Originally published on May 1, 2021. Republished with minor grammatical edits.
There are press conferences, and then there are press conferences.
In April of 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic was raging across the state of New York, especially in New York City, the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, began to hold daily press conferences updating the media, and the populace, on the crisis. This continued for around one hundred days – the Emmy award he received for them specified 111 briefings in all – until the state’s, and the city’s, rates of infection and mortality fell to the point where their frequency could be reduced to the more normal level of once or twice per week. The briefings themselves stood out in stark relief against the less than effective or coherent press efforts of the Trump administration, and almost immediately garnered Cuomo many fans, especially within the Democratic Party – at least for a period of time. That he ultimately received an Emmy1, a television award similar to the Oscars, for these press conferences in itself indicates how they were viewed at the time. Here, it was said, was a voice of stability, a voice of reason, a voice of authority that would explain, daily, what was happening, and what was being done about it, while urging everyone to “hang tough”2.
And yet.
For personal rather than political reasons, I ended up listening to nearly every single one of his press briefings, a task that at times became an outright chore as Cuomo would repeat entire sections and paragraphs verbatim, day after day. What follows below are my observations of the man, of his style, and of his politics, based on the totality of this experience. These can be expressed as several recurring themes, which combine together to form a portrait rather unlike that of a saintly yet stern father figure telling the nation to keep a stiff upper lip while the grown-ups fix things that caused the media to literally swoon with adoration.
To be sure, it has, of late, become rather customary to criticise Cuomo for this or that failing – allegations from multiple women regarding various forms of sexual harassment, deliberate concealing or mislabelling of nursing home deaths from COVID-19 so as to minimise the statistic, and more besides. As Cuomo had been New York’s governor since 2011, there are a lot more sins of his that could be added to this tally, most notably of corruption, of obsequiously serving his wealthy donors’ interests at the expense of the common people, of even sabotaging his own party to do so when it seemed convenient. But that is not what this post is about, nor did any of the recent revelations or allegations cause me to write it. In truth, I might have written the same exact words last autumn, when Cuomo was as yet collecting praises from the Democratic establishment and much of the mainstream press for his “handling” of the epidemic in New York while, not unironically, selling a freshly composed memoir about the very thing.
And so – to the recurring themes of Cuomo’s COVID-19 press briefings. As I so often prefer to do things in threes, no thanks to the video game industry, we can generalise these as follows.
Recurring Theme 1 – Someone ought to do something
One of Cuomo’s favourite ways of addressing a problem, whether it was brought up in the briefing itself or else in one of the questions from the attending journalists, was to describe it and then suggest or even implore that someone, somewhere ought to do something about it.
Communities violating COVID-19 quarantine orders to hold mass weddings and funerals? This should not be happening, someone ought to do something about it.
Several New York sheriffs3 publicly refusing to enforce Cuomo’s own orders on mask-wearing? This should not be, someone ought to do something about it.
My favourite piece de la resistance in this regard was when, during the Black Lives Matter protests in early summer of 2020, Cuomo detoured from his epidemic-related presentation to hold forth on the fact that, as it turns out, New York State’s average spending per student per year is almost exactly double for schools situated in wealthy neighbourhoods over those located in economically disadvantaged areas. This should not be, thundered Cuomo, someone ought to do something about it.
If only New York State had some kind of an official position embodying supreme executive authority, with considerable influence over the annual budget process not to mention a host of its own powers and offices independent of the state legislature. Perhaps we might call such an official a…a consul, or maybe a chief, or…a governor? Yes, if only the state had a governor who, having been in office since 2011, and having on more than a few occasions since that time directly intervened in all kinds of local matters to assert his personal and executive authority to the exclusion of all alternatives, maybe he might have done something about at least a few of these issues. Or maybe if the state had a governor who, since 2011, had amassed such a degree of personal control over the annual budget process that he, on a moment’s notice, can insert blanket legal immunity provisions for his donors in the private hospital and nursing home industry during an epidemic, maybe that governor might have done something about those schools, or those unruly local officials – whose snouts are as much in the trough of the state budget as in that of their home counties.
