Rebecca Traister has written not only a useful guide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s rapidly-deteriorating political fortunes, but a deeply incisive look into the links among his authoritarian style, sexism, and incompetence. She also pulls back the lens to make a broader point about the nature of how many male politicians of both major political parties choose to wield power.
This paragraph captures her basic thesis:
Though the multiple scandals erupting in Albany seem to toggle between sexualized harassment stories and evidence of mismanagement, what is emerging is in fact a single story: That through years of ruthless tactics, deployed both within his office and against anyone he perceived as an adversary, critic, or competitor for authority, Cuomo has fostered a culture that supported harassment, cruelty, and deception [. . .] his tough-guy routine has in fact worked to obscure governing failures; it is precisely what has permitted Cuomo and his administration to spend a decade being [. . .] both mean and bad at their jobs.
As someone who pays pretty much no attention to New York politics but whose general impression over the last several years has been of a corrupt and not particularly progressive New York governor, Traister’s reporting and analysis more than validates my own personal third-hand impressions of unimpressive goings-in in Albany. But as good as her concentration on Cuomo is, the broader critique she makes regarding a more widespread American governing style is just as striking. The New York voting public’s confusion of a performance of strength that’s rooted in a fundamental sexism with an authentic, effective leadership style points not only to a con job perpetuated by Cuomo, but basic cultural assumptions about leadership found across the U.S., and which should trouble citizens of a democracy.
Traister makes the essential comparison between the styles and results of Cuomo and Donald Trump — a likeness that was transmuted into false difference by uncritical media coverage during the coronavirus pandemic. One major observation I come away with is that, no matter our political orientation or professed ideology, many of us are too easily swayed and seduced by those who simply appear powerful and confident, particularly in troubled times — a phenomenon that Cuomo demonstrates is hardly confined to the right and the Republican Party. Whatever the social or biological undercurrents to this impulse, we need far greater discussion and awareness of its tension with a democratic spirit; it’s an authoritarian lure that corrodes fundamental values like basic accountability of our elected officials.
For those eager for an increasingly progressive and effective Democratic Party, Cuomo, and other politicians of his substance and style, are a roadblock to the party’s ability to expand its electoral appeal and make meaningful economic and social progress across this country. Among other things, Cuomo’s retrograde example helps advance pragmatic arguments for why Democrats should continue to promote a strong bench of female politicians, with the non-negotiable goal of representation equal to the female share of the population. To read of the twisted, sexist, self-serving ways of Cuomo and his administration, and to realize that they’ve been following a long-existing template in American politics, should lead seamlessly to a collective drive to shatter that template into a thousand irretrievably broken pieces.