American Cicero : Mario Cuomo and the defense of American Liberalism /

Mario Cuomo, a three-term governor of New York, is portrayed by Ambar (Rutgers) as America's Cicero, who launches devastating philippics against Ronald Reagan, America's Mark Antony. As an ethnic, Catholic politician, Cuomo recognized that the urban North, "where urbanity and cosmopolitanism mask traditional fears, hatreds, and unfulfilled longings," was the last redoubt for a renewed and workable New Deal coalition. In four major addresses to the nation--especially his memorable keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 1984--Cuomo articulated a politics that lifted the harsh reality of everyday people into a renewed vision of government whose aid would forge a unity of faith, family, neighborhood, and nation. Those in the moderate and Clinton-led Democratic Leadership Council, formed after Mondale's crushing defeat, recognized the power of his call, even as they feared he "was pushing liberalism to its limits in its twilight hours." Because Cuomo refused presidential bids (and a Supreme Court nomination), Ambar's story reads as an ironic post hoc campaign biography and an elegiac tribute to the progressive liberalism of "a man governing out of his time." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. --Eldon John Eisenach, University of Tulsa

Was three-term New York governor Mario Cuomo one of the most consequential figures in recent American politics? Readers inclined to answer that question in the negative are unlikely to have their minds changed by this slim and eccentric biography that will get attention mainly for the spectacular claim made in its epilogue, in which Ambar (Malcolm X at Oxford Union) provides a new answer as to why Cuomo never ran for the presidency. Ambar writes that he interviewed the politician's cousin Maddalena during a trip to Italy in 2012 and that she disclosed that Cuomo "was told by the Mafia-in both America and Italy-that he would end up like John Kennedy" if he sought the White House. Even though Maddalena also claimed, erroneously, that Cuomo was not born in the U.S., Ambar gives her unsupported allegation some weight. Apart from this sensationalism, Ambar seeks to buttress his firm belief that his subject was "the most significant liberal politician to challenge Reaganism in the past 30 years." But it's left unclear how successful Cuomo's challenges were, or what his track record as governor actually amounted to. By giving so much attention to Cuomo's much-lauded speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Ambar only reinforces the perception that the governor was more talk than action. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.