There have been few Democratic candidates who have run for
President over the last few decades that have not run on the
platform of “bring us together.”
Democrats are the great uniters, attempting to unite us all
across lines of race, class, income, sexual orientation,
whatever. It’s an idea that has its appeal. We like to think of
ourselves as one nation, disparate individuals and cultures
brought together by the power of shared ideals, diverse elements
united to a common purpose, e pluribus unum.
The master of this rhetoric was Mario Cuomo, the former governor
of New York who was touted several times as an odds-on favorite
to sweep through the Democratic primaries and secure the
nomination for President — except that he never got past his own
contradictory nature and so never left Albany — at one point
literally leaving the plane on the tarmac that was supposed to
take him to Iowa to start his campaign.
Cuomo ruled by what he called the “poetry of politics.” He came
to prominence at the Democratic National Convention in 1984 where
he gave a historic, stem-winding speech in which he excoriated
the Reagan Administration for caring only about “millionaires”
and portrayed the nation as a huge wagon train moving Westward:
Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his
wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees — wagon train
after wagon train — to new frontiers of education, housing,
peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to
extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon
on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic
group, and native Americans — all those struggling to build
their families and claim some small share of America.
Powerful rhetoric then, powerful rhetoric now. Not even the
current occupant of the White House has ever really soared to
that level in trying to portray his vision of America.
Yet what did Mario Cuomo actually accomplish in his three terms
as governor? During his twelve-year tenure Mario Cuomo presided
over the virtual evisceration of the New York State economy. He
had no sense of how to achieve prosperity except to set up trade
barriers and “share the wealth.” At one point he suggested that
only New York State wines be sold in grocery stores. He refused
to buy bid-winning subway cars for New York City because they
were made in Canada. When the New York Yankees threatened to
leave the crime-ridden Bronx and move to New Jersey, Cuomo
promised to “sell some bonds” and buy the team from George
Steinbrenner — probably not even realizing that “selling bonds”
meant borrowing money. In the 1991-1992 recession, one out of
every five jobs lost in America were in New York State.
Cuomo had absolutely no sense of institutions other than the
state and needy individuals. He constantly invoked the “family”
but his family was people leaning on the government. He had no
sense of building the “little platoons” that Edmund Burke said
were the foundation of civil society. In the midst of welfare
reform he once remarked about 16-year-old welfare mothers, “If we
get her in an apartment and get her going to school or earning
money at a job, what’s the problem?”
In 1990 I worked as a speechwriter on the ill-fated campaign of
his Republican gubernatorial opponent Pierre Rinfret. On the
staff we were constantly appalled at Governor Cuomo’s economic
ignorance. His ideas were almost Medieval. In one speech he
recounted a conversation with his State Director of Economic
Development, Vincent Tese, after a meeting with some Italian
trade officials. “Hey Vincent, this is great. We make something,
we sell it to them, they make something else, they sell it to us.
This is good.”
“It was like listening to your grandmother explain how the world
works,” commented one researcher.
At one point we had a bootlegged tape of Cuomo telling the state
nominating convention, “We’ve just struck a deal with a British
company that is going to build a brickyard in upstate
New York.” This was at the time California was building the new
Information Economy in Silicon Valley. Andrew Cuomo, who was
managing his father’s campaign, carefully made the entire speech
disappear so we never could get it on the record.
By the time Cuomo left office in 1994, people in upstate New York
were selling their houses for less than they had paid for them
thirty years earlier and New York City was being called
“ungovernable.” Only Rudy Giuliani’s heroic rescue of New York
City and the national welfare reform engineered by President
Clinton and Congress in 1996 turned things around. Even so, while
New York City managed to revive, upstate New York remains yoked
in the “bring-us-together” syndrome, forced to live under
City-inspired high taxes and suffocating regulations. As a
separate entity, upstate New York is the 49th poorest of the 50
states.
So what’s the lesson? While it’s nice to “bring us together,” it
doesn’t make any sense to bring us together in an
undifferentiated mob. That’s where all this
all-for-one-and-one-for-all rhetoric usually ends up. You could
see it last week in California when a charitable group from
Tennessee tried to give away free health care in Southern
California and found itself inundated by a mob it couldn’t
handle. That’s just a preview of where President Obama’s
all-for-one-and-one-for-all health care reform is going to take
us.
President Obama was elected on the bring-us-together premise of
racial harmony. America would no longer be a nation divided along
racial lines. It’s a great ideal and I hope it happens. But being
part of a racially harmonious society does not mean we want to
surrender our individuality and our individual
responsibilities. Making a living, educating ourselves,
taking care of our health — all of these we have to do for
ourselves. We can’t pile it all on “the government.” Now, of
course, not every individual is capable of taking care of himself
and there should be plenty of room for exceptions and safety
nets. But if we simply aggregate into one big mob and expect the
government to provide us all with “health care we can afford,”
we’re going to end up with less than we have now.
As Ortega y Gassett put it in The Revolt of the Masses,
“When there’s a shortage of bread, the first thing people do is
burn down the bakeries.” Now that health insurance has been
defined as the “problem,” the first thing the Democrats are
inviting us to do is burn down the insurance companies. What else
is Nancy Pelosi angling for when she tells us that Obama’s health
plan will eliminate the insurance companies’ insufferable
“co-payments.” (Under three different plans, the most I’ve ever
co-paid for visiting a doctor’s office is $20. I pay the plumber
$75 to come to my house and inspect the pipes.) Once the
insurance companies are in smolders, what comes next? Hospitals
and doctor’s offices, perhaps?
Everybody’s been celebrating Woodstock this weekend and as the
primal gathering of peace, love and harmony — and it was indeed
perhaps the most orderly, tolerant, and good-natured mob in
history. All the “freaks” of the 1960s suddenly found themselves
in like company and a moment of cultural self-recognition. The
good vibes lasted for three whole days and became the founding
event of a counterculture that still believes the world can live
in greater peace and harmony.
But mobs get restless, even in the best of circumstances. It was
only four months after Woodstock that an ad hoc police force of
Hell’s Angels killed a crazed gunman at Altamont. After that,
free outdoor concerts quickly degenerated into unruly events that
often ended in violence. Notice they don’t give them anymore,
either. When Bruce Springsteen plays the Meadowlands, he charges
$75 a head and up.
And so, in the healthcare debate, the time has come to draw the
line between universal brotherhood and individual responsibility.
Bring us together, Mr. President, but leave us room to lead our
own personal lives as well.
