‘Crisis Management for Dummies’ (by A. Cuomo)
Last spring, I got an email from a guy who demanded that I support the idea of having Andrew Cuomo take Joe Biden’s place as Democratic nominee for president.
Leadership would have to persuade Biden to step aside — this guy insisted — for a candidate with a far better chance of beating the incumbent, who I believe was King Aerys II Tagaryen but it’s been a while, so check that.
Onto this idea I tossed a colorless, odorless liquid that was below room temperature.
First, Joe Biden had been trying to become president for 32 years. It seemed unlikely that he would stop dancing with Ginger Rogers just because Cuomo said, “May I cut in?”
Second, millions of Americans had voted in the primaries for Biden, as opposed to for “Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. unless somebody way cooler pops up.”
Third, Cuomo’s appeal tended to dwindle and fizzle as one drew farther away from New York. Those daily briefings, which so many of us enjoyed, began with — in comedian John Mulaney’s rendering — Cuomo saying, “We are New York Tough because we are New York Strong. And we are New York Strong because we are New York Kind.”
Wisconsin and Arizona are not very close to New York.
This person wrote back to tell me I was wrong.
I was not wrong. It’s not that I am never wrong, but I am wrong very rarely and at only very specific intervals. I am not due to be wrong again until May 27, 2023. I’m like a comet.
In recent weeks I have not written back to this individual to remind him of our earlier exchange. I am not that kind of smallminded, petty, nyah-nyahnyah person. Also, I could not find his email address.
I get it. Spring of 2020 was a different time. A leader could exude greatness simply by not suggesting it was OK to inject yourself with bleach.
Our standards were so low the Cuomo was given an Emmy. For briefings. That’s like giving an Oscar to the person who made the pre-flight safety film for your Delta flight. “The seat cushion as a flotation
I’m starting to worry about that 2019 Lake Ontario fishing trip Cuomo took with Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont. Is it going to come out that the trout they “caught” were previously frozen?
device scene? Mwah!”
If the little girl from “The Exorcist” were president, people would be winning Nobel Prizes for not being possessed by the Devil.
Cuomo also wrote a book last year about his handling of the COVID crisis. This is like publishing a book about how you won the Super Bowl at halftime. I believe the title was “My Pretty Decent Grasp of Reality.” It was an instant bestseller. We were desperate.
Now, everything is unraveling. His administration manipulated data about nursing home deaths to make him look better. Women have charged him with sexual harassment including at least one case of alleged groping.
In recent days, the Albany police department reached out to that woman’s lawyer to offer their services, though she had not filed a complaint. You know things are not going well when the police volunteer to investigate you for a crime that has not been reported to them.
I’m starting to worry about that 2019 Lake Ontario fishing trip Cuomo took with Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont. Is it going to come out that the trout they “caught” were previously frozen?
Has anybody noted the irony that Cuomo biggest failing in handing his overlapping scandals has been in the area of ... briefings?
Sometimes I think about what I would do if I were not providing the world with my deft and sagacious journalism. I think I would be a crisis management consultant. I’ve covered a lot of these imbroglios. I have some simple rules.
First, make a wellplanned, compact statement about your involvement. You must not omit things that will be found out later, but neither should you volunteer things that can be used against you. In the case of the nursing home undercounting, Cuomo held a one-hour-and-forty-minute news conference. By the time you’ve answered questions for 100 minutes, you’ve undoubtedly got half the room thinking Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa are freshly buried behind a nursing home in Coxsackie.
Second, do not say things that will prompt other accusers to come forward. At first blush, this appears to have happened in the case of the sixth and most recent woman to accuse Cuomo.
According to the Albany Times Union, the woman, an aide to Cuomo, became visibly upset while watching Cuomo say, at a March 3 news conference: “I want you to know this from me directly, I never touched anyone inappropriately.”
Another staff member noticed her distress and eventually learned the cause of it, according to the newspaper’s report.
If this holds up, Cuomo, who won an Emmy for briefings, will have briefed himself into oblivion.
But there is hope. Actor Matthew McConaughey said this week he is seriously interested in running for governor of Texas. You may recall that musician Kinky Friedman ran for the same office after the tenures of George W. Bush and Rick Perry, using the slogan “How Hard Could It Be?”
Twenty-two years have passed since McConaughey smoked pot, stripped naked and started playing the bongos so loudly that he did not hear the police pounding on his door.
That’s what you want to do. Get this stuff out of your system while the stakes are low.