This is the problem with Machiavelli. It may indeed be better to be feared than loved... until your survival depends on the goodwill of others. Cuomo made enemies for its own sake for decades in New York politics. Even his allies don't like him personally. And he's given them the perfect excuse.
I wouldn't consider myself a Machiavellian, but I've read "The Prince", and Machiavelli actually said it's best to be both feared and loved, but failing that, being feared is better because love is much more fickle than fear. Cuomo lasted through almost three full governor terms without any trouble. He was both feared and (during the pandemic) loved, and is only now being brought down because of an index of incompetence and disgusting behavior that is shockingly high for somebody at this level of power.
He's finished now both because he's managed to weaken himself to the point of no longer being scary to other politicians and also because--validating Machiavelli's writings--the love for him was short-lived and easily reversible. Random people I knew in Arizona and Canada loved Cuomo during the pandemic, and that love got him a bunch of money when he put out his book, but it's not helping him now.
If he had only been loved and not feared, he probably would have been eliminated many years earlier at the first sign of scandal or weakness.
Nixon's misconduct wasn't "quaint," unless the word includes the President of the United States authorizing payoffs to the burglars who tried to bug the DNC and then lying about it repeatedly to Congress, the FBI, and the public for two years, to which we can now add that in 1968, as the GOP candidate, he secretly contacted the North Vietnamese government and told them not to make peace with LBJ in order not to lose the political point to Hubert Humphrey, an act of treason that prolonged the Vietnamese War for years and cost tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese casualties. Nixon was a world-class villain and his later life as an aging apologist for himself did very little to erase the impression..
I looked and you're correct, and I am mistaken, I owe him an apology, though I suppose the additionally needless thousands of dead would think it a distinction without a difference.
Our government exists for little else but to enable elites to steal from the poor and to make sure the poor remain powerless.
Allowing Cuomo to get what he deserves would set a precedent of holding elites accountable. This will never be allowed to happen, even by the elites who hate his guts.
This is the problem with Machiavelli. It may indeed be better to be feared than loved... until your survival depends on the goodwill of others. Cuomo made enemies for its own sake for decades in New York politics. Even his allies don't like him personally. And he's given them the perfect excuse.
I wouldn't consider myself a Machiavellian, but I've read "The Prince", and Machiavelli actually said it's best to be both feared and loved, but failing that, being feared is better because love is much more fickle than fear. Cuomo lasted through almost three full governor terms without any trouble. He was both feared and (during the pandemic) loved, and is only now being brought down because of an index of incompetence and disgusting behavior that is shockingly high for somebody at this level of power.
He's finished now both because he's managed to weaken himself to the point of no longer being scary to other politicians and also because--validating Machiavelli's writings--the love for him was short-lived and easily reversible. Random people I knew in Arizona and Canada loved Cuomo during the pandemic, and that love got him a bunch of money when he put out his book, but it's not helping him now.
If he had only been loved and not feared, he probably would have been eliminated many years earlier at the first sign of scandal or weakness.
Nixon's misconduct wasn't "quaint," unless the word includes the President of the United States authorizing payoffs to the burglars who tried to bug the DNC and then lying about it repeatedly to Congress, the FBI, and the public for two years, to which we can now add that in 1968, as the GOP candidate, he secretly contacted the North Vietnamese government and told them not to make peace with LBJ in order not to lose the political point to Hubert Humphrey, an act of treason that prolonged the Vietnamese War for years and cost tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese casualties. Nixon was a world-class villain and his later life as an aging apologist for himself did very little to erase the impression..
Nixon contacted the SOUTH Vietnamese government, not the North, with whom he would have no power. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notes-indicate-nixon-interfered-1968-peace-talks-180961627/
I looked and you're correct, and I am mistaken, I owe him an apology, though I suppose the additionally needless thousands of dead would think it a distinction without a difference.
Oh, Ross—I fervently hope your analysis is correct
Still, I wouldn't count Cuomo out.
Our government exists for little else but to enable elites to steal from the poor and to make sure the poor remain powerless.
Allowing Cuomo to get what he deserves would set a precedent of holding elites accountable. This will never be allowed to happen, even by the elites who hate his guts.