The face, broad and fleshy, with dark-ringed eyes and a gap-toothed smile; the body, stocky and powerful, slightly uncomfortable in the boxy blue suits; and the hands, strong and blunt like small shovels--all combine to give him the look of one of the proud immigrants who toiled in the caissons deep below the East River to build the Brooklyn Bridge. A laborer, a man capable of bearing heavy weights, a man of explosive passions and simple pleasures. Someone strong. Someone you do not want to tangle with.
Then a rustle of papers, and the man puts on a delicate pair of wire-rim glasses. He begins to talk, to speak in smooth, connected sentences. As if by conjurer's trick, the laborer is transformed into the scholar, a solitary thinker who shies away from the world of action, a man of introspection who rises early to wrestle with questions of motivation and desire and write about them in a thick loose-leaf notebook.
Mario Matthew Cuomo, 53, the Governor of New York, is both of these men, the man of strenuous action and the man of otherworldly contemplation. Like the titans he frequently invokes--Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt--he is a man who battles inwardly between passion and reason, between his ambition and his doubts. Some believe that out of this man's head and heart may come the soul of a new Democratic Party, and perhaps the strength to lead it to the White House in 1988.
The push and pull between the Governor's aspiration and his uncertainty was visible last week as he announced at press conferences in Albany and Manhattan that he would run for re-election this year. Despite his long insistence that it would be self-defeating to run for Governor in 1986 and then turn around and run for President, he did not rule out a try for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. Standing behind a lectern in a high- ceilinged, wood-paneled room near his office at the state capitol, a composed and confident Cuomo said, "I have decided to run for Governor. I have no plans to run for the presidency." When reporters pressed him about 1988, Cuomo tap-danced around their questions. Why did he not end all the speculation and say he would not run for President? asked one reporter. "I don't want to lock the door against eventualities that I don't even understand or imagine," replied Cuomo, as if instructing a class of stubborn undergraduates. "I'm not God. If you have a crystal ball, if you can tell me what's going to happen, fine. But I can't." Asked directly whether he would pledge to serve a full four years as he promised last time, Cuomo was uncharacteristically brief. "No," he replied.
Political observers suggest that an impressive re-election might provide Cuomo with his best possible presidential launching pad. Victory in November is considered a sure thing. His approval rating in New York hovers around 70%, and he has already raised a campaign war chest of some $10 million. His probable opponent, Westchester County Executive Andrew O'Rourke, is a relative unknown.