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The Eleventh Hour graphic. Funding for show by charitable organizations announced and listed over graphic.

Show Host, Robert Lipsyte, welcomes viewers and introduces today's guest, the Governor of New York - Mario Cuomo.

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.

INTERVIEW WITH Mario Cuomo CONTINUED

Robert Lipsyte:
can really make a difference. One person,

Mario Cuomo:
if you ask me, did I make a difference? The answer is yes.

Robert Lipsyte
I hope I mean, whatever your function, whether it's one wiring or bullying or what one person does something,

Mario Cuomo:
One person can make a difference and some individuals can make immense differences. Jesus did. Buddha did, Kennedy did. Martin Luther King jr. did, Joan of Arc did. Yeah. So individuals can make an immense difference.

Robert Lipsyte: I don't think

Lipsyte I can you don't see yourself in that role now?

Mario Cuomo:
God forbid, and I don't see anybody on the scene, frankly, who can make that kind of difference. And that's Mrs. Robinson. That's the Graduate, that's Joe DiMaggio.

Robert Lipsyte
not even yourself?

Cuomo:
Oh, no, of course not. So that if I do right for that, and he shouldn't vote for you.

Mario Cuomo:
If what I offered you, if I ran for President and told you, Hey, I'm Kennedy, I'll handle this. I'll make that then you shouldn't vote for me. What you really should do then is to get some psychiatrists, you know, to talk to me.

Robert Lipsyte
Let me, if you'll indulge me to rewind for just a minute. I covered your campaign in '77. Had you beaten Koch for Mayor. This is one of those terrible hypothetical questions. Do you think the cosmos would be different? Do you think something would have happened?

Mario Cuomo:
I have no idea.

Robert Lipsyte:
Sure you do.

Mario Cuomo:
I have no idea. I think a couple of things quickly. I think Koch was perfect for '77. I think the the thing you needed most for '77 was spirit, elan, a certain charm, and his brash New Yorker, Koch, you know, this boolean confidence of his, that's exactly what we needed. Because we were down. We had no money. We didn't have much of a future. And while, and he didn't even have to do anything mechanically with a budget or anything else to really make a difference, I think he was perfect for that moment. That might not have been as true 10, 11,12 years later, but certainly for that moment. He was right. I will say for myself personally, the idea of being mayor has always had more traction to me than the idea of being Governor. Although I didn't think I was right for '77. I said so, and I should have followed my own first judgment. Being Mayor, I you know, the idea that you could, you could be working every day in the city that I've lived in all my life. And I feel so comfortable here in the city of New York. But the idea of relating to the people here every single day, in the streets, working with them.

Robert Lipsyte:
Well it seems you're kind of shirtsleeve, getting in there.

Mario Cuomo:
Of course I do a lot of that statewide , but there's something about the Governor's. You see the Governor is not associated with your daily life. The way the mayor's Mayor picks up your garbage. The Mayor protects your children, educates them in the schools. He takes care of your ferrying you around on the transportation so city

Robert Lipsyte
Do you think the city would be in the mess it's in right now if you had been the mayor?

Mario Cuomo:
We'll never know.

Robert Lipsyte We will but you'll have some thoughts in the back of your head. No, not without thinking

Mario Cuomo:
The back in my head is already worn out.

Robert Lipsyte:
What aboutDinkins?

Mario Cuomo:
Dinkins has as extraordinary, maybe even unique opportunity. The city is in very big trouble. And I'm not happy about that. But it is an opportunity for Dinkins to bring it back. And you'll be able to measure the progress, It would be very difficult to say that David Dinkins ever made the city worse than it is now, because if we have such terrible problems, but it will be easy to detect progress. And that's an opportunity for Dave Dinkens. Dave Dinkins is a Black, an African American. I was the first Italian ever elected Governor. I remember polls we took when I was almost unknown as a politician, and you asked people, what do you have against this guy? 6% said Mafia. They didn't know who I was. All they knew was Mario Cuomo.
Being in government gives you an opportunity to deal with that.
If you work a year and you don't get caught stealing the Treasury, maybe some people will conclude you can have a name like Mario Cuomo and not be in organized crime.

