The man who should have run in 1988 and spared us both Bushes is now telling Democrats to keep the mutant son from illegally getting us into a war with Iran as he did in Iraq.
Mario Cuomo broke his political silence Friday night after the Lieberman/Kyl vote with an impassioned reminder that the Constitution gave war-making power to Congress to avoid having it exercised by one man who “may be mad, an egotist, misguided or stupid.”
“That power cannot be delegated,” he said on MSNBC’s Hardball. “You can’t adopt a resolution and say well, the Founding Fathers wanted us to do it, but it’s too heavy a lift for us, so we empower you, Mr. President, if you feel like doing it, to do it.”
He enjoined Democrats not to repeat their 2002 mistake of abdicating their will to a President who misjudged everything about going to war in Iraq:
“(H)e was wrong about the reason for it, he was wrong about complicity, he was wrong about how many troops we needed, he was wrong about how we would be greeted when we got there, he was wrong about the civil war, wrong about how much it would cost, wrong about how long it would last and now you’re saying maybe he can start another war.”
A new generation may not remember the former Governor of New York who dropped out of public life after electrifying the 1984 Democratic convention with his “shining city on a hill” keynote speech and in 1992 going as far as keeping a plane waiting to fly to New Hampshire to run against the reelection of the first President Bush.
Cuomo changed his mind at the last minute and, after Bill Clinton’s election, declined a likely nomination to the Supreme Court.
When a man of that caliber reminds this year’s Presidential hopefuls to go to the mat with Bush about Iran, they would do well to listen.
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