Friends, I've been skeptical that a flurry of allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo would succeed in prying him out of the Governor's Mansion in Albany, but I'm starting to believe it's possible, mainly because virtually every Democratic elected official in the state has turned his/her/its back on Emperor Andy. It's looking pretty bleak! My latest article is a rumination on Cuomo's predicament, which I suggest has a lot more to do with politics than it does with justice.
The Worst News for Cuomo is...He'll
Be Judged By a “Jury of His Peers”
Soon the New York
State legislature will have to decide whether to impeach and remove
Governor Andrew Cuomo. Virtually every elected official in New York
is on record saying that Cuomo ought to resign. That, however, does
not make it a foregone conclusion that he will be impeached and
removed if he refuses to resign. The impeachment and trial process at
the state level is inherently nebulous and political, just as it is
at the federal level.
Ideally, when
legislators are called upon to consider the guilt of an elected
official, like a Governor, they would weigh the evidence impartially
and come to an objective, fair-minded conclusion about whether the
accused has committed the state-level equivalent of “high crimes
and misdemeanors”.
Realistically,
however, legislators make decisions based on personal prejudices,
narrow political interests, and ideological commitments. It would be
a surprise, therefore, if Cuomo were to be judged impartially.
Therefore, in prognosticating about Cuomo's fate, we should consider
only secondarily his guilt or innocence.
Cuomo is accused
of a wide range of crimes and improprieties. The fact is that most of
the accusations against Cuomo were already publicly known and
discussed many months ago – from allegations that he put seniors at
risk in nursing homes, to suggestions that he sexually harassed his
female staff, to concerns that he abused his office to write and
promote his book – but none of these charges were taken overly
seriously, especially in isolation.
Not so long ago,
Cuomo was also a political rock star, with sky-high approval ratings,
a fawning press corps, and even an Emmy Award for his supposedly
impressive COVID-related diatribes. Cuomo had his critics – and
presumably he had already committed most of the crimes/offenses of
which he now stands accused – but his political armor was, in those
halcyon days, more than strong enough to repulse these attacks. In
fact, only the truly desperate even bothered to mention them. It was
self-evidently a waste of time.
Now, however, by
a process of attrition, Cuomo's popularity, his legitimacy, and his
credibility have been diminished. He is a wounded, and therefore
vulnerable, Governor, instead of a larger-than-life super-Governor.
In addition, the
more he is accused of wrongdoing, the easier it becomes to believe
that each one of the separate accusations could be true. After all,
now Cuomo is assumed to be bad, whereas before he was assumed to be
good – and, as we are all wont to believe, bad men do bad things,
at least presumptively. (Donald Trump knows all about this species of
“logic”: his detractors have presumed him guilty, of anything and
everything, several million times a day since 2015).
The
problem, however, is that, while we may want to believe that Cuomo is
guilty of, well, everything, because it is so easy to think ill of a
man so widely disliked, this does not necessarily make him guilty of
any crime
or “misdemeanor” in point of fact. Cuomo may simply be the victim
of the same phenomenon that has befallen countless men in powerful
positions: an initially modest series of allegations leads to a flood
of new ones (a “pile-on”), a media feeding frenzy, a precipitous
fall from grace in terms of public opinion, and then a desire by
(often vengeful) politicians to drive the final stake through the
man's heart. Nothing could be more natural – and, arguably, nothing
could be less just.
Keep
in mind that Democrats in New York want
Cuomo to be guilty, because if he is then he can be removed – as a
political liability to Democrats. Republican politicos likewise want
Cuomo to be guilty, because their conservative constituents would
never forgive them if they did not vote to impeach and remove such a
hated figure on the right.
For different reasons, therefore, politicians of both parties in New
York can agree on the desired outcome of the present debate over
Cuomo's fate – it is impeachment and removal, period/exclamation
point – regardless of where the facts and evidence might lead.
And that, in the final analysis, is the worst news, but probably
also the most insightful, that Cuomo's advisors can give him: he has
become so toxic that no defense that could be mounted in the State
Senate would likely override the political imperative that Democrats
and Republicans alike feel impels them to remove him. The outcome of
the trial is effectively predetermined, therefore.
Cuomo's
position is, in this regard, a little like that of Saddam Hussein in
2003. Hussein stood accused of the possession of weapons of mass
destruction, of which he was in fact innocent. No one outside of Iraq
had the temerity to defend Hussein, however, or even the imagination
to suggest that he could
be innocent
– and thus his goose was cooked.
