primary political sin, the one his son needs most to not duplicate. Mario Cuomo could show New York where he wanted us to go, could even convince people, in the abstract, to go there. But, for whatever reason, he had difficulties finding the path, or following it once he found it, or in getting others to follow it. Or all three. Always not quite.

As a result, after twelve years of not quite, in 1994, George Pataki defeated Mario Cuomo with what amounted to one argument alone: That he was not Mario Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo is likely New York State's next Governor.

There are many political similarities between Andrew Cuomo and Mario Cuomo, but there are also differences. Mario Cuomo earned the nickname “Hamlet on the Hudson” for giving off what were popularly perceived as perpetually-mixed signals on whether or not he would run for the Presidency. But Hamlet wasn't quite indecisive. He knew what he had to do. Where he failed was translating thought into action. The Hamlet analogy is thus appropriate to Mario Cuomo, but not quite in the way it was popularly used.

A picture on Andrew Cuomo's campaign Internet site illustrates what I think Andrew Cuomo hopes will be a difference between himself and his father. In that photo, Andrew is seen with Bill Clinton and Al Gore. The Clinton administration is firmly associated in the American mind, especially in the New York mind, with competent administration, and with good reason. Among other accomplishments, Clinton turned the Reagen-era federal budget deficits into a surplus.

Andrew Cuomo is likely the next Governor of New York. Rick Lazio has thus far been as unable to find campaign traction as he has a convincing argument. Anything can happen in politics, and 4 months is over 120 news cycles and several lifetimes, but at the moment the chief danger to Andrew Cuomo appears to be if starts to take victory for granted, and he shows no sign of doing so.

There are some signs that Andrew might be better than his father at translating thought into action, at overcoming Hamlet's dilemma. Andrew appears to have more of a bureaucrat's sensibility, which goes beyond having an idea of what's doable, into the realm of figuring out exactly how to do it.

Chris Smith wrote the following in late May:

Spitzer was ahead of the curve in his embodiment of voter anger, and fighting consumed him. Cuomo is no Mr. Nice Guy—many pols who know him well fear him—and he arrives as public rage with government soars. Yet his success in Albany will likely hinge on whether he can stroke people at the same time as he’s pushing them around: Manipulation we can believe in.


Absolutely true. But there's another, related but separate, issue upon which Andrew Cuomo's success, and hence New York's, will in-part depend: Andrew's ability to translate principle into politics and policy, and thought into action. His ability to neither water-down the analysis nor remain paralyzed by it.

Andrew's ability to duplicate his father's gifts, but not his father's sins.


Works Consulted or Cited

“About Andrew Cuomo.” http://www.andrewcuomo.com/about

Alan Chartock. “Interview with Andrew Cuomo.” 3 July 2010. http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1670295

Alan Chartock. Me and Mario Cuomo: Conversations in Candor. 1995.

Andrew Cuomo. Crossroads: The Future of American Politics. 2003.

Andrew Cuomo. “Remarks to the National Press Club.” 28 April 1999.

Andrew Cuomo. “The Empire Strikes Back.” Undated Speech at University of Buffalo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWAZTtTYC9M

Andrew Cuomo. The New NY Agenda: A Plan for Action. 2010.

Andrew Kitzman. Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City. 2000

Bob Herbert. “Unmasking Poverty.” The New York Times. 29 April 1999.

Casey Seiler. “Everything New is Old Again.” Capitol Confidential (blog). 28 May 2010. http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/27494/everything-new-is-old-again/

Chris Smith. “The Silver Surfer.” New York Magazine, online edition, 28 May 2020. http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/66300/

Elizabeth Benjamin. “Settling The ‘Status Cuomo’ Score.” Capital Tonight (blog). 4 June 2010. http://capitaltonight.com/2010/06/settling-the-status-cuomo-score/

Hy Rosen and Peter Slocum. From Rocky to Pataki: Character and Carictures in New York Politics. 1998.

Lars-Erik Nelson. “A New and Better Vision For Cities.” New York Daily News. 30 April 1999.

Mario Cuomo. 1993 Message to the Legislature.

Mario Cuomo. 1994 Message to the Legislature.

Mario Cuomo. “A Tale of Two Cities” (speech). 1984. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariocuomo1984dnc.htm

Mario Cuomo. Diaries of Mario M. Cuomo: The Campaign for Governor. 1984.

Mario Cuomo. Forest Hills Diary: The Crisis of Low-Income Housing. 1974.

Mario Cuomo. More Than Words: The Speeches of Mario Cuomo. 1993.

Mario Cuomo. The New York Idea: An Experiment in Democracy. 1994.

Mario Cuomo. Reason to Believe. 1995.

Michael Gormley. “Democratic Nominee Cuomo Seeks 'New' New York.” Associated Press. 28 May 2010. Found many places, accessed most recently here: http://pressrepublican.com/0100_news/x433574646/Dem-nominee-Cuomo-seeks-new-New-York

“President Clinton Announces Another Record Budget Surplus.” CNN.com. 27 September 2010. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/

Rick Lazio. Various documents on lazio.com.

Robert S. McElvaine. Mario Cuomo: A Biography. 1988.

Star-Ledger Editorial Board. “NY Democrat Andrew Cuomo sounding a lot like NJ Gov. Chris Christie.” Star-Ledger, online edition. 30 May 2010. http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2010/05/ny_democrat_andrew_cuomo_sound.html