In recent years, I had a number of wonderful on-air conversations with Mario Cuomo about the great issues of the day. Aside from the back-and-forth “banter,” these interviews helped our listening audience—and now our readers—know what a wise and articulate man the governor was. Many times we discussed difficult topics. But often our conversations occurred during moments of triumph or great elation.
A NEW MILLENNIUM CONVERSATION
Over the years, I would ask Mario Cuomo for his thinking on current issues. In this conversation of January 2000, we talked at length about the new millennium.
WILLIAM O’SHAUGHNESSY: What’s the secret to a good life, Mario?
MARIO CUOMO: Never give up trying to follow your dream, whatever it is. Poppa taught me you’re never too young or too old for dreams. Every time I thought I was going to fail—in politics particularly, or when I failed a test and I was crushed—all those moments when you want to hide and you don’t want anyone to see you, all those times when I wanted to quit, I thought about Poppa and how he would never quit on a dream.
WO: Mario Cuomo once said, “When the people say ‘Send me a president,’ they are really saying, ‘Send me a moral leader.’ ” But you told some friends, “I don’t want to be the moral leader of this country.”
MC: I would tell the children of America what I would tell a child about his or her father. What we hope for in our father, our mother, our heroes, our presidents is somebody perfect. Someone who is so good, so correct, so right that whenever we’re confused about life we can go and put our arms around him or her and say, “Thank God for the Truth, and there is the Truth.” Unfortunately, that has happened only once in my experience and knowledge. Only once have we been given such a person, and even then we didn’t recognize it. That was the beginning of the Christian era. Since then, and before and maybe forever, we’re going to have imperfect creatures. And we will all sin, according to the good Jewish book and the good Christian book, seven times seven times a day! That’s true even of presidents, of popes, of great rabbis. Some day in another universe we will achieve perfection. That is called Nirvana, Heaven.
You have to hope for institutions that can survive the weakness, the venality, the short-sightedness of leaders, as we have for many years. This is not to confuse what is real with what is desirable. Nor to suggest that we shouldn’t continue to aspire for more excellence—and insist on it.
The presidency should be a place where you send signals to people about how they should behave, about how to be civil: You shouldn’t hate someone because the other guy is Jewish or black or a female or gay; honor your relationships, live up to your contracts; don’t mess around with interns in the back room. We all have an obligation to put out these signals of civility. Everybody is a parent or role model to somebody.
We have two things going against us, O’Shaughnessy. The first is our humanity and vulnerability, our concupiscence: just because Adam and Eve bit that darn apple all those years ago. And the other thing is freedom. Because we are a relatively free society, because we insist on giving ourselves a lot more room than most other successful nations ever have, we are free to make mistakes and bad choices. We are free to be disgusting and even mean in our language. We are free to lie about public officials as long as we don’t do it maliciously. We’re free to have all the sex we want. We’re free to do a lot of things a lot of people regard as not good for the making of a healthy society.
WO: Governor, you’re not blaming all of Bill Clinton’s problems on Adam and Eve, are you?
MC: I blame everything on Adam and Eve, Brother Bill!
WO: A few weeks ago out on the West Coast you addressed 2,000 people, and at the end of the program some nut in the back row screamed out, “Why don’t you run for president?” He brought the whole damn gathering to their feet. Why don’t you run?
MC: I think my moment has passed, Bill. I think there was a time when I might have been able to make the case. I think the party has enough quality to make the race, and I don’t think there is a need for me. If I believed there was a need, I would consider it. There are other people who run not because they think they are the very best but because they think they would like to be president. That has never been enough for me. Would I like to be president? Yeah, but I don’t think I’m anywhere near the best available, and so I’m not even considering it.
I do miss the opportunity the governorship gave me to do good things. I described it once this way: Every morning you are lucky enough to wake up as the governor of New York, you have an infinite number of opportunities ahead of you to do good things. It is a great gift to be in a position to help a lot of people to make their lives a little bit better. The private sector has many rewards, and I have been luckier than I deserve to be, but I do miss the opportunity to be useful to a lot of people. The test is not so much what you achieve, although we all strive to achieve; the test really is how hard you try. So I’ll keep trying as long as I have the energy to do it.
Try to make this place as good as you can make it. And don’t ask how. God says, “I’ve sent you rules, I’ve sent down the tablets: don’t take someone’s spouse, don’t take someone’s goods, don’t kill anybody. That is all you need. The rest you have to work out for yourselves. You know what sweetness is, as distinguished from bitterness. You know what fairness is, as distinguished from unfairness. You know what it is to be good. And to be bad. Just do the right thing. That’s all I’m asking.”
And if you think that’s not a good enough answer, show me another one!
And that’s what Islam believes too.
And God also admonishes us, “And don’t be telling me you don’t have the capacity to change the world. I know you don’t have that capacity. But you have the capacity to try! I know how grand and complicated a place this is. And I know how little you are. And so if the best thing you can do in your lifetime is find one other human being along the way and comfort her in her moment of distress, then terrific! I’ll settle for that. Don’t worry about fairness when judging your effort. I’ll know when you tried and I’ll know when you didn’t.”
