All Things Possible… – Bonus Post

This blogger read most of the book, “All Things Possible, Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life” by Andrew Cuomo, published in 2014. This career memoir tells how the author has followed in his father’s footsteps, building a life for himself in New York State politics as a bleeding-heart liberal. Of course, the timing of this book’s release coincided with his re-election campaign for governor of New York State.

As a side note, in mid-July 2014, this blogger heard a smear campaign against Cuomo’s opponent, Rob Astorino, in the guise of a short telephone survey. The wording of the questions was quite biased. The questions went something like, “If you knew Astorino was against abortion, and Cuomo favored women’s reproductive rights, would you vote for Astorino, or Cuomo?” and “If you knew Astorino raised property taxes in Westchester…” This blogger was turned off by this dirty campaigning by the Cuomo camp.

It is inappropriate at any time, but completely unnecessary because Cuomo was the incumbent in a race in which there would be extremely low voter turnout. He was destined to be overwhelmingly reelected regardless. That is the kind of seemingly minor slur that could make or break a close election; obviously an aspect of politics Cuomo forgot to mention in this book.

In the mid-1980’s, due to his New-York-State-governor-father’s power and influence, Cuomo enjoyed an immediate meteoric rise in practicing law. Cuomo became a partner at a law firm whose members had close ties to his father. This, after graduating law school and serving as an Assistant District Attorney for only one year. The usual time frame for making partner for the most brilliant Northeastern elitists who billed the most client-hours at New York City’s top law firms at that time was five to eight years, and even then, it was akin to winning the lottery. This makes Cuomo more of an “outlier” (according to Malcolm Gladwell) than Bill Gates, who worked around the clock for years before achieving fame and developing a reputation for expertise in a particular field.

Nevertheless, through the decades, Cuomo has implemented many policy changes and racked up achievements as New York State Attorney General and Governor. According to this book, he is a man of action. In the late 1980’s, he improved the quality of life of thousands of people through “HELP,” the nonprofit organization he created. It built temporary housing for the homeless and oversaw the attempts to improve other aspects of their lives, through drug rehabilitation and job training.

At the start of President Bill Clinton’s first term, Cuomo arrived at Housing and Urban Development. The federal agency had been in disarray for years, having lost billions of dollars to “…fraud, theft, mismanagement and favoritism.” Cuomo helped reallocate funds for a multi-billion dollar program more fairly. He writes that Clinton implemented a policy that applied both Republican and Democratic ideologies, respectively: a) “… the private sector, not government, creates jobs and wealth” and b) the culturally disadvantaged will help themselves if they get government services such as education, training, etc. At HUD, under Cuomo’s leadership, the gravy train ended for slumlords.

Read the book to understand the details of the political and life lessons Cuomo has learned, find out everything you ever wanted to know about his administration’s legislative actions on same-sex marriage and gun control, and his personal values and family life.