16 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2018
By ROSARIO A. IACONIS
Italian Heritage Educator,
Suffolk County Community College
Politics in New York resembles a
Game of Thrones.
Rabid ideologues clash with pragmatic
progressives in a fierce power
struggle over governance of both city
and state.
Last year, when called upon to
expunge the statue of Christopher Columbus
from Gotham’s skyline — and
the pages of history — Gov. Andrew
Cuomo crossed swords with feckless
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio,
defying the false gods of revisionism
and declaring: Not today. And not ever.
In 2018, Cynthia Nixon relied on
identity politics, a far-left agenda
and her fame as a thespian to mount
an ultimately futile gubernatorial
primary campaign to wrest the
Democratic nomination away from
the governor.
Like Bill de Blasio, Nixon failed
miserably.
In honoring his Italian heritage,
championing Western civilization
and defeating the uber-ideological
wing of his party, Cuomo paved the
way for a possible White House bid.
Though Mario Cuomo missed his
rendezvous with presidential destiny
in 1992, the current governor of
the Empire State is well positioned
to make a full-throttle run for the
Rose Garden in 2020.
Cuomo the younger values performance
over populism. That is, he
favors solid accomplishments over
sturm und drang identity politics.
This leitmotif combines the legal
acumen of Ferdinand Pecora with
Niccolo` Machiavelli’s virtu`.
From the Excelsior Scholarship
program to gun-control legislation
to LGBTQ rights to infrastructure
revitalization and environmental
protection, the governor has demonstrated
profoundly astute leadership.
What’s more, by persuading
IBM, Intel, Samsung, Globalfoundries
and TSMC to spend $4.4 billion
in New York, Cuomo has also laid the
groundwork for making the state a
global nanotechnology center in the
21st century.
And in lauding New York’s fabled
diversity, Andrew Cuomo has cited E
pluribus unum — “Out of many, one.”
But America’s national motto is not
just a point of pride for the Empire
State. It derives from the governor’s
ancestral Italian roots in antiquity’s
Pax Romana.
While he may never attain the
rhetorical heights of his eloquent
paterfamilias, Andrew Cuomo remains
utterly sui generis: a pragmatic
progressive untethered to ideological
orthodoxies.
He takes immense pride in the august
Italian jurisprudential tradition
— and in the blood, sweat and toil of
his grandparents who first made the
trek to America.
Such cultural bona fides would
play well in Potsdam, Patchogue and,
yes, Peoria.
Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss
to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential
election created a void in the
Democratic Party. Enter Gov. Cuomo.
A contest between Andrew Cuomo
and Donald Trump calls to mind Marcus
Aurelius’s timeless juxtaposition:
“A noble man compares and estimates
himself by an idea which is higher
than himself; and a mean man, by one
lower than himself. The one produces
aspiration; the other ambition, which is
the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”
POINT OF VIEW
NY POLITICS:
A GAME OF THRONES
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