At his daily briefings, there's a moment when Governor Andrew Cuomo becomes Don Draper in a board room, selling everyone in there on whatever he needs to that day. It's a comparison I've made before, and it happens when the governor pivots to the personal opinions portion of his slideshow. If Mayor Bill de Blasio is Don Draper having a meltdown during a Hershey's pitch, Cuomo is Draper masterfully driving grown men to tears over a slide carousel.
Like everyone else I'm struggling with how to assess his performance. At the end of the day, he's a politician. Is he trying to sell you on his own humanity through other people's humanity? Maybe. Has he done everything right? Nope. Can you criticize him for past and current sins? Sure.
But he is proving himself to be a good consoler-in-chief, as further evidenced today, when he dedicated a portion of his press briefing to reading a letter from a farmer in Kansas. Here was the wind-up (edited for time):
My grandmother on my father's side, Mary, was a beautiful woman but tough. She was New York tough, gone through the Depression, early immigrant, worked hard all her life. I would say to her, "you know grandma, met this girl, met this guy, they're really nice." She would say "nice, how do you know they're nice? It's easy to be nice when everything is nice." I said grandma "what does that mean?" She said "you know when you know they're nice? When things get hard. That's when you know if they're nice." You really get to see people and get to see character when things get hard... It's almost as if the pressure just forces their character and the weaknesses explode or the strengths explode and that's what we've gone through. For me, the beauty you see and the strength that you see compensates and balances for the weakness. And I get inspired by the strength so I can tolerate the heartbreak of the weakness. Here is a letter that I received that just sums it up.
And the clincher:
Dear Mr. Cuomo, I seriously doubt that you will ever read this letter as I know you are busy beyond belief with a disaster that has befallen our country. We are a nation in crisis, of that there is no doubt. I'm a retired farmer hunkered down in northeast Kansas with my wife who has but one lung and occasional problems with her remaining lung. She also has diabetes. We are in our seventies now and frankly I am afraid for her. Enclosed, find a solitary N95 masks, left over from my forming. It has never been used. If you could would you please give this mask to a nurse or doctor in your state. I have kept four masks for my immediate family. Please keep on doing what you do so well. Which is to lead. Sincerely, Dennis and Sharon.
And then he brought it on home:
You want to talk about a snapshot of humanity? You have five masks. What do you do? You keep all five? No, you send one mask one mask to New York to help a nurse or a doctor. How beautiful is that? I mean how selfless is that? How giving is that? It's that love that courage that generosity of spirit that makes this country so beautiful. And makes Americans so beautiful, and it's that generosity of spirit, for me, makes up for all the ugliness that you see. Take one mask, I'll keep four. God bless America.
The handwritten letter was later shared across Cuomo's social media accounts:
Ultimately, it's a sentimental story he and his team astutely plucked probably from hundreds of angry letters, many of them from his actual constituents who are facing horrendous hardship and problems, like figuring out how to apply for unemployment benefits and trying to understand why he has been silent on providing real rent relief.
Still, the Kansas story worked. His amazed disbelief at a faraway gesture of generosity felt genuine. These "can you believe it" moments — even if you believe them to be emotionally manipulative ones — provide a little hope at a time when it is desperately needed, which is a service on its own. And even if it is all manufactured for the daily Cuomo Show, the reactions are real.