That’s what I tell my grandchildren. And if you understand that, then you can live justified.
They ask me, as they ask every politician, I guess, “What do you want on your tombstone when you die?” That’s easy for me. I always give the same answer, “Just put: ‘Mario Cuomo, 1932– . . . fill in the blank. He tried.’ ” Tried what? Just forget about that. He tried. That’s all you have to do to make yourself successful. In this life and the next, Brother Bill.
WO: Whew! You’re being very profound this morning. Governor, what does it mean to be an Italian American?
MC: You say it accurately when you say, “Italian American.” If you had said, “What does it mean to be Italian,” I would have had difficulty because I’m not really Italian. I’m an American born here. Momma and Poppa were born in Italy and came here. They were born in a place called Salerno, in the Mezzogiorno, one day’s journey from Rome, in the south of Italy from which most Italian American people came. They didn’t come from the north—and this is important to remember when you’re thinking of Italian Americans. Milan and Florence are where the industry has always been—the money, wealth, and high culture, if you’re talking about literature, literacy, and the arts. The South has always been the poorer part of Italy with fewer educated people, fewer successful people, more poor people and strugglers. That was true for all the [twentieth] century, and it’s why so many people came from Sicily and the lower part of Italy to America, and my people were among them.
WO: It’s part of the popular culture, Governor, that your parents were very poor.
MC: They were poor in Italy and that’s why they came here. And they were poor here because they chose, unfortunately, just before the Depression as a time to come. My father and mother were never educated in Italy. They never went to school a day in Italy. And whatever they learned about Italian writing and words they learned from their families a
nd from the streets in Salerno. When they came here my father had no skills other than labor. He was a small man, not big and powerful. What he did was use a shovel. He was a ditch-digger, literally, in Jersey City. He was able to make a living. He had no friends, no money, no family here. He was able to make a living until the Depression stopped the construction work, and then he was desperately poor. My mother came over a year after my father did, which was the established pattern. You’d get married, the woman would become pregnant, you’d go to America, and a year later she’d come over to America with her first child. So they were poor and they were saved in the Depression by a gentleman from Queens County by the name of Kessler, who owned a grocery store but couldn’t run it himself because he was ill and needed someone to run it. He put them in a back room of the grocery store in South Jamaica and taught them what they needed to know. It is hard to say we were poor because, although my father wasn’t paid in the beginning, we had food and shelter and probably did better than most people in the neighborhood.
WO: Governor, you mentioned Mr. Kessler, the owner of the grocery store. I’ve heard you speak of this to Jewish groups. Are there similarities, I wonder, among Jewish people and Italian Americans?
MC: I think, Bill, as I’ve grown older—and this is true of a lot of people I know—you arrive at two conclusions about values in this society. One is that it is harder and harder to look to the collectivity, to the American culture, and say, “This is going to supply me with all the values I need.” Especially at a time like this, given the current argument: What is it that we believe in that truly uplifts us? And because we’re troubled by a lack of heroes and a lack of clear values, we tend to turn more and more toward our ethnicity, toward our roots. I’m probably more distinctly Italian American now than I was when I was fifteen. When I was fifteen or sixteen, it didn’t mean as much to me. For some immigrants, and this is a shameful thing to admit, if you were poor and your parents couldn’t speak the language and you weren’t particularly good at it yourself, there can even be an embarrassment factor at being Polish or Jewish or Romanian or Greek or Irish (not the Irish as much because they were literate in this language). But then as you grow older you come to appreciate your roots. If you happen to be an Italian American, then part of your heritage is Italy itself. Notwithstanding [that] my mother and father weren’t educated and never visited a museum in Rome and never knew who Cicero or Caesar was, it’s in their blood to some extent. They share that culture, and, therefore, you inherit it to some small extent. And that’s meaningful. You come from a people thousands of years old.
You see this in the African American community very vividly. They’re going back to their roots. Remember [Alex] Haley’s book Roots. And when they go back they are reminded that however badly they’re treated here, they have an immense contribution to give. They have been left a tremendous legacy of intelligence and accomplishment from Africa, and so these things take on much greater value.
I think of myself as an Italian American, and I feel that I have the culture of the Italian American. I have the values my mother and father brought over that are centered and distinct. These they have in common with all the other immigrants of their generation, whether they were Irish, Polish, or German. And these values were a willingness to work very hard, a total commitment to family, an instinct for religion though no philosopher had taken the time to teach them the nuances and subtleties of one God and three Persons. But they had a general sense of a God to whom we owe loyalty and obedience and who in one way or another would save us when it’s all over. They had that religious commitment. They also had incredible patriotism, and so they developed this very powerful commitment to the United States of America. People who came here as immigrants appreciate it better than those who were born here, the difference between this place and all others; and, therefore, they had a fiercer love even than some of the native-born people. All these things I inherited in common with the Podales who were Greek Americans, the Svitliks who were Czech Americans, the Fosters who were Jewish Americans (I think there was a name change! They were from Russia originally). These people lived in my neighborhood in addition to a lot of African Americans.
