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Don’t Pity the Losers
Rosy lives await forcibly retired politicians
By Alan Chartock

What happens after a politician loses? Is it really that bad? Take the case of my old friend Mario Cuomo, with whom I shared a radio show for more years than I’d like to count. People ask me about him all the time. I always tell them not to worry; he is leading the good life and doing very, very well. He looks fit and trim. He has become an elder statesman of state and national politics. He lives in the swankiest neighborhood in New York and he has a very good office in one of the best law firms in the Big Apple, Willkie Farr Gallagher (and other names, too.) Don’t even ask what his gubernatorial pension is.

From all reports, he is helping his son Andrew in his race for higher office. Yes, he was a Housing and Urban Development Secretary for Clinton, but if you are dumb enough to think that Mario hasn’t been out there doing his thing for Andrew, you are pretty dumb. Old IOUs have been flying back and forth faster than the speed of light, especially during the primary.

Retirements are getting pretty onerous since the city’s voters wisely went for term limits. Naturally, the politicians who love the old incumbent protection plan were really ticked off, but every time some clown tries to suggest that the voters reverse themselves on term limits, the echo comes back loud and clear: “Hell, no!” even when people are talking about beloved folks like Rudy Giuliani or Michael Bloomberg.

Soon Bloomberg will have to join my favorite Disney character, “Scrooge McDuck,” counting his millions, making more millions (make that billions), working at giving it away like the guy on the old “Millionaire” show or, ye gads, spending what now looks like funny money from Monopoly on running for President. Hey, why not? You really can’t take it with you and you can’t eat in Lutece every night. So Bloomberg may be forced to try to get a bigger job since the voters won’t let him keep the one he’s doing so well.

Then, of course, there is poor, hapless George Pataki, who does seem a little addled as he runs around the country trying to be President. He didn’t exactly retire because he had enough. He was going to get beat, and bad. Here’s a prime example of a guy who retires to beat the grim political reaper to the punch.

Only in America can a failed politician be forced to run for a higher office to save face.

Don’t worry about him. He can have Mario’s deal any day, and that means a nice corner office in a big law firm, maybe even the same one that Mario is in. That way one can make Republican rain and the other Democratic rain or snow, even.

Of course Pataki has done so much for his rich friends while in the Mansion that he is really owed. He gets a nice pension and health care, but he will have to pay to shine his shoes, and if he wants a chauffeur, that’s extra too.

And of course, these people get to keep the campaign funds that they never stop raising while in office. Capone’s racket was nothing compared to what these folks do. They get to keep their campaign money and spend it on political stuff, broadly defined.

Of course we should not leave out Bill Clinton. He may well get to move back into the S.S. White House, this time as the first mate. He gets so much money per speech now that it is hard to imagine what those trying to curry favor with President Hillary will pay him if and when the new gig happens.

It can be fun. When Ed Koch left office he was a bum. But now he’s turned into a right wing, pro-Bush zealot, and a beloved caricature of old “How’m I doin’?” Ed. There are always gigs for guys like that. When Frank Purdue died, I was sure that his look-alike Koch would get the chicken job on TV.

Don’t cry for these people. They know how to make it pay.

Alan Chartock is the president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and the executive publisher and project director of The Legislative Gazette