Line in Early Draft of Cuomo Book Is Ridiculed

Another day, another unpleasant story about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. This one is from the New York Times, which raises some ethical questions about Cuomo's how-to-govern-during-a-pandemic book that came out earlier this year. Among other things, the Times reports that Cuomo may have violated state rules by having staffers work on various aspects of American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic while on the state's clock. The Albany Times-Union follows up by digging into the implications of that. But more attention appears to be focused on a line in an early draft of the book unearthed by the Times: “I have experience and a skill set that qualifies me as a good governor,” Cuomo wrote. “I have accomplished by any objective standard more than any governor in modern history. But I am not a superhero.”

A Daily Beast headline about this is "Don't Flatter Yourself," while Marie Solis at Jezebel writes that she "guffawed" at the sentiment. "What makes the line so amusing (to me at least) is that American Crisis would not exist were it not that Cuomo saw himself as such; the whole point of the book is to convince us of this very thing, that he is a superhero." A more serious matter raised by the Times: The writing of the book overlapped with another controversy—allegations that the governor's office pressured state health officials to downplay fatalities at nursing homes by excluding deaths of resident who died in hospitals. A final tidbit: The story says Cuomo received more than $4 million for the book, whose publisher has stopped promoting it and has shelved plans for a paperback version. (Accusations of sexual misconduct against Cuomo continue.)