We
can ask New York legislators to judge Cuomo fairly and impartially,
therefore, but we might as well ask the stars to stop shining, or the
Earth to stop turning on its axis, for all the good it will do. More
than anything, Cuomo's poll numbers will determine his fate, and
unless he can dramatically improve those he will be soon be an
unemployed former Governor. C'est
la vie.
Of course, few of us, especially on the right, will shed many tears
over Cuomo's fate. He was and is a terrible man and a wretched
Governor. Good riddance to him.
On the other hand, one thing about this process ought to trouble us.
It is not so much that politicians make decisions for political
reasons – that has always been so – but that the mechanism of
impeachment and removal, which used to be reserved for very rare and
flagrant violations of the public trust, is now increasingly becoming
the default means by which politicians try to effect the removal of
their most troublesome colleagues. And that is inherently dangerous.
True,
the presumption of innocence – the cornerstone of American justice
– was never a prominent feature of our partisan politics, but
what's new in the present climate is the ease with which we are all
sliding into a presumption of guilt that applies to almost anyone we
dislike, regardless of the species of crime or wrongdoing of which
they stand accused. It is becoming, in other words, increasingly
difficult for Democrats to imagine that any
Republican could be innocent of “high crimes and misdemeanors”,
and vice versa.
Attitudes like these naturally produce a surfeit of
self-righteousness. More damagingly, though, they will also produce
more and more invocations of the “nuclear option” in our
political life: the use of impeachment and public trial for the
purposes of ending the careers of elected officials – or, to be
more blunt, for the purposes of destroying one's political enemies.
Cuomo
is to be congratulated, therefore, for uniting Republicans and
Democrats
in a headlong rush to judge and condemn him. That's a rare
manifestation of bipartisanship in this day and age.
It
does not, however, change the fact that the defining feature of 21st
century American political life is its ugliness. And, in all
likelihood, the worst is yet to come.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
***
In other news, COVID is causing alarm, once again. Here's a great article about how the Chinese are obfuscating and trying to blame COVID's genesis on us...and unfortunately much of the world might be fooled by their con job.
https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/trudy-rubin-column-china-is-pushing-a-big-covid-19-lie-that-makes-a-new/article_56f61344-61ff-5ff9-9a75-841a581b488f.html
It bears repeating that many of same "woke" politicians who demand masking and vaccination from the hoi polloi are living large themselves. Newsom is a prime example, and his hypocrisy may well catch up with him in the upcoming recall election.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/09/obamas-60th-birthday-party-is-peak-democrat-covid-sanctimony/
The Pentagon is cracking the whip on vaccination, ordering every service member to "get the jab" by September 15th. Is this legal? It's hard to imagine the courts blocking it...
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/567009-pentagon-to-require-all-military-personnel-to-get-coronavirus-vaccine-by-mid
As the country deals with yet another spike in COVID cases and deaths, Republicans are vexed by the Biden Administration's insistence on disgorging thousands of COVID-positive illegal aliens in communities from coast to coast. As this article points out, the policy is a secretive one. You don't get advance warning if the government intends to dump COVID-positive Central Americans on your doorstep. You just have to deal with the consequences.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/aug/9/where-are-the-illegal-immigrants-going/
How do elections officials decide what to do with ballots on which voters' markings are ambiguous? Easy! They afford all such questionable votes to Democrats!
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-ballot-adjudication-spoiled
Our old friend Andrew Cuomo seems to be willing to cancel his run for reelection in return for being allowed to serve out his term. The Dems, however, don't seem tempted by this offer. They want Cuomo GONE!!!
https://nypost.com/2021/08/09/cuomo-making-last-ditch-attempt-to-avoid-impeachment-report/
Apparentlty, should the GOP take control of the House in January 2023, Republicans are considering refusing to give some firebrand Dems committee assignments. Personally, I disagree with this approach. The party-in-power traditionally shows a modicum of respect to the "loyal opposition", deferring to the leadership of the minority party in assigning its members to committees. Moreover, when we start picking and choosing which members are worthy of committee assignments, we put ourselves on a slippery slope that could someday lead to the unseating of many opposition Congressmen. Can you say "rump Parliament"? In my view, if the voters in a district elect a bonehead, then that bonehead should represent them. I call it "democracy".
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house-gop-eyes-removing-swalwell-omar
Finally, here's an outstanding article by a friend of mine who believes that escalating crime, and the Dems' complicity in fostering it, will be pivotal issues in 2022. I sincerely hope he's right!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/08/09/democrats_defund-the-police_debacle_146216.html
