I was very saddened to hear that former New York Governor Mario Cuomo has died. He was a fine governor and might very well have been a good president or U.S. Supreme Court Justice. <\/p>\n
In reading his obits, I recalled that back in 1991 I wrote a Hamlet-style soliloquy for New York Newsday, related to Mario Cuomo’s indecisiveness about running for president. So I dug it out of my ancient archives, and here it is:<\/p>\n
To run, or not to run: that is the question:
\nWhether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
\nThe slings and arrows of outrageous deficits
\nOr to take arms against a sea of Republicans,
\nAnd by opposing, defeat them. To reign at home:
\nOr to sleep at home no more: and by running to say we’ll end
\nThe fiscal heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
\nThe northeast is heir to, ’tis a consummation
\nDevoutly to be wish’d. To quit, to run;
\nTo run: perchance to lose: ay, there’s the rub;
\nFor in that White House quest what brutal press may come,
\nWhen we have shuttled off this Albany soil,
\nMust give us pause: there’s the respect
\nThat makes calamity of so long New York;
\nFor who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
\nThe opponent’s wrong, the public abuse,
\nThe pangs of disprized voters, the law’s delay,
\nThe insolence of office, and the spurns
\nThat Democrats suffer from the media snakes,
\nIf the Governor simply plays it safe
\nIn the comfort of his Statehouse? Who would those burdens bear,
\nTo drone that keynote speech night after night,
\nBut that the dread of a crash in ’93 ,
\nA wrecked economy from whose depths
\nThere is no return, puzzles the will,
\nAnd makes us rather bear those ills we have
\nThan fly to Washington finding who knows what?
\nThus conscience does make cowards of us all,
\nAnd thus the native hue of resolution
\nIs sicklied o’er with fear of the polls,
\nAnd primaries of great pitch and moment
\nSeem less appealing as we fear each loss
\nAnd lose through sheer inaction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was very saddened to hear that former New York Governor Mario Cuomo has died. He was a fine governor and might very well have been a good president or U.S. Supreme Court Justice. In reading his obits, I recalled that back in 1991 I wrote a Hamlet-style soliloquy for New York Newsday, related to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2573,156,3],"tags":[2575,2574,282,2131,2576],"class_list":["post-10719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-york-governors","category-new-york-politics","category-politics","tag-hamlet","tag-mario-cuomo","tag-new-york","tag-political-parody","tag-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10719"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10732,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10719\/revisions\/10732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}