Robert Lipsyte:
Can you translate that into Dinkins?

Mario Cuomo:
Well, I think David Dinkins is an African American, you've never had one before who was Mayor. He has an opportunity to demonstrate what anybody with any intelligence should know without the demonstration. And that is that he is a man of extraordinary competence, extraordinary ability. And that the stereotypes that might still reside in less intelligent people's minds about Blacks and African Americans etc. He has a chance but he's

Robert Lipsyte
But he's not a Joe DiMaggio either. I mean, in your concept of hero that we need.

Mario Cuomo:
He can be a very, very big and heroic figure in my opinion. He has a quality that's, you know, elusive. He is He is gentle. But he is strong. That's an extraordinary combination. Look at the pounding he took from the toughest pounders in the business for this campaign. They threw everything at this man. He never even blinked. He just kept coming.

Robert Lipsyte:
Including your friend Roger Ailes.

Mario Cuomo:
Yeah, absolutely. He just kept coming. He's strong. He's obviously nice. There is a gentility in this man that you can't teach people. He has a civility about him that comes only out of respect for other human beings of all kinds.

Robert Lipsyte:
People want Mayor Dad, I mean, people want the hero that you're talking about. In some ways, it's sad. I mean, it is it's almost some sort of emotional bankruptcy in the system, that we keep looking for these people. You keep evoking Joe DiMaggio. Why can't we as as a people, as a body politic, govern ourselves without having to find these people who will take care of us?

Mario Cuomo:
Why couldn't civilization live without such people? Haven't you always had such people? Didn't you make them out of stone? Didn't you make them King? Didn't you fall down at their feet? Haven't you always wanted somebody.

Robert Lipsyte:
and they've always failed us.

Mario Cuomo:
Yeah, but you still want them and you still need them. It's part of the human condition. We've always needed them before we've created gods. I think I have a god that I created in my mind. And that's real. But a lot of people believe that people have created gods for themselves. They created parent figures. they've they've needed to. It's a natural instinct to want to be guided. Your your your orderly, and sometimes desperately aware of your own imperfection and vulnerability, and you want help.

Robert Lipsyte
Well in your you must feel some pressure. You've avoided our discussion about your demagoguery, or being President, you're not being Joe DiMaggio. You're you're what you would have done mayoralty. But still out there, you know, better than I do, that there are people who want you to be Joe DiMaggio in politics, and almost demand that, you know, if not, you will invent somebody like you. How do you keep responding to this on a day to day basis?

Robert Lipsyte:
You mean, in my mind? Yeah, to me, I make a very sharp distinction between the message and the messenger. As a matter of fact, occasionally I'll talk to people about that. Last year, I traveled around the country a bit and gave some lectures on campuses and other places, and have a question about the presidency would come up, I sometimes would say this to them. Look, I've talked to you about the peace dividend about income taxes going from 70 to 28%. And how that forced taxes, sales and real estate taxes to go up locally. That means poor and middle class, etc, etc. That's an important message. I talked to you about the interconnectedness and the global economy. That's an important message. If I now start talking to you about Mario Cuomo, as a political candidate, a presidential candidate perhaps, that's going to obscure the message. Because either way you're going to like Mario Cuomo as a candidate or not. If you don't, you're liable not to listen to my message, that would be a terrible loss. If I had my way, I would have talked to you from behind a screen, you wouldn't have known who it was, it would have been AJ Parkinson, or Glenn de laduke. I've written things and had them published under other names, because my identity should be a distraction. You shouldn't say this makes sense. Because this guy wrote it. It makes sense or doesn't make sense.

Interview ends.

Funding for the Eleventh Hour announced.