Reason to Believe by Mario Cuomo

...Cuomo unabashedly labels the contract "the New Harshness," and he has the gumption to say straight out that "in large part it was designed by distilling the bitterest juices from the people's anger, bottling them as legislation, and then offering it all back as a magic elixir...

...Cuomo does not offer us a programmatic alternative...

...Not a trendy concept and, it must be added, not one easily translated into political action and legislation...

...Now, in Reason to Believe, he serves up a brisk critique of the current Republican "revolution...

...Cuomo has certainly not escaped criticism...

...this is no mere replaying of "Happy Days Are Here Again...

...He is scathing about the inadequacy and hypocrisy of the Republican welfare proposals, which evidence an effort to "transform the issue, with all its moral and practical complexity, into a blunt political wedge to divide the middle class against the poor," the middle class being interestingly defined as those "not rich enough to be worry-free but not poor enough to be on welfare...

...The author also brings to bear his rich personal background-his Catholicism and his immigrant parents' struggle against prejudice and the Depression, fighting for a better break...

...Taking welfare as an example, he foresees that without nationally imposed standards a "welfare-cutting contest" will pit one state against another, with "the poor taking all the punishment...

...His Diaries (1984), detailing his first campaign for governor in 1982, are as good a personal record of running for office as we are likely to get...

...Cuomo observes that our current dilemmas will not be solved by mindless budget-cutting...

...True reform would not be money-saving in the short run, but would require a substantial fiscal commitment to job training, counseling, child care, and health benefits: "Realistically, there's no other way to transform a young woman with little or no work history, few if any occupational skills, and several young children into a self-sufficient member of society...

...It is clear throughout that Cuomo is willing to discuss change where it is truly needed...

...We need to strengthen ourselves with fiscal restraint, not throttle ourselves with fiscal strangulation...

...It is "composed of simplistics, emotionalism, shibboleths, and empty slogans that appeal to the worst that is in us...

...At least since the Diaries, Cuomo has often referred to the body politic as a "family," in which we are "all in this together"-the antithesis of the compassionless, hyper-individualistic contract...

...Consider, for example, Al Smith's The Citizen and His Government (1935), George Washington Plunkitt's scoundrelly reminiscences of life before civil service, FDR's lucid, explanatory speeches, even Ed Koch's Mayor (1984...

...And liberals, no matter how incisive their suggestions for true reform, as opposed to slash-and-burn destruction, are treated with condescension, if not outright derision...

...Compromise and weak-kneed tinkering with the clauses of the contract are the fashion...

...This company of writing politicos was joined long ago by Cuomo, three times governor before being "capsized by the Republican tide of 1994...

...But he refuses to view the items in the Republicans' poll-driven agenda piecemeal, without an exploration of their interconnections, their long-term implications, and their impact on society...

...Here his accumulated wisdom as a governor-a New York governor-is most valuable...

...Noting that he is "a great fan of states and what they can do," he nonetheless views devolution, as preached by the Republicans, as a regression going clear back to the failed Articles of Confederation...

...As governor he was often characterized as being a better talker than a doer, and his failure to run for president or accept nomination to the Supreme Court turned off many would-be admirers...

...New York politicians must confront nearly all the American social and economic problems that Mario Cuomo describes as "big, awkward, expensive, and even repugnant...

...leads magically to solving it...

...He advocates approaching deficit reduction in a "realistic and sensible way," reallocating funds to favor "programs to meet our needs, not our wants," maintaining essential investment in infrastructure and human resources-and forgetting about tax cuts (including President Bill Clinton's...

...Despite the carping and the reservations, however, his undoubted intelligence and experience give him the credentials to criticize the contract which, when all the leaves of the artichoke are peeled away, exposes us to a heart reeking of social indifference and an almost anarchic contempt for government...

...James Duffy is a writer and former lawyer living in New York...

...He is the author of Domestic Affairs: American Programs and Priorities...

...James Duffy New York Democrats, when they have put pen to paper, have often enhanced our understanding of government...

...Slashing the rolls "might make welfare itself go away, but it won't make the problem go anywhere, because the real problem is poverty and the real solution is producing jobs and opportunity...

...it is "foolish" to think that the "notion that handing over a problem to the states...

...The former governor is especially telling on the "devolution" of programs and responsibilities from the federal government to the states...

...Experience in this ethnic and economic melting pot just may give its public officials a more complex sense of what government service is about than, say, the congressman from the Sixth District of Georgia...

...Nonrightist commentators and officeholders alike today seem awestruck by the Contract with America and determined to flagellate any observer who has anything good to say about the progressive legacy that began with the New Deal...

...Despite the occasional suggestion for practical action, his real purposes in writing appear to have been to give us a wake-up call about what the Republicans are proposing and to help create a framework in which problems and policies can be debated sensibly...