Clearly, New York State does not possess, nor, presumably, has ever possessed such an official. All irony aside, feigning powerlessness and asserting that someone else ought to handle a given problem has been a go-to technique of Cuomo, and of the Democratic Party as a whole, for many years. Having to employ it on a nearly daily basis, however, and in such a public setting, brought it into an incredibly stark relief, doubly so given the emergency powers granted to Cuomo by the state’s legislature in March of 2020, which were ultimately withdrawn only a year later.
To be completely fair, there was at least one issue where Cuomo did not employ this technique. When, in late June and early July, it turned out that some of New York City’s bars and restaurants were opening ahead of the actual lifting of the quarantine, Cuomo spent several daily briefings thundering, threatening, and vowing to send forth a veritable tsunami of state inspectors with the powers to close down any establishment found to be in violation of the state’s COVID-19 rules. I then spent nearly two weeks regularly taking a constitutional through some of the more well-off areas of New York City and marking which restaurants were in flagrant violation. The count was nearly a dozen each time – and my constitutionals were not terribly long at that juncture – and it seems that those selfsame state inspectors never quite managed to visit nary a single one of them. They did, however, ultimately close down a couple of bars in one of the poorer sections of town, which, I suppose, is, in fact, evidence of someone doing something.
Recurring Theme 2 – No-one could have anticipated
This theme began to be expressed most explicitly approximately a month into the briefings, when questions began to arise regarding the state’s lack of preparedness or preparations for the pandemic. In response, Cuomo offered a refrain repeated almost verbatim on what seems, in retrospect, to be at least a couple of dozen occasions, namely that New York was caught unprepared because it was told that the virus had originated in China, however the specific strain that infected the state’s residents came from Europe. If only someone would have told state authorities that…airlines exist…and that they should have been on alert for infected individuals flying in not only from China but also from other parts of the world, including from Europe. But, as no-one was specifically told about the European strain – nor read any European newspapers ringing alarm bells – no-one thought to consider international flights from Europe as a potential vector of infection, or to stockpile personal protective equipment4, or to consider whether the state’s hospital capacity, especially in poor neighbourhoods, was up to the task…
…no-one could have imagined a pandemic coming in from anywhere other than China. Or what steps might have been taken in, say, February, when COVID-19 had already appeared on US territory, specifically in California and in Washington State.
In similar vein, no-one could have imagined that some individuals or entire communities would ignore mask mandates and social distancing rules in absence of any firm state-level enforcement measures. As well, no-one could have predicted that sending infected elderly patients from hospitals to private nursing homes – essentially to free up a fairly constrained supply of hospital beds – would lead to the epidemic raging in those very nursing care facilities among a demographic that is by far the most vulnerable to the disease. After all, no-one could possibly have suspected that chronically under-resourced, under-staffed and poorly managed facilities would not prove capable of handling a highly infectious contagion5.
Taking this specific dodge together with the first recurring theme outlined above, one cannot but help to recollect the standard Foreign Office response to any crisis, as expounded upon in “Yes, Minister”:
- Say nothing is going to happen.
- Say something may be going to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
- Say maybe we should do something about it, but there is nothing we can do.
- Say maybe there is something we could have done but it is too late now.
“Yes, Minister”, of course, is a satire of the first order, whereas Andrew Cuomo and politicians like him are the cold, hard reality. And unfortunately, at least from a public relations standpoint, the “no-one could have anticipated” approach has historically worked even better than Cuomo’s personal favourite of “someone should do something”.
Recurring Theme 3 – Repetitive repetition, repetitively
To a degree, this theme is less political, and more presentational.
