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Cuomo loathes labels, deriding them as "one-word summaries of an entire philosophy." He challenges anyone to define him. "How about the money we spent on prisons?" Cuomo asks. He has built more than 6,000 new cells. "Is that liberal or conservative?" He cites his $1.2 billion transportation bond issue. "What about all the work we've done on highways, roads and bridges?" His voice rises. "Is that liberal? Maybe it's conservative." He has balanced New York's budget but has appropriated more money for the homeless than any other state. "Tell me," he says, as if cross-examining a recalcitrant witness in a Queens criminal court, "is that liberal or conservative?"
His soaring rhetoric, though stirring, seems to float above the realm of the practical. "We believe in only the government we need," Cuomo says frequently, "but we insist on all the government we need." An elegant phrase, but hardly a coherent philosophy of governing. In practice, Cuomo rarely makes the distinction between only and all. What Cuomo will tell you, though, is that government has an obligation to assist the homeless, the infirm, the destitute, to serve the poor without ravaging the middle class. "I didn't come into this business to be an accountant," he says. "I came into this business to help people."
Cuomo's character does not always coincide with his rhetoric; his politics and his persona are not a seamless garment. Cuomo is the poetic speaker who preaches the politics of inclusion yet distrusts all but a handful of people. He is the cerebral Roman Catholic who has modeled himself on St. Thomas More but can display a kind of conspicuous moral vanity. He is the immigrant's son who talks about mercy and generosity but can be meanspirited and vindictive. Yet contradictions aside, he is that rare figure who is able to inspire, to tap into the souls of voters.
Cuomo is impulsive. He bristles easily. He boils over. He blurts things out. During the 1985 debate over the New York seat-belt law, he derided the bill's opponents as "NRA hunters who drink beer, don't vote and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend." He is almost too quick, too facile, for his own good. Last year when he got into what reporters called an argument but he preferred to term a Socratic dialogue on the subject of organized crime, Cuomo said, "You're telling me that Mafia is an organization, and I'm telling you that's a lot of baloney." When he read a newspaper column that suggested an Italian could not be elected President, he told a reporter, "If anything could make me change my mind about running for the presidency, it's people talking about, 'An Italian can't do it; a Catholic can't do it.' " Sometimes Cuomo sounds self-serving, as though he is the only man in politics for the right reasons.
Yet the Cuomo style is a mixture of warmth and wit. He is simpatico. As a reporter embarks on a question, Cuomo yells out, "I deny it! I deny it!" He describes something that irks him as "just a walnut in the batter of eternity." In the midst of a conversation Cuomo is having with an elderly woman from Queens, his press secretary, Martin Steadman, sneezes while she is talking. "That's a Yiddish sign," she says, "that the person talking is telling the truth." Cuomo turns to Steadman: "Next time, see if you can sneeze while I'm talking."