Albany Times Union (Sunday)

Cuomo learns that #metoo means #himtoo

- Washington

First, he married a Kennedy. Then he behaved like one. Like his idol Bill Clinton — he still cherishes the cigar humidor Clinton gave him — Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not seem to realize times had changed.

Back in 1998, when the story broke about the affair with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton aides whined to reporters that they should read biographie­s of President Kennedy. JFK did stuff like that all the time, they said. So did FDR! Yes, reporters explained, but that was then.

Clinton thought he could survive the scandal by hiding behind his circle of accomplish­ed women, who filed before the cameras to repeat the president’s cowardly denials about “that woman.”

He believed that his progressiv­e actions for women would be a shield against his retrogress­ive behavior.

It was a form of blackmail: Let me be a lech in the backroom and I’ll give you feminist policies in the Cabinet Room.

As I wrote about Clinton, and I’ll say again about Cuomo, the power differenti­al between a young aide or intern and a much older boss always makes things dicey. Throw in the fact that it’s a president or governor we’re talking about, and it’s most certainly an abuse of power.

In an ideal world, women would channel Barbara Stanwyck and snappily put the boss in his place. But this is a world where women had to stifle their inner blech for centuries for economic security. When your boss transgress­es, your response could very well determine whether you keep your job, get the best assignment­s, or pay next month’s rent.

Charlotte Bennett, 25, a former aide to Cuomo who has accused him of inappropri­ate conversati­on — asking whether she had trouble with intimacy after surviving sexual assault, saying how lonely he was during COVID and how he would date women older than 22 — said she thought he was hitting on her.

“People put the onus on the woman to shut that conversati­on down,’’ she told Norah O’donnell, “and by answering, I was somehow engaging in that and enabling it when, in fact, I was just terrified. It didn’t feel like I had a choice. He’s everyone’s boss.”

“Probably enough Democrats feel it no longer makes sense to hold your own side to serious ethical standards if Republican­s won’t, so it’s possible to tough out things like this,” Ron Brownstein, a senior editor of The Atlantic, told me. “I wouldn’t look at this as evidence that #Metoo is losing momentum. It’s more the sense that a red-blue cold war is gaining momentum. I think there’s less and less willingnes­s to unilateral­ly punish your own side. Why take your own piece off the board if they won’t?”

A new Quinnipiac poll shows most New York voters do not think Cuomo should resign but they also do not want him to run again.

Linda Stasi, a longtime New York tabloid columnist, defended Cuomo, tweeting: “With any #sexualhara­ssment allegation, #Dems always want to destroy the man’s reputation, and #Republican­s always want to destroy the woman’s. No gray areas allowed.”

“You don’t get things done in this toughass state without being a bully,” she posted on Medium. “Terrible but true. He is also a big flirt who loves pretty women, and never fails to compliment in ways that are now considered very wrong.” Awkward, she argued, but not a pig.

Even Trey Gowdy on Fox News urged a standard that is not filtered through the prism of politics: “I want one playbook for both Republican­s and Democrats.”

So why was Cuomo, a man who has been passionate about passing laws against sexual harassment, citing the future he wants for his three daughters, and who has pilloried the “repugnant” behavior of fellow New York pols accused of sexual transgress­ions, so tone-deaf and reckless?

Because despite being drenched in the lessons of #Metoo, a society does not change instantly. The reason Shakespear­e is still the greatest playwright is humans have the same tragic flaws, century after century.

When Cuomo claimed obliviousn­ess about how he was making these three women feel, he excused himself by saying that, like his father before him, he has a kissy-huggy political style with men and women.

I covered his father, Mario, the three-time governor of New York who gnawed at the idea of a presidenti­al run. And I can tell you that the closest he came to making a move in his office was reaching for a book by Teilhard de Chardin to give me. I still have it.

 ??  ?? MAUREEN DOWD
MAUREEN DOWD

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