Since the epidemic came to New York, every night, every single night, I sit down, compile the vital statistics on things like infections, mortality and hospitalisations, write a handful of introductory paragaphs, and send them along – to whom, it matters not. Rather, I know first hand what it is like to write something like my own miniature daily briefings on the same subject, COVID-19, for weeks, months, and even years on end, and how incredibly difficult it might be sometimes to come up with material that is both new and genuinely informative. In fact, to some extent, repetition cannot be avoided, but it can, however, be masked. Different turns of phrase, different angles, simply dropping a theme for a couple of days before coming back to it. I suppose it helped that in my past professional life I have had, from time to time, to provide similar daily or near-daily notes and briefings to my superiors on all sorts of issues, and after a certain point one does internalise a way to at least try and maintain reader focus.
Cuomo, or his staff, will have none of this. In his briefings, Cuomo repeated identical multi-minute blocks of verbiage on a variety of issues dozens of times, often on consecutive days, in one or two cases for weeks on end. By the end, even he seemed slightly tired of it all. To some extent, this commitment to repetition can be an effective propaganda technique, not to mention a way of avoiding political pratfalls by repeating the same words on the same three or four agenda items day after day.
Conversely, however, this approach considerably limits the information given and the scope of the discussion, not to mention being less than easy to endure for anyone who happens to watch multiple consecutive briefings. As the main purpose of Cuomo’s COVID-19 briefings ought to have been keeping the public informed, and assured that authorities were doing what they can, I found it strange to instead witness a politician repeat the same script day in, day out, as if running for office or desperately seeking not to make a mistake. That a good portion of Cuomo’s seemingly memorised passages were utterly self-serving – “the virus came from Europe!” – only worsens the impression, in my mind.
To be sure, it was perfectly possible to watch the very same briefings and not see any of these recurring themes – if one were only seeking some form of emotional support and reassurance, the image of a “grown-up” with a stern voice telling them that everything was going to work out after all. It is no accident that at least some of the memes that arose from Cuomo’s performance referred to him as “America’s crisis daddy”.
This, however, is hardly a good sign. A public that only wants emotional reassurance instead of, say, basic competence, and a compelling policy agenda that serves the common good rather than the interests of the socio-economic elites, is a public far too easily manipulated and controlled. After all, this same tendency of seeking emotional comfort instead of paying attention to actions and policy can be seen in many of those individuals who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, or those who had voted for Trump in either 2020 or 2016. This is Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” coupled with harsh right-of-center economic, fiscal and social policies, many of them magnifying that very same pain; this is George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” with its wars of aggression and torture prisons, and, of course, tax cuts for the wealthy. Emotion over reason, effectively the infantilisation of the public, is not a good look for a people of any nation, and if Cuomo’s briefings have any single arch-theme to them, it is that, given the opportunity, he always went for emotion. And, at least before his fall from grace a year later, was rewarded for it by the media and the powers that be to the fullest, including financially via his “post-COVID” memoir. Almost as if dulling the general public’s reason in favour of emotional, nay, infantile reactions that can be easily managed or manipulated, were someone’s class interest…
- More precisely, the International Emmy Founders Award, which is a way for the Academy to honour individuals not directly connected to a specific television programme; Wikipedia’s list of winners, for example, includes several CEOs of telecommunications firms and, of all people, famed underwater explorer and conservationist Jacques-Yves Cousteau.[↩]
- The slogan “keep calm and carry on” having already been taken…[↩]
- In the US, a sheriff is generally the local head of police who is elected, much like a mayor or a legislator, and as such is as much a creature of small-town politics as a law enforcement officer.[↩]
- I happen to live across the street from a hospital whose nurses, in March-April 2020, posted photographs of themselves taping together sliced open rubbish bags as improvised protective clothing.[↩]
- To be sure, someone did predict that these selfsame facilities would very much desire legal immunity from any and all health and safety violations over the course of the pandemic, and this was granted well in advance of the first peak of infections in the state.[↩]