The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

It happens every day now, around midday. What pops up on the television screen is a briefing by a senior elected official full of useful, relevant information backed up by charts and graphs and a sense of honest credibility.

The backdrop is not a bunch of uncomfortable looking experts and consultants looking at their shoes as the speaker at the lectern misspeaks or lies. The experts in this setting are spaced an appropriately socially distanced six feet apart on a makeshift lectern. So are the journalists who ask blunt questions and receive frank, direct answers.

The setting is a large room in the statehouse in Albany, New York. And the speaker is a man who has emerged in this season of pandemic panic and cultural chaos as “America’s Governor”.

The speaker is the Empire State’s current governor and son of a past governor. It is Andrew Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo is the eldest son of Mario Cuomo, who once held statewide elective office in New York state for 20 straight years. The last 12 of those years were as governor, ending in 1995 after he was defeated in the Republican Revolution of the previous November.

Mario Cuomo was called “Hamlet on the Hudson” because he never could completely commit to running for president either in 1988, when he would have almost certainly lost to George H W Bush, or in 1992, when he might have beaten Bush.

Andrew Cuomo is now in his own third term as New York’s governor, having first been elected in 2010. Getting his start in politics as his father’s campaign manager, Andrew is more pragmatic and centrist than his dad and perhaps even more potent politically.

Until the past couple of weeks, no one had really much speculated on the notion of Andrew for president. But he is doing such an outstanding job in his daily coronavirus briefings and general comportment that, in this time of profound executive leadership deficit in the US, people are starting to seriously take notice. He has become a TV star.

Conveniently, younger brother Chris Cuomo is already a TV star, hosting a weeknight talk show on CNN that regularly eviscerates the incumbent American president. Chris Cuomo has just announced he has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Andrew Cuomo speaks, jokes and spars with the local press corps for about an hour at lunchtime. He is clearly on top of the mass of often confusing information that threatens overload for anyone trying to conscientiously get their mind around this particularly scary pandemic.

Cuomo speaks of trends, of relevant facts and figures such as current hospitalizations and fatalities in America’s hardest hit state, and of forward-looking measures he is implementing to deal with the hopefully soon-upcoming “apex of the crisis”. The governor is clear and articulate.

He speaks dispassionately about some of President Trump’s decisions and statements. Cuomo is, simply, objective and factual at a time when both are desperately needed.

Despite the occasional courtesy mutually extended by these long-standing antagonists, Trump and Cuomo clearly represent different perspectives, especially on the role of government. On available evidence, Cuomo’s big government stance is preferable, particularly during a time when citizens everywhere are looking for help.

Over the weekend, New York’s chief executive spoke of Sunday dinners in his emphatically Italian-American family, presided over by his parents, who were famously devoted to each other for the span of a 60-year marriage. The son somewhat ruefully noted at one point that he is “not married now”.

Andrew Cuomo was married for 15 years to one of Bobby Kennedy’s daughters. For Democrats, it was almost a Shakespearean union of powerful political houses. The marriage didn’t last, but his political career survived the divorce. Cuomo then maintained a “partnership” with a TV chef for another 15 years, but that too has apparently foundered.

In earning the title of America’s Governor at a time of missing executive inspiration in the nation’s capital, Cuomo follows in the once-impressive footsteps of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose determination and grit after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre inspired the country and earned Rudy the title of America’s Mayor.

Until virtually disappearing from public view during Trump’s impeachment hearings and exoneration, Giuliani was best known recently as the craven confederate of the president, digging desperately in Ukraine and elsewhere for muck that would stick to likely November opponent Joe Biden.

But now New York is giving the country another new hero. Its governor is clear and tough and smart and honest. It’s too late for Cuomo to take on the fatuous Trump at November’s ballot box, though Trump has already begun speculating about it to sew dissension among his opponents. But there’s plenty of room on the national stage for Cuomo to become an American hero.

And there might be room on the Democratic convention stage for Andrew Cuomo this summer, too – assuming the coronavirus pandemic has abated sufficiently that there is a convention. After all, Cuomo’s father got his first big national political break at the 1984 Democratic national convention, where his keynote address was just about the only positive thing that happened to the Democrats in a year when Ronald Reagan waltzed to easy re-election.

If there is a Democratic convention this year, and if Cuomo speaks, maybe the results will be different this time.

Trump’s ratings keep on soaring

The US, like most of the rest of the world, is feeling and reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. People are scared. And in a period of national crisis like this one, approval ratings often rise for whomever sits in the White House.

Donald Trump is no exception. Approval for his performance in office, notwithstanding his many intentional and inadvertent errors in handling the crisis, has soared to the highest levels of his presidency. A recent survey jointly conducted by ABC News and the Washington Post revealed that 48 percent of respondents approve his job performance, while 46 percent disapprove.

This is the first time since he was inaugurated in 2017 that Trump’s approval rating is higher than disapproval.

Recent history backs up the theory that crisis begets higher approval ratings for the president. After 9/11, George W Bush’s approval rating jumped from 55 percent to 86 percent. And within two months of launching the Gulf War in 1991, Bush’s father’s positive rating reached 90 percent.

This has to be good news for Trump, who has appeared to at least try to stay mostly on message and avoid the pettiness that is clearly his default posture.

There have, naturally, been exceptions. Trump has been embroiled in a public spat with popular Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who accused his administration of discouraging suppliers from sending needed medical equipment to hard-hit Detroit, a long-time Democratic stronghold, and other Michigan cities.

Trump has also lashed out at beleaguered Washington governor Jay Inslee, another Democrat.

Trump won’t win Washington in November, but he will probably need to carry Michigan to get re-elected. He has recently begun to refer to himself as a wartime president.

Is this part of an effort to inspire the country to rally around and listen to the health experts and substitute for its fears an optimism for a quick recovery from the pandemic? Let’s give the president the benefit of the doubt and say yes.

But Trump probably also wants to get the same crisis-related approval surge the Bushes did.

...and no rivals in sight

However cynical, petty, careless or uniformed Trump may appear to be on his daily TV appearances, the fact remains he’s out front and centre before the country every day. What of his rivals?

Joe Biden is home in Delaware. Every so often, there is a story about how his advisers are scheming to get his name out in the public consciousness. But since he isn’t in the Senate anymore and lacks an obvious platform for offering his views on the national health crisis, neither he nor his campaign is getting much traction.

Bernie Sanders, still in the race, is at least in the Senate. But there’s little to be gained for any politician in opposing giant funding bills or other measures before Congress that are designed to help voters and small businesses. Sanders isn’t making many headlines, either.

This is important. Trump is gaining a significant advantage with his daily press conferences.

Just another reason for the Democrats to hope the crisis ends in time for them to recover some momentum as the presidential election campaign gets real in the Fall.