On the one hand, Andrew Cuomo had 18 million people.
On the other hand, he had an activist.
His former brother-in-law. A guy with a famous name and an extremist reputation. Robert Kennedy Jr., a rich boy with a heroin conviction, a law degree and zero understanding of science.
That’s who young Andy listened to.
Not the financial interests of his state, not the activists on either side, not the professional staff of his Health or Environmental Conservation departments. He didn’t consult the landowners of the Southern Tier. He didn’t talk to the professors at the universities. He didn’t call up the greens or the drillers.
He didn’t take any of them into account.
As New York lingered after four insufferable years of indecision, as activists and industries waited for a decision on hydrofracking, one opinion weighed more than all others.
The opinion of his brother-in-law.
RFK Jr. told him to wait, so he waited. Instead of announcing a decision – and opening New York up to the potential $1 billion in annual revenues, or saving fretting environmentalists from the fear of chemical uncertainty – he punted for another year.
About to announce a system of very limited trial drilling, about to finally provide some direction in a sea of chronic uncertainty, about to actually lead, Andrew Cuomo demonstrated the family trait.
Indecision.
He knows he wants to be president. He doesn’t know much else.
Most particularly, he doesn’t know how to represent the people who elected him, instead of the politically elite who surround him.
Instead of relying on his own judgment, and the recommendations of his staff and administration, he decided to take the advice of the former brother-in-law who wants one more long-term study.
This is the same brother-in-law who has danced for decades on the extreme fringe of the environmental movement. He has travelled around the country, taking stands on the far end of reason.
For example, about vaccines.
Robert Kennedy Jr. has said that vaccines poison children and that there is a massive federal government conspiracy to conceal that fact and foist vaccines on a trusting populace.
Now, some people may share that view.
But not very many of them.
And nobody takes them seriously.
Most particularly those with a background in medicine and science.
And it is fair to ask if someone whose understanding and intellect are such that he believes vaccines are a government plot is sufficiently sound to offer meaningful advice on any subject, much less one that is very technical and complex.
It is also fair to ask if a governor with a world of resources at his fingertips, who has the fruit of four years of study available to him, and who can call upon the world’s best experts and the faculty of the nation’s largest university system, but who is still swayed by the last-minute pleadings of a crank, it is fair to ask if that governor’s decision-making abilities are sound.
Somebody needs to remind Andrew Cuomo that this is a big deal. Whether you want to frack, or forever ban it, this is colossal. Either the state will deliver itself from economic languor, or it will destroy its aquifers and its waters, those are the two extremes. Either way, somebody needs to decide.
And if the decision is to ban fracking – as delay does for at least a time – then he should have the courage to say so. To stand up and own the decision. He should tell the landowners and the unemployed and the businesses that he has decided against them.
Or, if he feels the other way, that fracking is acceptable, then he should tell the environmentalists and the liberals and the Hollywood types that he has decided against them.
He should have the judgment to decide, and the courage to announce a position.
He is the governor, he should govern.
He has shown great ability to decide and act when he wants to, but in this matter, he chooses cowardly indecision.
And he ignores the wishes of the people.
In order to listen to his brother-in-law.
