Taking responsibility

Back when I was a cub reporter in the 80’s I covered state politics and spent a lot of time with then Governor Mario Cuomo.

I liked him.

I like him because he was direct and accessible. He didn’t care if you worked for the NY Times or some small-town radio station (which I did at the time), if you raised your hand he’d call on you and give you a chance to stump him. I honestly think he enjoyed the jousting. When he died not so long ago, I asked the TV station to let me cover his funeral in New York City because I always respected the man.

I don’t know his son Andrew at all, and I’ve never been to one of his press briefings.

Still, like most of America, I was glued to my TV set or smartphone every morning since mid-March to watch Andrew Cuomo’s Covid-19 press briefings. I think he’s done a very good job keeping most of us safe and I know not many of you would agree with that. The shutdowns were extreme, the screaming about ventilators was over the top, but I think our death toll would be much higher had he not put the hammer down when he did.

I also heard him say, more than once, that the buck stopped with him and if you had a complaint blame him. If you couldn’t have a proper funeral because we can’t have crowds of people together, blame him. And if something goes wrong with the virus and how the state handled it, blame him. I heard him say that more than once. There was a bravado to it, an almost Shane from the old westerns, “high noon” like quality about his stance on where to place blame. He’d be out front, everyone else step away so he could take the hit. It was impressive. So, you can understand my confusion when I heard our governor asked yet again about his policy on letting people sick with the coronavirus go back into nursing homes and the high death toll. His response wasn’t, the buck stops with me, it was tantamount to “the republicans ate my homework.”

On Wednesday, when asked about the criticism he is now receiving on a national level, some of it coming from the same places that adored him eight weeks ago, he said that’s just politics and republicans doing what they do. Only it’s not.

On the very day he pointed the finger at the GOP, an investigative website known as ProPublica published a scathing, lengthy, well sourced article on how the state’s handling of nursing homes likely played a direct role in many deaths. My first thought after reading it was this must be some “hit piece” from a right leaning website.

But a glance from a media biased fact checking service shows that ProPublica, founding by two men in New York City, is left of center and has a more liberal bias in their reporting. Translation, they usually like and treat kindly, democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo.

I know what you’re thinking, that was just one bad article tossing blame around right? Nope. Just a few days before, yet another one with the same angle was published by the well-respected Politico. According to people who do research on media bias, Politico is one of the most balanced media groups out there with an equal number of democrats and republicans reading it religiously. So, what’s my point? Fair minded people are looking at all the nursing home deaths in New York State compared to all the other states and it’s clear we did something wrong. And that “wrong” falls on the order to send COVID patients into nursing homes in March and April.

The governor says he was just following federal guidelines but that strikes me as odd because he has billed himself as a maverick who does not march to a federal drum. He is Shane and he has swagger and boldly speaks truth to power when he wants to. He’s not afraid of anyone.

So, it doesn’t make sense when this policy went south and people starting dying, to suddenly act like you are afraid to take on the feds if you disagree with them. Especially when he’s done it so many times before.

I said at the top, I think our governor and his staff have done a solid job responding to the virus and made some smart, tough choices. But on this one they got it wrong. I just wish they’d acknowledge it. It wasn’t’ the CDC or these nameless republicans out to stir the pot, it was them.

And the proof is in early May he reversed his decision and stopped COVID patients from going into homes.

Nobody is perfect and I don’t think anyone believes our governor or health commissioner would willingly hurt a fly. If they said, “Listen, back in March when this pandemic was raging out of control we were worried about running out of hospital beds and we thought nursing homes could isolate these patients, that’s why we said you have to take them.

“In hindsight it was wrong ... Good intentions, bad decision and we’re sorry.”

If they said that I think most fair-minded people would respond, “You were doing your best under an impossibly stressful situation, so we understand. Thank you for owning it.”

I could be wrong but I think that’s what his father would have done.