Mario Cuomo: "Once you get to be President, you want to be king.”

[kpete]

JANUARY 1, 2015
Remembering Mario Cuomo
BY KEN AULETTA

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Cuomo did not go all the way in baseball (he couldn’t hit a curveball). Nor did he go all the way in politics. He chose not to run for President in 1992 because his ambition was superseded by his distaste for the grovelling, the fundraising, the selling, the motels. He did, however, “go all the way” as a public man.

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“The secret to contentment is reducing your needs and aspirations,” he said, as we sat on the couch. “I feel fulfilled in the job I have. I don’t have that great vacuum in my psyche that feels I have to keep going up. I felt that way as lieutenant governor. I don’t feel that way now.… Andrew has regrets. He thinks it should be me up there. He’ll get over it. You have to use criteria other than self-gratification. You can’t win that game. Once you get to be President, you want to be king.”

Mario Cuomo had flaws. History will not record that he was a great governor. His budgets were almost always late. His reflectiveness and reclusiveness did not dazzle legislative leaders. And his flight from San Francisco, like his choice not to run for President in 1992, may have indicated a reticence that would not have served him well as President. Or maybe it camouflaged insecurity that was both disabling and wonderfully human. Unlike most politicians, who have no interior lives, he was worthy of a novel. He was not, as the scouting report also observed, “an easy chap to get close to but is very well liked by those who succeed in penetrating his exterior shell.” In the four decades I knew him, I tried to keep him at arm’s length. Journalists are not supposed to say this, but I loved the guy.


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