Mark Cunningham

Mark Cunningham

Opinion

Andrew Cuomo’s struggle to go big

Amid all the other reactions to Gov. Cuomo’s latest State of the State speech, can we take a moment to pity the guy? He so plainly wants to do great things, but circumstances conspire against him.

Yes, the governor talked a grand game Tuesday, citing a host of accomplishments and setting out a supposedly bold agenda for the coming year. But it all adds up to changes too small or too cosmetic to truly shift New York’s course — or his own.

On the economy, if Cuomo gets everything he just asked for, New York will remain one the most overtaxed states, with one of the worst business climates — at best trading places at the bottom with New Jersey, where Chris Christie, for all his bluster, has also failed to pass any game-changers.

Florida is still passing us to become the nation’s third-largest state, with no end in sight to New York’s decline.

As for Upstate, even a zero corporate-income tax will only slow the region’s already-tragic decline. Cuomo’s casinos can at best create some low-paying service jobs; the governor’s shown an iron determination to “study” to death the easiest real game-changer, fracking.

And on property taxes, the strong cap Cuomo won in his first term merely limits future harm. To force local taxes down, he’d need to tackle all the state mandates that have forced local spending so high — and that would mean taking on the public-employee unions and the Legislature, which they pretty much control.

So all he’s offering is consolidation of local governments — reforms that will save some real money, but in the end amount to no more than shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Don’t get me wrong: New York is better off under Andrew Cuomo. He is, after all, our first governor since George Pataki’s second year to be simultaneously engaged, sane and competent. But when you’re reduced to bragging about how taxes aren’t quite as high as they used to be, and how budgets are now getting passed on time . . . well, George W. Bush’s observation about “the soft bigotry of low expectations” is one of the kindest lines that comes to mind.

None of this is likely to endanger the governor’s re-election this fall, not in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. But so what? The forces that keep him from doing more won’t grow any weaker in a second term, or a third.

And he’s got nowhere to go. He can’t run for president unless Hillary Clinton drops out. Fair or not, she’s got first call not only on the New York establishment, but on the “sensible Democrat” niche in the primaries. His best hope is that some Republican beats her, so he can run in 2020.

A Cabinet job? He’s already been Housing secretary (though it’s not something much to brag about, given how his policies there helped foster the whole subprime crisis and the 2008 financial collapse). The only obvious role for him is as attorney general — and Democratic presidents these days feel the need to fill that post with a die-hard loyalist, not a guy with his own White House ambitions.

Cuomo, in short, is stuck: For the foreseeable future, the best he can hope to do is keep on keeping on, praying for some opportunity to develop — a mega-scandal that truly upends the Legislature (you go, Preet Bharara), or a national crisis that somehow demands his talents in Washington.

In the meantime, he’s stuck negotiating with Shelly Silver and the Senate’s leaders to manage New York’s decline, and jousting with Mayor de Blasio about who’s the real big Democratic dog in New York.

A natural politician like Cuomo may enjoy those fights, but you can bet his gut burns at being forced to play on so small a stage, no matter how happy a face he puts on it.