WO: Mario Cuomo, who are some other Italian Americans who have made great contributions to this country?
MC: My mother and father were truly great people! If you take the little they had against what they accomplished—raised a family of four, one died, for those children to grow up reasonably straight and well situated in this country—[it] was a fantastic accomplishment. If you want to talk about “historic” Italian Americans who achieved great fame in this country, there are the scientists and inventors like Fermi and Marconi; great athletes like DiMaggio; artists like Sinatra, Toscanini, Cavore; great politicians. Incidentally, there are great Polish Americans, Irish Americans, Greek Americans, Jewish Americans, African Americans—we all have our pantheon of heroes. But I must tell you, Bill, as great as they were, the two things I notice when I look at the range of great people all across the board is, none of them are greater than my mother and father.
WO: But is it fair to say that Italian Americans have a stronger sense of community? No one has spoken more eloquently about Jewish people than Mario Cuomo, but what about your own tribe?
MC: I’m not sure that isn’t a conceit. I can say for sure that the Italian American culture I was born to was very strong on family. And the respect for your mother and father, and for your spouse, whether she liked you or not—the respect for your obligation to one another, toward your children, the loyalty to the blood—was a very powerful part of my upbringing and of the genes that make me whatever it is I am. I am not sure that distinguishes me from the Svitliks or the Podales or the O’Rourkes in my neighborhood or even the DeSilvas, who were Portuguese. I think that has a lot to do not so much from the place from which they came but with their situation here. They were close when they came because that’s all they had.
When my mother and father were in Jersey City, before the Depression struck, and then in South Jamaica, in 1929–32, there was no welfare, no worker’s compensation, no unemployment insurance, no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid. There was charity, but we didn’t belong to any groups that would have a settlement house for us. You were on your own and had to learn how to make it on your own. You’re cooped up in one room behind a grocery store because a man by the name of Kessler, who can’t speak your language, or even appreciate your food, provides for you. You get the sense you are in an alien place. You’re lucky to find this wonderful man who reaches out for you. That vulnerability creates a desire to cling together. You could be primitive cave people. When that lightning strikes, the lightning you don’t understand—when the storm comes from gods you only imagine—your instinct is to cluster together for heat, for warmth, for protection. I think that has a lot to do with the idea of family.
This is dangerous ground for me because I haven’t thought it through, but I suspect as you go from that condition of privation and desperation and the struggle for survival—as you add to it layers of generations and growing wealth and ease—I suspect the idea of family deteriorates. One of the great ironies in my own experience as a lawyer is how many families started as immigrants, like my mother and father, and made a ton of money, and then you’re working on the estate and you discover that brother won’t talk to brother and sister won’t talk to sister and everyone is cursing everyone else as they rack up the wealth. I’m not sure it’s a matter of wealth as much as a matter of circumstance.
The answer someday, for more intelligent people than our generation or all the generations we have had in this country, is to realize that the consummation, the perfecting of this world, which is what we’re all supposed to be striving for, will occur only when we appreciate all of us. That we’re all family. That we’re all connected to one another, with some of us a little bit closer than others, but all connected, all in the same struggle. Not just to survive in this place but to make it the most beautifu
l place possible, to make this the most decent, fairest, safest, the most civilized country in the most civilized world that has ever existed. Only when you understand that is your mission, as grandiose as it sounds. Your mission is to play whatever role you can. You may be only a foot soldier in the army here, and the war is not going to be won or lost because of your efforts. But only when you appreciate the pride of being a foot soldier and marching with the army in the right direction for the right cause. Only then when you think of yourselves as family. That’s the word we get from our God. When you appreciate your brothers and sisters with one Father—only then will you achieve anything like you’re supposed to.
WO: Governor Cuomo, with all your magnificent words, I’m reminded that the Irish had some trouble when they came here: “No Irish need apply!” I just wonder if the Italians faced that too.
MC: “Guinea,” “dago,” “WOP,” “greaseball”! Those are the words we heard. The Irish heard “micks,” “potato eaters”; “manga batana,” a bigoted Italian would have said of the Irish. We all took our turns being victimized by this stupid language and snide condescension. The tragic thing about that is we never seem to learn. One wave of immigrants after the other was abused by the one who was here before it. And when your turn comes, and the Hispanics move in behind you and the African Americans are finally being given an opportunity to emerge, a lot of us tend to forget what happened to us and our people. And how much we hated it and how unfair it was. And we become guilty of the same kind of bigotry to the group that is coming behind us. We’re still learning this game. We’re still a work in progress as a people and as a culture. But oh, yes, we took our turn at bigotry, and we still do. More in the old days than there is now. The Jewish people? Do we have to even talk about the discrimination they’ve felt? The anti-Semitism. Racism: Is there any question the African American has been treated badly in this country? Can you really allow yourself to forget they were enslaved, denied the most basic liberties? And many of them are still suffering from that, still way behind. Our history, unfortunately, has been to take diversity—people from all over the world who are different—and put them together and mold them into the greatest country in history, and so we have learned to make a strength of diversity but it is a vulnerability at the same time.
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