Review of Andrew Cuomo's American Crisis

After a heady two weeks on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list in early November, Andrew Cuomo's American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic quickly fell back to earth.

Cuomo's sober briefings during the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic won him plaudits across the political spectrum, but American Crisis apparently has found its fan base among doctrinaire liberal Democrats confirming their priors-the kind of readers who might underline such Cuomo pearls as "I have learned something as I have gotten older: the truth wins out."

On March 25, the state Health Department had issued a directive to nursing homes, stating in part: "No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19." Cuomo writes that "New York State never demanded or directed that any nursing home accept a COVID-positive patient," and says the controversy over nursing home deaths was cooked up by Republicans to "Distract from ... their botched federal response." He doesn't mention that his fellow Democrats in the state legislature were also concerned enough to hold hearings on the issue, even as the governor was composing American Crisis.

Perhaps the kindest way to sum up American Crisis is that those who like and admire Governor Cuomo will like and admire his book.

Mario Cuomo had a final dramatic curtain call in the public eye on January 1, 2015, when, after a long illness, he died at 82 on the day Andrew Cuomo began his second term as governor.

The print edition of American Crisis lacks an index, but a search of the Kindle version turns up 69 uses of the phrase "My father"-far more references than Andrew Cuomo makes to any individual other than the villain of the piece, Donald Trump.

Late in life, talking to a New York Times reporter he knew to be writing his obituary, Mario Cuomo summed up his preferred epitaph in two words: "He tried." Andrew Cuomo, by contrast, wants you to believe that he has already succeeded.

https://www.city-journal.org/review-of-andrew-cuomos-american-crisis