Inside the Diaries, and the Mind

By Robert Ajemian

The Governor's mansion is silent and mostly dark. It is 5, an hour before dawn, as Mario Cuomo sits alone in the small upstairs study writing longhand entries in his diary. It is a discipline Cuomo has engaged in for almost 15 years. Outside, the streets are empty. His wife Matilda is still asleep nearby, and on the floor above, two of their children, Madeline, 21, and Christopher, 15, have two more hours before they wake.

The voluminous diaries provide a glimpse into Cuomo's well-camouflaged self. For despite his hearty exterior, almost no one really knows him. Even as a boy, he moved with a neighborhood group but always kept a certain distance. Until he left home, Cuomo says, he never had a single lengthy discussion with his father. Over the years, he has made few close friends. "No one," he observes with a trace of pride, "really knows what I'm thinking."

Thus Cuomo writes his innermost thoughts in these diaries--which now fill four fat black notebooks--wringing out his feelings, probing his often masked motives. In public, Cuomo's belligerent words often land like karate chops. In the diaries, he is far less defiant. Hence, a recent entry agreed with a newspaper columnist's criticism. "His reference to my legalisms and pedantry," wrote Cuomo, "is an accurate one." Another entry tried to analyze the change of his mood: "I felt an unhappiness again the last few days, not a depression but a sense of emptiness. It usually comes after the euphoria. It's wearying."

That such contradictions exist in the gifted and complex man from Queens is not all that puzzling. For the querulous Cuomo is often at odds with himself. At 53 he still wrestles with unanswered questions about the direction and purpose of his life. Whether to run for President is but one of even more transcendent self-doubts. "What does God want of me?" Cuomo wrote one day in the diary, "But how serve him?"

Whatever the answers, Cuomo's restless mind keeps turning. His thinking is, in fact, more systematic than adventurous. He pores over options deliberately, delaying decisions until the very last moment while he gathers even more information. A Cuomo presidency would be less daring than determined. Says one aide: "He has to know the answer."

Cuomo's mind is swift and shrewd, almost awesome in its ability to grasp and retain material. He takes a lot from his voracious reading. "This morning," he wrote recently in his diary, "I read an hour or so of The Razor's Edge (Somerset Maugham's novel about a restless man searching for inner understanding). It always had good meanings for me." Another morning he rereads portions of Thomas Jefferson's autobiography. "One thing struck me," wrote Cuomo, "the logical forcefulness of his debate."

Sometimes his own unrelieved sense of logic gives him trouble. Cuomo is exhilarated by the power of government but dismayed by its necessary politics. "I have to plead, cajole, rationalize, justify," he wrote out of exasperation last month in the diary. "I don't want that." He is only partly amused that on occasion he receives high praise for routine decisions and sometimes little acknowledgment for politically courageous ones.

Once in a while the urge to escape is tempting. "How I would like to disengage, if only for a while," he wrote one day last year, "away from decisions, scrutiny, interaction. To be alone." Once a friend teased Cuomo that the perfect job for him was Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. There, in splendid remoteness, he could contemplate and decide. Cuomo had already thought of it.

But mere solitude would never hold the eclectic man from Queens. His need to accomplish and excel runs too deep. For 15 years he has scorned vacations. Instead, hard work is more renewing. Cuomo dominates those around him. An excessive talker, he routinely holds listeners captive as he slips into changing courtroom roles, playing innocent here, bullying there, as a technique for gathering information and testing the motives of others. It is a bruising process that tends to make flunkies out of the less sturdy around him. One top aide has packed on 50 lbs. from nervous overeating. But the extra weight is no matter. Says the aide of Cuomo: "He's exciting to be around."

Strong personalities rarely become Cuomo insiders. He deals more comfortably with strength from a distance. Though he engages people easily, he does not easily offer his own trust. It is not by chance that Son Andrew, 28, is his closest political counselor. Preparing for his uphill 1982 race, Cuomo examined a list of 60 prospective campaign managers and rejected them all. Instead, he installed Andrew. It is an odd and intimate partnership. Like no one else, Andrew over the years has learned how to deal with his father's personal force. A skillful manager, Andrew argues politics rather than substance. He almost never retreats. Sometimes he shouts objections into the phone and simply hangs up.

Criticism jostles Cuomo, and he retaliates. From time to time, writers in distant places have been startled to pick up the phone and hear the Governor on the line questioning the accuracy of their stories. Often he accuses critics of bad motives. Says a former close colleague: "Mario cannot treat honest criticism with respect. He views it as a personal attack." By now Cuomo has identified exactly how he responds to attacks. Recently he analyzed himself in the diary. "The first phase is the defensive one," he wrote. "For a short time there is regret, distaste, a desire to return to solitude, separation, the back of the store with the partitioned quiet. But only briefly. Time to fight back. Then the desire for separation turns to an eagerness, even a combativeness. I become almost comfortable with the idea I am under siege." Under siege, Cuomo can be hard. Last year when Democratic Leader Robert Strauss commented that if Cuomo became a presidential candidate, he needed to be less a voice of the past, the Governor fired off a bristling letter. Strauss tried to telephone for days, but Cuomo spurned the calls. After a disagreement with another national official, Cuomo demanded and got a public retraction, dictated verbatim by the Governor himself. Sometimes Cuomo can be physically intimidating. Years ago, when then Governor Hugh Carey backed away from a promise to support him, Cuomo protested in person. He felt betrayed and said so angrily. Stung, Carey started to rise out of his chair. "Sit down, Hughie," warned Cuomo, "or I'll knock you right on your ass." Carey leaned back into the chair.

