This Italian-American governor whose “liberalism” was out of step with the Eighties swallowing Reagan’s load of crap had often been the “what if” scenario of choice until his defeat in 1994. As you may watch from above, Mario gave a really good speech knocking St. Reagan’s “City on the Shining Hill” rhetoric, and I would agree, despite my family having to move twice during his first term, we weren’t living more prosperously. Too bad the best speeches for the Democrats are often given during the presidential elections they lose in; Cuomo in 1984, Clinton and Richards in 1988 and Obama in 2004; I don’t recall anything interesting in 2000.
The whole “what if” probably carried on from 1988 and 1992 because the Democrats were beaten by a blue-blood Republican and then a southern DINO who quickly ran to the center the day he nailed the nomination. I think Mario did the right thing by bowing out. Sure he was ridiculed as the Hamlet on the Hudson plus I loved Phil Hartman’s imitation of him in a skit showing a Democratic debate of who isn’t running for many thought Bush the First was a shoe-in after “winning” Gulf Distraction I.
“Four words on why I can’t run. I have Mob ties!”
No, he saw how Dukakis got ripped a new one and to me it had overtones of Stevenson. Nevermind that the American majority was descended from Germans, Italians and the Irish, it continues to back the WASP minority which has continuously been dragged kicking and screaming into suffrage reforms. The Stevenson element is most Americans hating intelligent leaders, therefore they back people with mediocre intellects: Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush II.
It’ll be a while before the more blunt publications bring up Mario’s actual record (The Nation, American Prospect) and I’m confident there will be back-handed compliments in the royal we from The Economist. Compared to how much the Democrats have handed the agenda to Wall Street, the DLC and NeoLiberals, Mario was too Liberal for America. Translation, he would push for legislation to have the rich pay their taxes while not gutting the nation’s infrastructure.
I think any legacy Mario did have was success for a first generation Italian-American in an era when morons thought we all are involved with the Mafia (Mario wasn’t anyway, it was a cheap/easy joke). The other is what a disappointment his son Andrew is, a mealy-mouthed moderate from the same bullshit mold as Arne Duncan, Obama and the Clintons.