Based on his record as a policy innovator and a vote-getter, Mario Cuomo was less impressive than John Engler, Tommy Thomson, and any number of other governors who, upon their deaths, will not receive one-tenth the fawning media coverage that Cuomo is getting today. Cuomo’s national prominence is primarily a product of the emotional needs of down-the-line partisan liberals (including many reporters) during the mid-1980s.

His specialty was fluently and confidently telling the people who already agreed with him the things they already wanted to hear. He is best remembered for giving the two most overrated speeches of the 1980s. His 1984 speech to the Democratic National Convention applied Great Depression rhetoric to a rapidly growing economy and failed to make the case for why his party and ideology should be trusted to solve any of the problems of the moment. His Notre Dame speech, for all of its throat clearing, could not address why he should be able to impose his values in the case of the execution of a serial killer but not in the case of protecting a late-term fetus.

Many thought of Cuomo’s 1984 convention speech as the answer to Reagan’s eloquence. Cuomo couldn’t be the answer to Reagan because before you can answer (rather than merely denounce), you have to listen. Just calling Reagan a Social Darwinist and a Herbert Hoover was going to fail regardless of the theatrical abilities of the speaker. It worked about as well then as calling Obama a communist works today.

Reagan was such an effective orator because he had listened to liberal speakers and worked on defusing and parrying liberal arguments. Reagan built his political career on defeating the echo chamber liberalism of speakers like Pat Brown, Ted Kennedy, and Tip O’Neill – and Mario Cuomo.

It used to be said of Barack Obama that he could restate his opponents arguments and make them better. I don’t think anyone ever said that about Cuomo. Obama came of age at a time when the American left (or rather those to the left of the Clintons) faced one political defeat after another – including Cuomo’s 1994 defeat for governor. Obama learned to listen a little. That is why the real liberal reply to Reagan was delivered at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.