Byron York’s Daily Memo: Andrew Cuomo’s hubris

ANDREW CUOMO’S HUBRIS. When allegations of sexual harassment first began to appear about Andrew Cuomo, many Republicans felt a bitter sense of irony. For months starting in March 2020, the New York governor had grossly mishandled the Covid crisis, pushing policies that spread the virus into nursing homes, and then lying about the extent of the death and damage those policies brought. And yet despite it all, Cuomo became a media darling, mostly because Democrats, and their allies in the press, saw him as the perfect foil to the hated President Donald Trump. It was only when the stories of alleged sexual misconduct picked up steam that Cuomo began to falter.

Now Cuomo has announced his resignation, effective in two weeks. He could not survive a report from the New York attorney general detailing the sexual allegations against him. When the report came out, any Democrats who still supported Cuomo abandoned him. When he determined that he no longer had the minimum level of support needed to stay in office, he quit.

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It had nothing to do with Cuomo’s Covid disaster. But those Americans who were appalled by his Covid record could at least take satisfaction that, no matter the reason, Cuomo will soon be gone. “He. Is. Out. God bless America,” tweeted Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean, who lost two in-laws to Covid and has led the effort to spotlight Cuomo’s misdeeds in handling the pandemic.

But perhaps it is best to look at the situation this way. In the end, what really brought down Cuomo was hubris. To say the governor displayed hubris — excessive pride and self-confidence that leads to a fall — would be an understatement. And in retrospect, perhaps Cuomo’s ultimate act of hubris, the act that would tempt fate beyond all imagination, was his decision, in the midst of the Covid crisis, to write a self-congratulatory memoir, accept millions of dollars for it, and boast to the world that his wretched failure had actually been a great success.

In the summer of 2020, publishers competed to sign Cuomo. At the time, he was the subject of adoring commentary in much of the press. His worshipful fans, including several celebrities, embraced the term “Cuomosexual” to show their love for him. The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences broke with tradition to award him a special Emmy award for his “masterful” daily coronavirus briefings. Crown Publishers won the bidding war for his book with a contract that would pay him $5.1 million. It was an unheard-of amount. But Cuomo was a star.

Then news began to appear about the nursing homes. Had Cuomo actually forced them to admit, or to re-admit, Covid patients? Yes, he had. Had Cuomo forced his administration to lie about it afterward? Yes, he had. Given the terrible toll that Covid took in New York — more than 54,000 deaths in the state so far — Cuomo’s actions were unforgivable.

And yet Cuomo had the sheer gall — chutzpah? something? — to write and publish a book called “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic.” And then, as it turned out, the big “leadership lesson” that Cuomo took away from the crisis was that Donald Trump was a bad man — the president was mentioned more than 200 times in the book.

Cuomo’s book sold reasonably well for a brief time, although nowhere near well enough to recoup the $5.1 million Crown paid for it. But then, as the New York Times reported, “its sales flagged as a new wave of coronavirus infections crested over the state and the nation.” And then came the sexual misconduct allegations. Soon, boxes of “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic” were sitting around in warehouses, never to be sold. Nobody wanted to learn Cuomo’s “lessons.”

And then, finally, came the state attorney general’s report, the proximate cause of Cuomo’s resignation. That’s what killed him. But looking back, it seems reasonable to believe that, given what Andrew Cuomo had done, fate, or the gods, or whatever you want to call it, simply would not let him get away with singing his own praises after doing such terrible damage. In the end, Cuomo’s hubris, more than any report from the attorney general, is what brought him down.

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