Cuomo's Sparring Partner

A White House attack boosts the Governor

As Humorist Art Buchwald saw it, White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan had given supporters of New York Governor Mario Cuomo reason to rejoice. How? By lambasting Cuomo as a "glib, fast-talking lobbyist for a reactionary liberalism" in his campaign against President Reagan's tax-reform plan. And by branding the Democrats' star performer a "welfare statist" who belongs to an "American Left" whose "dirty little secret is that it is interested in power, not people." Such choice abuse, in Buchwald's view, added up to the "kind of endorsement from the White House" that "a Democratic candidate for the presidency would kill for."

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