When the GOP persuaded the popular and good-natured O’Rourke to run for governor against Mario Cuomo in 1986, he famously toured the state with a cardboard cutout of the governor, which he “debated” in town after town. But Andy O’Rourke also used his considerable influence to assist Andrew Cuomo launch his highly praised transitional Housing for the Homeless (HELP) projects. (O’Rourke and Andrew met and bonded at a luncheon at 21 hosted by Yours Truly.) Mario never forgot Andy O’Rourke’s encouragement of and kindness to his son. And when the beloved Westchester politician lay dying in Calvary Hospital in the Bronx a few years ago, Mario called his old adversary for a long farewell talk. We spoke about Mr. O’Rourke on the radio on January 4, 2013, when he left us the day before.
Incidentally, Mario echoed on other occasions the sentiments expressed in this interview: “We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we’ll do it not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses.” It’s almost as if he foresaw the 2016 presidential campaign.
WILLIAM O’SHAUGHNESSY: Governor Cuomo, an old opponent of yours has gone to another—and, we’re sure, a better—world. Andy O’Rourke ran against you for governor.
MARIO CUOMO: Bill, it’s very difficult to talk about Andy without sounding like you’ve made an effort to cover him as some kind of heroic figure. I really do think he is—was, and always will be, in my memory—a heroic figure, because he was such a powerful coming together of good things. His intelligence, his vision, his sense of humor, his sense of fairness made all the political labels meaningless. Liberals are supposed to be Democrats, and businesspeople are supposed to be Republicans . . . all of that. Once you meet and see what he is and see his goodness and his charm and see his intelligence, you say, who needs categories, political categories? Just get the best human beings you can to serve you as public servants. He was a wonderful public servant because he was a wonderful human being. He’s a great loss to Flora, his wife, and to his children.
WO: Governor Cuomo, do you remember when he was running for governor against you and he had that cardboard cutout of Mario Cuomo?
MC: Talk about a sense of humor. Early in the campaign between Andy and me we had always gotten together. But we had a small “disagreement” for a time, which required on my end that I not debate until the very last moment, and he, bright man that he was, thought of a way to deal with that. He had a cardboard cutout made of me, and it was a very good image of me—except it was considerably thinner than I was because it was just cardboard. And he debated the cardboard figure. Now I didn’t know that until—and I happened to be in Westchester on the first day he used it—the reporters came to me and said, “Do you know Andy O’Rourke debated a cardboard figure of you?” And I said, yes, I knew. I told them he’s done it more than once and so far the cardboard figure won two out of three!
WO: But wasn’t it because you were something like 1,000 points ahead and said, I don’t have to debate this guy?
MC: No, it wasn’t that at all, O’Shaughnessy. He said something about Andrew [Cuomo] I didn’t like. And I decided to punish him, but he punished me by debating the cardboard figure. But then I put the cardboard figure on my side by saying it won two out of three!
WO: Governor Cuomo, Andy O’Rourke was a Republican. Mario Cuomo, as the world knows, is a Democrat. How did you two get together?
MC: Those are not real distinctions, Bill. And they shouldn’t be. Frankly, I think one of the greatest errors made by our Founding Fathers was ignoring George Washington when he said two things. First, you should never allow a single person to declare war. And so you should never start a war because the president of the United States asked for it. That’s a ridiculous thing because the one person shouldn’t be in a position where a bad judgment could be horrible for us. And he also said another thing. He said we should not have political parties. Because as soon as you commit yourself to leftists or rightists, to this kind of person or that kind of person, you choose up sides and you pit them against one another.
He said there should be no parties. And we didn’t listen to that. And I think since he said that, we have had something like 176 parties. And the parties do exactly what he projected they would. They would take a position contrary to the other side, because that’s the way it is served up to us, our politics. And it’s foolish. First of all, we don’t stay true to the labels, because there was a lot about Andy O’Rourke that wasn’t classical Republican. And there was a lot about Mario Cuomo that wasn’t classical Democrat. They are silly labels. And who says so? George Washington. Too bad we didn’t listen.
