State of the State speeches are invariably painful, lengthy and fruitless. It's not anyone's fault; it's the nature of the beast.
For a governor, it means an enormous expenditure of staff and personal time during the holidays, at the same time the much more important executive budget proposal is being put together. For Assembly and Senate members, it requires a display of public affection for the governor of your party, and a stony, but polite, glare from the opposition, no matter what they really think.
For the Assembly speaker, Senate leader(s), lieutenant governor, attorney general and comptroller, it requires more than an hour of feigned interest and spotless personal deportment.
For the special-interest groups it's time to figure out if you've been helped or hurt. For the public, it's a yawn.
Here's a hint. Pay no attention to what is said: Read the full text of the full address, in what is called the Big Book. Therein lies the truth.
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Comes now Andrew Cuomo for his third State of the State speech. He's been a decisive and effective governor, whatever you think of his policies, and his popularity in New York is sky-high.
That has been, correctly, the basis for Big Questions about a presidential bid in 2016. Cuomo is able and ambitious. His way may be blocked by Hillary Clinton's potential candidacy, but there's no other obvious obstacle. He's going to look at 2016 as his best shot.
With all the above in mind, here's what can be said about his speech. It's meaty, chock full of ideas, and unafraid to toss things out for discussion. It's impossible, there's no money to pay for most of it, especially given his Paul Ryan-esque pledge of no tax increases.
It's a lawyer's document. Read it carefully he means exactly what he says, and no more. It's self-serving, he glosses over his mistakes — failure to have a prevention plan in place for Superstorm Sandy — and inflates his already considerable string of successes. And it's unsurprising, a continuation of the grand political and governing strategy he adopted in the 2010 campaign.
The Grand Strategy is worth thinking about. From Day 1, Cuomo was a "progractionary" a hybrid of the right and the left. His economic policies fit well with the House Republicans' austerity, tax cuts, pro-business and downsize government agenda. His social policies on gay marriage, nuclear power, minority concerns, abortion rights, gun control, etc., have always been left of the left.
His State of the State speech doubled down on the "progractionary" strategy. For the right, he talked about fiscal integrity and discipline: "Gone is the tax capital mentality; replaced with a property tax cap, a new pension system and the lowest middle-class tax rates in 58 years," he said.
For the left, everything they wanted in a self-named "progressive agenda." And the presentation itself was focused on gun control, the left's current focus.
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Cuomo is going to use his toughness and political capital to ram through as much as he can. That's good for storm recovery and gun control. It could cause problems for important state issues that don't fit into the "progractionary" model — expanded gambling, privatizing the Long Island Power Authority, education reform, finally getting ready for the next hurricane, etc.This was a speech intended to get Cuomo's agenda on the national stage. There's the rub, a focus so heavily on noncore issues. Guns and storms are very important to be sure. But bridging budget gaps, re-creating functional cities, the implementation of Obamacare, long-term financial stability — these are the heart of the work of state government. Yet they took second place to sexy, national issues.
Cuomo has every right to build on his New York success and bring it to a national audience. But the big political struggle may be keeping him focused at home.
Richard Brodsky is a former state assemblyman from Westchester County. He is now a fellow at the Demos think tank in New York City and at the Wagner School at New York University.