https://www.city-journal.org/html/andrew-cuomo-16114.html
New York governor Andrew Cuomo says that America was “never that great,” and he’s entitled to that view, but it would be interesting to know where the U.S. ranks in his personal list of great nations. And it’s amusing to imagine what the late Mario Cuomo, who so frequently praised America for the singular place that it is—“the greatest nation in the only world we know”—would have to say, especially in private, about his impulsive son’s latest outburst. Cuomo delivered his caustic observation at a bill-signing ceremony cum campaign pep rally on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and it might be a mistake to take it for much beyond what it was: just another rhetorical drive-by shooting aimed at Donald Trump, the bête noire of New York Democratic politics.
But let’s unpack it anyway.
“We’re not going to make America great again,” Cuomo said. “It was never that great. We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged.” Perhaps the governor meant “perfect” when he said “great”—his language skills aren’t profound when he’s in political mode—and that would have the advantage of being true. Humans aspire to perfection, but never achieve it; greatness is a relative goal, reachable but open to mischievous rhetorical abuse.
Perhaps Cuomo was conjuring the spirit of his father’s keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a carefully composed, skillfully delivered attempted takedown of President Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” campaign theme. But this was an infinitely larger stage in a game played for immensely greater stakes, and Mario Cuomo was a masterful public speaker. At best, Andrew Cuomo’s crack was an uninspired knockoff of his father’s singular statement of principle and purpose. Just as Trump is no Reagan, Andrew is no Mario when it comes to political oratory.