An emphasis on the stylistic dimensions of leadership, combined with a tendency to view politics as a nonstop morality tale, is hardly a new phenomenon. But it has become an exaggerated one in the media-saturated Trump era. And few people demonstrate the hazards of this brand of politics better than Cuomo.
On narrowly political grounds, it is risky for a Democrat to encourage, as Cuomo did last spring, a cult of personality. Despite occasional swoons, progressives just aren’t inclined to support this in a sustained way, in marked contrast to Trump partisans. Some commentators have cried hypocrisy because there are not more immediate widespread calls for Cuomo to resign in the face of allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women. In fact, Cuomo is hanging on tenuously, at best. He spoke deferentially of the women who accused him, and few Democrats are defending him; Trump responds contemptuously toward harassment allegations against him (and all other allegations) and faces no penalty from his zealous supporters.
More importantly, personality-based politics of the sort that buoyed Cuomo and now threatens to sink him are increasingly out of step with the problems of the age.
Cuomo’s father, fellow Gov. Mario Cuomo, famously said that leaders campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Inspiration and public persuasion, of course, always have an indispensable role in effective leadership. But coronavirus has some similar characteristics with many of the issues facing the current and next generation of public officials, in that credible remedies are more compellingly described in prosaic rather than lyrical terms.
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