Andrew, Mario and New York

Andrew Cuomo’s spectacular implosion leaves many casualties in its wake. Mario Cuomo’s legacy shouldn’t be one of them. The younger Cuomo’s rise occurred on the shoulders of his late father, but his precipitous fall was entirely of his own making. Andrew’s Cuomo arc has been variously described as “Shakespearean” or “Greek tragedy.” But there is also a Biblical question, turned on its head: Are the sins of the son to be visited upon the father?

The political question of whether the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge should be restored to its original name, the Tappan Zee Bridge, is emerging as a flashpoint on whether the legacies of the two Cuomos can be separated. After his father’s death, Andrew Cuomo convinced a sympathetic Legislature to affix the 52nd governor’s name on the newly built Hudson crossing. Almost immediately upon Andrew’s resignation, some legislators mounted a push to reverse the naming of the bridge.

It would be petty to take down the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge signs, erasing an honorable man’s memory to punish a less than honorable son. But let’s be clear: The naming of the gargantuan bridge was an act of vanity designed to celebrate not Cuomo pater, but Cuomo filius. Andrew couldn’t name the Ozymandian monument for himself, and so instead his father’s name adorns a bridge best known for a multi-billion dollar price tag, a 30% toll increase and an investigation over safety concerns.

In truth, naming a $5 billion hunk of steel for Mario Cuomo was never a good fit. Mario’s true legacy was integrity, fairness, compassion and a clearly articulated view of government as a tool to raise up those who couldn’t do it on their own. A university center, law school, hospital or housing for those in need, a foundation, scholarship or any number of institutions or initiatives that celebrate life instead of commerce would better wear a name synonymous with his Jesuit view of life lived in service to the common good.

If the Senate and Assembly, brandishing a legislative version of pitchforks and torches, does decide to un-name the bridge, they should simultaneously honor Mario Cuomo and his contributions to the state by affixing his name to an institution that reflects his values, humanity and humility. In doing so, the Legislature might accomplish a task that Mario Cuomo himself often cited when quoting his intellectual hero, French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, “one of the tricks in life is to convert everything into good.”

The Tappan Zee debate obscures a larger issue about Mario Cuomo’s place in New York’s history. Though Andrew was known privately to deride his father’s legacy as “just words,” Mario Cuomo in fact fought off two national recessions, guiding the state to significant job growth against national trends, while setting the standard for progressive politics not just for New York but for the nation. In his principled stand against the inequity of the death penalty, Mario Cuomo was a voice almost alone. It cost him politically, dearly, on an issue that topped the polls in his day with 80% of Americans supporting the death penalty in 1994. That number declined 25 points in subsequent years. If the definition of a leader is to guide his people to a better place, Mario Cuomo led.

Mario Cuomo surely didn’t want a bridge named after him. He didn’t seem to want anything named after him, famously avoiding the traditional gubernatorial portrait for so long that his former aides had one done in secret so that it finally could hang in the Capitol two decades after he left office. How would that man advise us today about his legacy in the face of his son’s ruination? I think he would remind us that power is transitory, but that ideas — ideas! — have more permanence and more capacity to effect change in the world.

Mario Cuomo’s ideas and their impact on a generation will outlast any building, any bridge. The manmade structures will still crumble, eventually. But his ideas — not “just words” — and the acute clarity with which he expressed them, have enduring power that still resonates. To quote him:

“The secret of our success [is] the ability of the American people to create a collective generosity that pools our strengths and uses them to widen the circle of opportunity for the next generation, for the vulnerable, and for all those, who — without our help — would never reach the first rung of the ladder of success….New Yorkers through their government have reached constantly to include the excluded and the underutilized, immigrants and women, victims of prejudice, the disabled .... if we lose that vision of the American dream, we will lose the nation as we have known it.”

That is a Cuomo legacy worth remembering.