American Cicero: Mario Cuomo and the Defense of American Liberalism

Mario Cuomo was the most important Democratic officeholder during the Reagan era. The three-term governor of New York was also a famously eloquent defender of the Democratic Party's progressive legacy even as conservatives gained political power across the nation. As liberalism's most powerful and eloquent defender of the New Deal's legacy, he found a wide and receptive audience well beyond his home state of New York. Yet he never ran for president. Why?

Saladin Ambar's American Cicero trac...