On Monday night, Andrew Cuomo took a victory lap at the Democratic National Convention. His speech began with a declaration that “we climbed the impossible mountain, and right now we are on the other side.” He went on to dismiss COVID as merely “a metaphor” for the ills of our country’s politics. The next day, Cuomo announced that he would have a book, American Crisis: Lessons in Leadership from the COVID-19 Pandemic, out on October 13.
Oddly enough though, Cuomo warned today that actually “COVID is NOT over. At best it’s half time. You don’t call it a win at half time no matter the score.” The governor is apparently unable to make up his mind on where we are in our battle with the coronavirus. His quandary is understandable. He wants simultaneously to be able to claim that New York has reached the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to his leadership . . . and to continue to be in the thick of the pandemic so that he can hold his silly press conferences and receive fawning press coverage.
Obviously he got it right the second time; the pandemic has not yet ended. But in New York —where Cuomo failed to flatten the curve and his constituents paid the price — the crisis has largely abated. Whatever Cuomo believes about coronavirus, it’s beyond clear at this point that Andrew Cuomo believes first and foremost in himself.