The Political Interest: The New Mario Scenario

Just suppose . . .

It is Wednesday, Feb. 19, the day after the New Hampshire primary, and Bob Kerrey has come in third, behind Paul Tsongas and Bill Clinton -- or fourth behind Tom Harkin, or even fifth behind the Mario Cuomo write-in campaign. A small group of Kerrey backers, the money raisers, visit their candidate. In their minds is an old Eugene McCarthy line: "The motto of the Benedictine order is 'Keep death daily before your eyes,' which is a very good motto for politicians." We're sorry, Bob, say Kerrey's men, but you're dead. The bank is closed. We're broke, or will be shortly. You can limp along, but without funds it's hopeless. You're headed back to the Senate -- unless you can cut a deal.

With whom? With Cuomo. To do what? To run on the bottom half of a Cuomo ticket.

Without implicating Hamlet himself, it is possible to say that some people close to Cuomo have spoken with some people close to Kerrey and that a Cuomo- Kerrey pairing is more than idle speculation.

When last we left the Governor of New York on Dec. 20, 1991, the planes were ready and the papers were signed. Cuomo's formal entry into the New Hampshire primary seemed certain. "But I don't have a budget," Cuomo explained, and "I have a first obligation" to the people who elected me. "I want to run for President, but I can't." Fast-forward to last Wednesday evening, Feb. 12. The Governor delivers a brilliant political speech at Harvard, and the panting begins anew. In 45 minutes Cuomo runs the gamut from sounding like the liberal Harkin to the neoconservative Tsongas. There is "no free lunch," he says, aping Tsongas' hard-nosed view that resurrecting the economy will require a lot more than smoke and mirrors, a lot more than simply awarding the middle class a tax break at the expense of the rich. Don't say we can't find the money to do what must be done, Cuomo continues, it's a matter of priorities -- an outright theft of Harkin's nonspecific field-of-dreams answer to how he'd fund his "new New Deal." Still, says Cuomo, I can't run without a budget; but then again it would be "presumptuous" to call off those who are trying to draft me.

One way for Cuomo to seek the presidency involves the mandate scenario: the Governor enters several late primaries to prove his electoral strength as a prelude to Democratic leaders' corralling a majority of the delegates needed for his nomination at next summer's convention. But the mandate scenario is risky. One of the current contenders might still catch on nationally, or another candidate could enter the race sooner, which might preclude Cuomo's entering later.