WO: Andy O’Rourke helped your son build housing for the homeless here in Westchester when he was county executive. Do you remember those days? They both got ganged up on by the NIMBYs.
MC: Yes. Almost every time he did something notable, it was praiseworthy. What was a Republican in Westchester doing helping Andrew build housing for poor Democrats who were mainly the kind of people who lived in those humble homes he was building? But Andy O’Rourke, bright and intelligent person that he was, looked up over the labels constantly. If something was good, he recognized it as good, and he found something to do with it for our betterment. And that’s what he did with my Andrew and the housing projects. It got him no votes. Got him the irritation of a lot of Republicans in your area. He would smile at that, make a joke, and move on looking for another good thing to do.
WO: Governor, finally, I wonder if there is a lesson. Obama and Romney—clearly they hated each other. But O’Rourke and Cuomo ended up as friends. Any lessons there? Or has it gotten meaner? Nastier?
MC: Essentially you have to go back to George Washington again. Washington made it very clear in simple language. If you create parties, you are declaring that these two groups are different from one another and they should contend with one another. And you will not find your best answers by letting them fight with one another, lie about one another. And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since the people ignored him when they wrote the Constitution.
WO: Governor Cuomo, I hear it in your voice. We’ve lost Andy O’Rourke here in Westchester. Opponent that he may have been, I think you kind of liked the guy.
MC: I liked him a whole lot. I admired him. And I should. Andrew—my Andrew—I’m sure will have nice things to say about him. Andrew O’Rourke and Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo in the last poll got at least as many votes as a Republican as he did as a Democrat. It’s because Andrew Cuomo has been acting like Andrew O’Rourke at his best. And I hope he keeps doing that.
WO: Politics is a nasty business that only occasionally gets an Andy O’Rourke . . . and a Mario Cuomo.
MC: O’Rourke was good, Bill. O’Rourke was really good. Mario Cuomo is not bad. But I tell you, that cardboard cutout was a winner!
WO: You never forget, Mario. Thank you, sir.
POPE BENEDICT . . . THE CATHOLIC CHURCH . . . HIS OWN LIFE . . . ED KOCH . . . MARIANO RIVERA . . . AND IN THIS INSIGHTFUL CONVERSATION HE ALMOST PREDICTS POPE FRANCIS
It would be wonderful if we could all get one more shot at it . . . to be given the opportunity to go back and do it over.
—Mario Cuomo, February 11, 2013
WILLIAM O’SHAUGHNESSY: No pope has given up the miter or keys to the kingdom in 600 years. Governor, you’re a great student of things theological and a son of the Roman Church. What do you think about the pope’s walking away and hanging it up?
MARIO CUOMO: What the pope did, it appears to me, was a practical, selfless, intelligent decision. He is a man who has worked very hard for a long time. He’s now concluded he doesn’t have enough strength to do the job of being the most important person in the Catholic Church—at least when it comes to the Curia that make the decisions about how we should deal with our religion and how we should keep it strong and how we can improve it. It takes a lot of strength.
He doesn’t have
that strength anymore. He did, it seems to me, the right thing. If you can’t do the job, you have to step aside. Anything else would have been selfish and damaging.
WO: Governor, your friend of so many years Jimmy Breslin once wrote a book called The Church That Forgot Christ. And he went to great lengths to say there’s a hierarchy running a church that may not resemble what Jesus intended. How do you feel about that stuff?
MC: Well, that “stuff” is a huge amount of religious law that guides those of us that are Catholic in the way we should live, and it’s a very difficult thing to try to sum it up in any tidy, neat, and convenient way. This probably is not well understood by people like me and other Catholics. We have to keep in mind that the Church, although it has adopted a rule of infallibility—which means we can’t make a mistake if we’re talking about our religion; we’re not capable of making a mistake—that has been put to one side. That simply is not the working measure of the people who are making the rules. Infallibility was adopted at a time when the Church was already not well supported because it had proven itself vulnerable in a number of ways. To try to deal with that weakness, they suggested that when the pope chooses, because he believes it’s a matter of very high importance, to make a doctrine, to make a ruling, he does it with infallibility. It means he can’t possibly be wrong.
