A speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, seen here in 1988, laid out themes beginning to resonate again in the Democratic Party.
Long Read: Mario Cuomo's Enduring Legacy
The late governor's political approach is gaining new life among Democrats.
What’s perhaps most remarkable is how a speech delivered nearly 31 years ago has come to define the speaker far more than the political party it was meant to inspire. But Cuomo’s words echo now in the philosophy of a new liberal movement – led by another improbable politician, like him – that’s designed to pick up where his rhetoric ended.
Today’s long read comes from The New Yorker, which not surprisingly went full-tilt on Cuomo when word of his passing hit the headlines. While they posted a trio of stories profiling the late governor and his legacy of progress (and missed opportunities for liberals), the piece by Jeff Shesol, “Mario Cuomo’s Finest Moment,” probably gets closest to placing the speech in context of past, present and perhaps future politics.
Though it is arguably the most prominent of Cuomo’s legacies, Shesol writes, the convention speech – with its distinctive “Tale of Two Cities” theme – wasn’t Cuomo’s personal favorite. But it certainly did the most to establish him as a national figure, his three-term governorship aside:
[T]he speech that most resonated in the national consciousness is without doubt Cuomo’s keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, in San Francisco, the convention that marked Walter Mondale for annihilation later that year at the hands of the incumbent President, Ronald Reagan. The Cuomo keynote had much the same effect as the speech by Ted Kennedy at the Democratic Convention of 1980, where President Carter was resignedly renominated, or Reagan’s remarks at the Republican gathering in 1976, after losing the nomination to President Ford. Cuomo stole the show, leaving the delegates with the sinking feeling that they had picked the wrong man.
And they did. More on that in a minute.
Contrary to the Republican orthodoxy emerging at the time – taxes are too high, government’s too big, too wasteful and too restrictive on the individual – Cuomo lyrically declared that government was essential to creating a nation that would be made more perfect by sharing burdens as well as benefits, because we’re all in this together. Democrats, he said, “believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.” Shesol writes:
On the floor, the speech brought catharsis. It was all the things that Democrats wished themselves to be but no longer felt they were as a party. It was bold, in its willingness to take on a popular President directly; it was unapologetic, stating its beliefs clearly and without equivocation; it drew its indignation from some inner store of strength and conviction, not from mere calculation. “Some old-timers said it was the greatest political speech they had heard,” wrote New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. “It was as electrifying as any I remember, and I have been going to political conventions for thirty years.”
Cuomo’s speech underscored just what was missing in Mondale, who, in November, nearly managed the feat of losing all fifty states to Reagan.
Under the unwritten rules of politics, that meant Cuomo would be given a turn at bat; the Democratic nomination would be his, almost for the taking. But when Cuomo flirted with but decided not to chase the nomination in back-to-back cycles, Democrats found themselves longing for the messenger but pretty much ignoring the message he delivered in San Francisco. Instead, Shesol writes, Democrats chose “two successive anti-Cuomos” – a pair of small-state governors – to challenge Republicans:
In 1988, Michael Dukakis heralded “competence” as a core value, like a man running to be the nation’s chief operating officer. In 1992, Bill Clinton galvanized the middle class, as Cuomo had, but challenged the orthodoxies that Cuomo by then had come to represent: chiefly, the old Democratic faith in the efficacy of government.
And challenge them he did. During the Clinton era, the Democratic Party and the government moved to the right as he reformed welfare, argued for mending but not ending affirmative action and downsized the government Cuomo said we needed.
By the end of Clinton’s second term, “triangulation” was in the political lexicon and voters in New York had kicked Cuomo to the curb, handing the governorship to George Pataki, a Republican state legislator. The Democrats have struggled to define themselves and their governing philosophy ever since, and their calculations don’t seem to include New Deal liberalism.
“A decade after his triumphal appearance in San Francisco,” Shesol writes, “[Cuomo] had come to seem like something of an anachronism.”
Only not so much now, concludes Shesol. And he’s right, if you consider President Barack Obama’s recent series of executive actions, the movement to push presumed Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton to the left ahead of the 2016 primaries and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to give Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a hero among progressives, a leadership job:
The nation’s economy is growing today, as it had been in 1984 when he gave his speech. But for many Americans, what Mario Cuomo called “the struggle to live with dignity” remains our defining challenge. It is “the hard substance of things.” Its stubborn persistence is why we hear, increasingly, echoes of Cuomo in the ardency of Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats; Mayor Bill de Blasio, of New York, has even revived “a tale of two cities.” These echoes affirm what Daniel Patrick Moynihan said about Cuomo’s convention speech: “He created a memory.” Now that Cuomo has died, it is the work of his extended family – the country – to determine what that memory means for our future.Mario Cuomo: Life and Career Remembered
Video: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2015/01/02/long-read-mario-cuomos-enduring-legacy?google_editors_picks=true
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