Cuomo's Italian pride is palpable. He resented the movie The Godfather and refused an invitation to attend a special showing. To Cuomo the film is a slur. He still shakes his head when he hears Director Francis Coppola's name. These days the Governor misses no opportunity to laud the hard work of his parents, to glorify the immigrant experience. As a young man, however, he was less secure about his heritage. At St. John's Prep, he remembers, he found ways to avoid inviting his parents to school events. He was embarrassed that they spoke little English. For years afterward, Cuomo had a sense of shame about this ethnic self-hatred.

The Irish priests of his youth had a profound influence on Cuomo. His Catholic conscience is acute. Even those who loathe him concede Cuomo integrity. Often he jokes about his excessive guilt. Once a friend called to confess that he was feeling really good about life. Immediately Cuomo challenged him. "That can't be," he said. "You and I are too morose. We're only happy when we're suffering." Says Cuomo's wife: "He still takes everything so seriously. Maybe it's our upbringing. We had to struggle so hard." Indeed, Cuomo does not linger long on good news. He waits for the following storm. Says a colleague: "He likes it best when he's way behind."

Sitting in his upstairs study one evening last month, Cuomo talked about how he slips between his public and private selves. His tie loose, he sipped a glass of white wine. On a nearby shelf was a life-size bronze cast of Abraham Lincoln's hands. Shelves of books ran up one oak-paneled wall to the ceiling. Cuomo knows most of the volumes, and began picking through them. He spends hours alone in this room.

He moved to his desk and pulled out a scrapbook filled with newspaper clips of early sports days in Queens. Sentimentally, he pointed out teammates in pictures without needing to check the captions. Over the years, Cuomo observed, he has changed his views about the American melting pot. Now he believes the country's various cultures must be nurtured. He prefers the image of mosaic to melting pot. He is still astonished, Cuomo said, by the number of people he grew up with who have become conservatives. If he had to rely on the votes of his own people, he wondered if he would be Governor.

He spoke of Reagan's enormous popularity. "People sense that he believes what he says," said Cuomo. "That's his power." He was flattered by Richard Nixon's prediction that Cuomo would probably be the Democratic nominee. Some friends are trying to arrange a meeting. He looks forward to hearing the canny ex-President on foreign policy. There was no doubt, offered the Governor, the world was a safer place when Nixon was President than it is today.

Now his wife walked into the study. She wore a long black strapless dress. She had been having coffee downstairs with Writer Louis Auchincloss, who was sleeping overnight at the mansion. Cuomo immediately jumped out of his chair and began hugging her, kidding in a deadpan voice that she has never even read his diaries. For a moment she looked flustered that he said it openly. A vibrant and attractive woman with shiny eyes and a slim figure, she is less intense than her husband and handles him easily. Cuomo said it was impossible for anyone to understand him without accounting for Matilda. She is central to his whole life. After standing for a time, she slid away while he was talking.

The question of Cuomo's treatment of his staff arose. He is upset by criticism that he squelches them. He knows he pushes hard but is proud of their work. Suddenly Cuomo reached for the nearby phone and dialed the Governor's office. It was 11 p.m. Chief of Staff Gerald Crotty answered, still on the job. Cuomo smiled to himself, spoke a few lines and hung up. Stories about his temper, Cuomo said, are way out of date. He takes criticism far less personally now. He has stopped calling to complain to writers; these days it causes too much commotion. But anonymous criticism still angers him. "These gutless wonders," said the ostensibly better-controlled Cuomo, getting worked up at the thought. "They're like shadows. How do you fight them?"

A question about the presidency made Cuomo choose his words carefully. He is in no way afraid of the job, he said. He is convinced that his theme of family is right for the country. So far, he is not all that impressed with the predicted field of candidates in either party. There is a certain drabness, Cuomo said. George Bush is a continuing calamity. He does not think much of Gary Hart.

Does he really want to be President? Cuomo was asked. He paused for a moment. The question troubled him. He seems unable to deal with his own ambiguous feelings. He and Matilda have never had a single conversation about the presidency, Cuomo said. Slowly he rubbed his fingers over his chin. "I see that job as a burden," he answered, "not as an opportunity." He glanced over at Lincoln's bronze hands. He views the job much as Lincoln did, Cuomo said, and as Lincoln did, he muses on the biblical phrase "Let this cup pass."

But he might not be able to let it pass; so much is already in motion around him. For now he will keep the presidency out of his mind, and out of his diary. Better to hold for later that favorite option of coming from way behind. It is too early to be under siege.