Well, that struck a lot of people as not intelligent and not reasonable, and, in fact, it has never been exercised specifically—except, I think, with respect to the Virgin Mary and the question of whether or not she was assumed into heaven when she passed away. And that’s the only issue on which infallibility has been promoted by the pope and the Church that makes the rules. Now, that’s a very important thing because it means the Church is fallible. It means the Church can make a mistake.
WO: Are you saying the Church made a mistake with the Blessed Mother?
MC: No, I’m saying that it can make mistakes and it has made mistakes. And that’s important because it’s corrected a lot of mistakes. And if it can correct a lot of mistakes, that suggests that maybe more corrections are possible. At one time, you could not take any money for lending money to somebody—the interest bankers live with and a lot of other people that lend money. It was a sin to charge somebody for the use of money.
WO: What was that sin called?
MC: Usury, and it was a major sin. It was regarded as a very significant sin. And, of course, it’s no longer the law of the Church. And there are other things the Church has changed its mind on. There’s a great book by an Irish Catholic judge on the Church’s policy. And how over the years the Church has accepted and even promoted the reality that it is capable of making mistakes. Usury is one of those issues. They made a big mistake—the Church—when they said it was a sin to charge interest. And certainly a whole lot of people are happy because there are a lot of people in this world who earn a lot of money for lending money, and they didn’t want to hear the Church saying it’s a sin to charge interest.
WO: Governor, you’ve written lovingly and also critically—if gently—about the Church. You’re not going to like it when I remind you of this, but when you were elected governor of New York three times by tremendous margins, a friend of yours said, “I think Mario really wants to be a cardinal.” Forgive me; that really happened.
MC: No, no, that didn’t happen, O’Shaughnessy. I could guess who it is that said that. But I’m not going to give you the name for fear that I’m shooting at the wrong target. No . . .
WO: Did you ever think about being a priest?
MC: No. Let’s stay with the governorship. I felt capable of being a competent governor before I decided to run. I had a lot of experience as a lay Catholic, and that was useful in terms of being an active Catholic. I had a lot of experience doing that. And in terms of governing, I had four years as secretary of state in which I learned a whole lot about our government and traveled all over the state. And then I had four years working with Hugh Carey as the lieutenant governor, who would take his place if he [had] to step away. I was well armed for the job. I was a lawyer before that, and so I had the confidence I would be competent. I never dreamed I would be more than that, and when people started talking about me as a president, I could not say about myself what I could say about myself when I chose to attempt to be a governor. And that is I know I’m competent to do this. I did not have that same feeling about the presidency.
WO: But, Mario Cuomo, excuse me, you’ve always been drawn relentlessly and consistently to the great cosmic and spiritual issues of the day. Somebody once said famously, “This guy is too good to be worried about how many Bob’s Big Boys you should put on the Thruway.” You’ve worked the territory that should be worked by cardinals and bishops on spiritual and moral issues. You know you have. You spoke famously on abortion. And you’ve tried to make some sense of it all. You sure you didn’t go into the wrong business?
MC: No, not at all. If you’re suggesting I should have become a priest, I’ve already confessed I wasn’t good enough to be a president. I’m just as sure—or surer—that I’m not good enough to be a priest. Certainly not after I met Matilda!
WO: I’m not asking you to dump Matilda.
