1990s NEWS
Host Lipsyte begins live on set interview with Governor Cuomo.
(INTERVIEW INSERTED):
Robert Lipsyte:
I'm Robert Lipsyte for our first new show of the new year and the new decade, a conversation with Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, one of the most fascinating and complex personalities in American politics. Tomorrow, he'll deliver his State of the State address. I spoke with him at his New York City Office at the World Trade Center.
Governor Cuomo back in the 80s, that was last week, your friend Roger Ailes said that Mario Cuomo was the greatest demagogue that the Democratic Party had ever produced. Now indulge us in 1990. If indeed, this were true, what would you do to move people and in what direction?
Mario Cuomo:
Well, if Roger Ailes called me a demagogue? (Lipsyte: Well, no, no, no, if if it's true,) yeah. Well, first of all, is I should comment on the fact that I'm flattered for roger ailes to call me a demagogue is like Joe DiMaggio telling me I was a great centerfielder, you know, so I'll take it in that in that spirit. I don't know what he would mean by demagogue exactly if he if he meant that It gave you some efficacy with people by projection. If you're asking me what I would do with that kind of power, I think there's one message that the people of the state, the people, the city, the people of the country, the people of the world need to understand, I've been talking about it for 15 years of public life, even before. And it's the idea of family, the idea of interconnectedness, the idea of interdependence. Those are words that were too clumsy for use by politicians until Gorbachev who uses them all the time, I think the central idea that we need to know we need to understand politically is that we are all connected. You need to worry about those kids in the street, who are now addicted to crack. Even though your children are not addicted to crack, you have a connection with them, not just morally and spiritually, by way of moral obligation, but because you need them for your workforce, because this society will not make it if that larger segment of the society is in trouble. So that notion of connection and interdependence, that's the important concept. And recently in the end of the 80s, some very bright people, conservatives, former Secretary of State Schultz, and Milton Friedman the great economist, Bill Buckley, Judge Robert Suite, he also had legalized drugs. This wasn't the liberals of the 60s. These are conservatives, what are they really saying? They're saying, hey, look, my kids aren't going to be on the drugs. Those are those other kids in the street, a lot of black, white, Hispanic, a lot of poor kids, we can't afford to handle a problem. While they're missing, first of all, if that's what they're doing, I think it's callous. Number two, it ignores your interconnectedness. You can't escape the obligation of dealing with these children by pretending that they're not going to hurt you. by their own disorientation they will so if I had the power to move, I would move people to understand interconnectedness.
Robert Lipsyte:
but how does that work? I mean, it's a sweet bullet. You know, care. No, man is an island. We've heard this but no, it's not. What do you do?
Mario Cuomo:
No it's not just care. There are two political motivations. The first is the noble motivation. Do it out of love. You ought to take care of the poor people, because they're your brothers and sisters. Well, that's nice. And I believe in that. The other motivation is you got to take care of them because you need to, for your own best interest. You need to save Mexico from its debt, not because you love Mexicans, but because you can't afford to have them come pouring across your borders. You need to make of Africa a viable economic unit. Why? Because you need them for markets. You need to deal with the Soviet Union and the Chinese because your interests are connected. What do you do? First, you get people to understand that, that you must educate young people.
Lipsyte;
Do you think people are beginning t to see this?
the grand challenge
Mario Cuomo:
Thanks to Gorbachev, not thanks to the United States because we've spent eight years trying to teach our people just the opposite. We've had federal governments that tried saying to our people, look, every man is an island, do your own thing. Don't worry about those other people, if they wind up in the street as homeless or otherwise, especially Reagan it was a kind of plagiarism, they deserve to be there. And there's no connection between you and them. What we offer you as Americans is opportunity and opportunity is individual. And if you go and make it by being a great television star, terrific. And the guy who doesn't he's either a bum or unlucky, and that's God's fault. That's what we've been teaching people.
Robert Lipsyte:
I mean, what I hear you saying, in a strange sort of way is all those years of being, you know, ah bludgeoned by the idea of the evil empire. And then we have to hear from the evil empire, which way we should go to the human beings.
Mario Cuomo:
Well, that's right. That's about right. I think, evil empire was an easier notion to sell and to belief 40 years ago. I think, if if there was any credibility to it, you know, that that faded a long time ago. I think a kind of interesting thing happened is Soviet Union, we went to 1987. And I'm no world traveler, by any means. But we went to Leningrad to Moscow. Matilda and I, we came back after six days, and I said, this thing is over at a press conference, he said, the Cold War is over. And Gorbachev is a very smart guy. He's not a great pusher, he didn't push the Soviet people. He's not even leading them. He's following them. There are so far in front. They're, they're running away as fast as they can from Communism, toward our way of life because of television. And it goes to basketball, you play basketball in this country for a month, you go back, you're never going to be happy waiting on line for a potato let alone a bottle of vodka. And I said this is, you know, this, this military approach is just ridiculous. They're smart enough to know that they're going to go broke building tanks. They'll starve while they're doing it. And that's happening to us, too. Paul Kennedy was exactly right. So it's kind of ironic. Yeah, we've learned a lot from them.
Robert Lipsyte:
you think people always need an enemy of some sort. I mean, the war on drugs seems to have been structured not in a humanistic way about worrying about those kids. But in a kind of a military way.