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As a speaker, Cuomo is a modern master of the ancient art of rhetoric. His repertoire includes sarcasm, mimicry, hyperbole, irony, parables, analogies and allusions. He poses questions and answers them, sets up philosophical straw men and knocks them down. He begins slowly and gains momentum; he races up the hill of one sentence and coasts down another. His timing is that of a stand-up comic. His voice can be as soothing as a late-night disk jockey's or as rumbling as an Old Testament prophet's. He can, on occasion, be shrill, edging toward the sanctimonious. But always one hears a man who is actually thinking while he speaks.
Cuomo sleeps only four or five hours a night. His eagerness to work, not an alarm, wakes him around 5 a.m. In a study off his bedroom, he brews a cup of coffee and settles down for an hour or so of communing with his diary (see following story). At 6:45 he gets a regular call from an aide in New York City who summarizes the morning papers. Cuomo dissects everything that is written about him. Each morning he does 17 minutes of yoga, therapy for his bad back. His official day begins when he rides to his second-floor office in the ornate elevator built to accommodate Governor Franklin Roosevelt's wheelchair.
At 8:30 a.m. each Monday, Cuomo directs a senior-staff meeting of some 30 people. At one recent session, the subject of Medicaid comes up. An aide says that his administration has reached an impasse. "Impasse," the Governor says, like a finicky lexicographer emending an improper usage, "means no progress. None of that." After the meeting, in his office, Cuomo will punch out telephone calls himself. He rings the mayor of Niagara Falls. He is out. He calls his son Andrew, a shrewd 28-year-old lawyer who ran Cuomo's campaign for Governor and is in many ways his father's alter ego. The Governor mentions the name of a potential political appointee. Andrew likes the candidate and the idea. Good. It is settled.
Cuomo is a detail man who likes to do things himself. He polishes his elegant speeches and his clunky black shoes--and is proud of both. He reads the fine print in the bills he signs. There is no gatekeeper on his staff; he is the axis of the wheel. One ex-staffer says that Cuomo has created no real machine of government, has no grasp of management systems: "He runs a high- level mom-and-pop operation."
Cuomo, the paterfamilias, gives new meaning to the term hands-on management. Consider this for supervision: his longtime aide Tonio Burgos walks into the Governor's Manhattan office with a memorandum. "What's wrong with your collar?" asks the Governor. The tips of Burgos' collar are pointed up like butterfly wings. "Come here," orders Cuomo. The Governor reaches into his desk, takes out a paper clip and twists it. He then puts a hand on Burgos' shoulder, lifts up his collar and inserts the paper clip so that it acts as a collar stay. Same thing on the other side. "Balancing the budget was easy," says a deadpan Cuomo as he smooths down his aide's collar. "This was hard."