MC: The Church is a wonderful thing, Bill. The Church, when it stays close to Christ and what Christ said and what Christ believed and what Christ sought to teach all the rest of us—when the Church does that, it’s wonderful. Really wonderful. It can make the world better. And let’s stay with the Church and what it represents in terms of religious belief. If you look very closely, the Roman Catholic Church is not very far separated from Judaism. The essence of Judaism is those two simple principles that can be captured with two simple words: Tikkun Olam and Tzedakah. Tzedakah is, roughly in Hebrew, “charity”: goodness in dealing with other people. And “fairness.” That’s Tzedakah. Tikkun Olam is the Hebrew principle that says God made this world but didn’t complete it. Your mission is to continue the work He began. And to correct some of the misdirections we have become guilty of. Tzedakah and Tikkun Olam. But those two principles are exactly what Christ taught. And, as a matter of fact, there’s a kind of dramatic evidence of this in the story about Christ on that night coming out of the synagogue and being confronted by people who are not friendly to Him and demanded to know from Him why it was other rabbis were walking out and expressing astonishment at His intelligence and wisdom, et cetera. And what is it He said to these people in the synagogue? And He said simply . . .
WO: The Lord?
MC: Yes. This is Christ talking simply to the people in the synagogue, the rabbis particularly. He said, “Look, this is the Whole Law. Love one another as you love yourself.” That’s Tikkun Olam and the Tzedakah principle put together. “Love one another as you love yourself for the love of Me for I am Truth.” And what he was saying is “I am God, and you should rest on that principle, and that principle calls upon you to be good to one another. To love one another.” Well, if those two principles are the essence of Christ, then what distinguishes them from the Jews? Well, the Hebrews said exactly the same thing! One of the great rabbis said, “Love one another as you would love yourself, for the love of God, because that’s what God wants you to do. And everything else is commentary.” I love that! Loving one another is all you need to do to be right with the religion, whether it’s Judaism or Christianity. And if we could get that clearer in our minds, we wouldn’t have spent all those years trying to blame every Jew for having killed Christ and for being the massachristis—this was condemned in the Second Vatican Council. The massacristy was a kind of slur on Jewish people to say they are the killers of Christ. In fact, they are not the killers of Christ. They didn’t do the killing. But more than that, even as a matter of religious principle, they weren’t the killers of Christ.
You know, you have all of that going for you. We will continue to refine, to study, and to discuss the relationship between the Christian principles and the Hebrew principles and get even closer together. When that happens, then the great issue of
modern religion becomes, what do the rest of the world’s religions say about a new religion, that is, the New Christianity and the Old Judaism now making up the New Religion. Will they be frightened by it? Will they be attracted by it? There are more people out there that believe in the Qur’an than there are Jews and Christians. So, it’s an exciting world we’re living in if you judge it just by its religions. The kind of pope we need is the kind of pope who will say, “It’s time to look back on our history and to see we have failed in our mission because we simply have ignored opportunities.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if women, whom we are so eager to make equal to men in all ways that are practical—wouldn’t it be something if all the women who wanted to be priests could be priests? And all the women who want to be able to conduct the Mass, could? Then all the women would be the equal of all the men. How much stronger would that make us as a Christian nation?
WO: Governor, would you want to go to Confession to a woman? It’s hard enough telling a guy your sins!
MC: I’ll take your word for it, Bill.
WO: At least for me.
MC: OK, let’s leave it there, O’Shaughnessy.
WO: Governor, you’re a politician. That’s what you are. A governor, a politician.
MC: I’m a lawyer. That’s what I am: a lawyer.
WO: A lawyer. But governors and politicians and lawyers are not supposed to talk about things like this. About Tikkun Olam and Tzedakah. Soulful, religious, deep issues.
MC: Why not?
WO: See, you prove my point. You’ve always been drawn to this stuff. So again I ask you . . .
MC: It’s not “stuff.” It’s the rules by which you lead your life.
WO: One of our callers is nominating you for pope, and Mariano Rivera [the great Yankees relief pitcher] for vice pope. Will you serve if elected?
MC: No, but I tell you, I would love to see how he throws that one pitch. I mean, it’s just one pitch this guy has—the cutter. And I hope he hasn’t lost it to this year while he was sitting it out.
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