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Andrew Cuomo's Leadership Is an American Tragedy

Ellie Bufkin
Ellie Bufkin  |  October 23, 2020 2:00 PM

The Democratic governor of New York has been engaged in a grift involving not only the people of his state but also the entire nation since the beginning of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. When things were spinning out of control and New Yorkers were dying early on this year, Cuomo did not act fast enough, made some hideously bad decisions and people died as a result.

Cuomo was not alone in his miscarriage of leadership; this was an unprecedented event in modern American history and few leaders had anywhere near the amount of foresight needed to make those early calls correctly. But where Cuomo takes the proverbial cake as the biggest loser of the pandemic is how he has behaved in the time since he realized he was screwing up royally.

To refresh on how badly Cuomo bungled the coronavirus response, Stu Burguiere of The Blaze put together an eye-popping timeline last week, reminding us all of the very low lows Cuomo reached in the early days of the pandemic. Rather than apologize for his well-documented missteps, including signing an order that put COVID-infected patients in nursing homes with the most vulnerable citizens in his state, Cuomo wrote a book about how awesome he is.

"Andrew Cuomo’s new book is out, a fictional tale in which he proclaims himself master of coronavirus and viral savior of New York," Burguiere wrote. "But that’s not even close to true. Let's just go through Cuomo’s actions in the most important month."

After the first few days in March, Cuomo held a press conference on the threat of vaping in New York. He still didn't find the threat of the coronavirus all that interesting.

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Cuomo eventually did declare a state of emergency in New York on March 7, while still telling people that the virus was like the flu and didn't really pose much of a threat.

Almost midway through March, nearly two months after Trump began banning travel from China and other concerning parts of the world, Cuomo was still telling people this was not a disease anyone really needed to worry about.

It was right around this date, after Cuomo called a state of emergency, that NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was telling people not to be afraid and to go out and live their lives normally; he even encouraged them to go check out a film. Boy, how things have changed. He has since been excoriated by nearly everyone for his terrible leadership as well.

With the gift of hindsight, I can recall these incidents and truly did not see how badly Cuomo was handling the situation. I even came to appreciate his daily news blasts and calming "we got this attitude." But he did not "got this." Not at all. Days later, Gov. Cuomo appeared for the first time on his brother Chris's CNN primetime show. Their "yuck yuck" interview, which was repeated several times, failed to land with an increasingly concerned American public.

Burguiere's thread is fairly lengthy and there is a lot of minute-by-minute flubs from Cuomo that are well-worth revisiting, but I'd like to fast forward to the present day, as New York, under the leadership of Cuomo, has recorded the most deaths and one of the highest unemployment rates of anywhere in the country. The state is facing an economic fallout similar to the free fall of the 1970s, in which many families and businesses left the Empire State for better conditions.

This is all happening while Cuomo is promoting a book about how he is the savior of New York and a leader to be regarded highly in American history. This is just an insulting notion. Cuomo has yet to take even an iota of responsibility for signing an order that likely cost thousands of lives, constantly blaming President Trump, who gave him everything he asked for at the height of the pandemic.

To Cuomo, it's everyone's fault but his own. And now, rather than claiming his mistakes and attempting to help the people that looked up to him while he was getting it all so wrong, he is continuing his suffocation of a dying state while blaming religious groups, especially Jewish people, for continuing to spread the highly infectious virus.

Along with the mayor of NYC, Cuomo has specifically targeted Hasidic Jews for gathering en masse for weddings and funerals, holding them uniquely responsible for the continued existence of COVID-19. The words from Cuomo have also inspired a backlash among New York residents who now look at their Jewish neighbors as an enemy. The New York Times was all too happy to follow suit.

Cuomo is leading the state with nearly unchecked power thanks to the barrel full of executive and emergency orders from Albany. He morphed from a leader in times of uncertainty into a dictator by executive fiat who is sacrificing his state's prosperity in the interest of more power.

As the nation looks to November 3 as a time to select federal leaders and representatives on Capitol Hill, let Cuomo serve as a reminder that in our federalist society, choosing leaders with integrity and character at the local and state level should be paramount. Cuomo was elected to be the voice of the people in New York; instead, he is crushing his people while lying and sucking up as much power as possible. Tyrants in American history are never remembered fondly.