Mario Cuomo Was So Very Right—Especially on the Death Penalt

[Oscar]

Mario Cuomo Was So Very Right — Especially on the Death Penalty

[ http://billmoyers.com/2015/01/02/mario- ... h-penalty/ ]

January 2, 2015 by John Nichols

EXCERPT: (Numerous LINKS - go to URL above)

Cuomo, who died on New Year’s Day at age 82, was the first to admit that he was not always right. He faced criticism for mounting crude campaigns in the early stages of a political journey that took from the streets of Queens to the cusp of presidential politics. He was defeated in races for lieutenant governor of New York, for mayor of New York City, for re-election to a fourth term as governor of New York State. He will always be second-guessed for his “Hamlet on the Hudson” indecision about seeking the presidency in 1988 and 1992, and for rejecting the prospect of nomination to serve on the US Supreme Court.

Yet, in three terms as governor of New York, as a champion of liberalism in the face of what conservatives proclaimed to be the “Reagan revolution,” as a keeper of the New Deal and Fair Deal and Great Society faith in a possibility of a more perfect union, as a thoughtful proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment and of reproductive rights, as an early supporter of research and funding of programs to address the HIV/AIDS crisis, as a sometimes lonely defender of social-welfare programs, as an innovative thinker who recognized that economic development did not have to be at odds with environmental sanity, Mario Cuomo was so frequently right that he came to be understood more as a statesman than a politician.

And on one issue, above all others, he was the most rigorously and necessarily right of all the prominent political figures of his time.

That issue was the death penalty.

Cuomo was the steadiest high-profile foe of capital punishment in an era when most Republicans and many leading Democrats — including President Bill Clinton and New York City Mayor Ed Koch — supported state-sponsored executions.

Again and again as governor, Cuomo vetoed legislation to establish capital punishment in New York State, explaining when he issued one of those vetoes in 1991 that “The death penalty legitimizes the ultimate act of vengeance in the name of the state, violates fundamental human rights, fuels a mistaken belief by some that justice is being served and demeans those who strive to preserve human life and dignity.”

Long after he left office, Cuomo remained consistently outspoken in his opposition to the death penalty, and it can he argued that this consistency played a role in shifting Democrats and the country as a whole toward a more enlightened view. But even if he had been required to stand alone on the issue, Mario Cuomo would have done so. It was his chosen mission in the realm of politics, and in the realm of moral discourse, to argue for outlawing capital punishment.

“Because the death penalty was so popular during the time I served as governor, I was often asked why I spoke out so forcefully against it although the voters very much favored it,” former Governor Cuomo wrote in 2011. “I tried to explain that I pushed this issue into the center of public dialogue because I believed the stakes went far beyond the death penalty itself. Capital punishment raises important questions about how, as a society, we view human beings. I believed as governor, and I still believe, that the practice and support for capital punishment is corrosive; that it is bad for a democratic citizenry and that it had to be objected to and so I did then, and I do now and will continue to for as long as it and I exist, because I believe we should be better than what we are in our weakest moments.”

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John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. His most recent book is The "S" Word: A Short History of an American Tradition. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again and Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Follow him on Twitter at @NicholsUprising.