It just took one line to make me cry. One line for which I have been yearning for politicians to say. I can’t remember exactly how he said it, but Governor Cuomo said something like, “I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or something else, I represent everyone in the state of New York.”
I guess I was starting to lose hope that someone would say it. That someone would recognize that being an elected official is not just about representing the people who voted for you, but about representing all of the people, whether they love you, hate you, or don’t even know you exist. Cuomo, in his coronavirus briefing today, gave me hope.
I think far too often in politics we think that we only represent the people who elected us—perhaps there is some validity to this argument however. Maybe we do only represent those who voted for us and the majority consensus of the population. However, I can’t see how that applies to every decision. I would imagine that there is no majority population that agrees to make the same decision in every scenario—I can’t even find a group of two humans who agree on everything. So maybe it’s not about making the same decisions, but that some people believe it’s about representing “our” team against “their” team, the old us vs. them game. In that scenario, maybe trying to help one group win over the other group is aligning with political desires and beliefs.
I, however, strongly believe that when we elect politicians, we elect them to represent every single human being in that district, and ideally human beings outside of that district, as well as other living beings and non-living things. If I were to run for office, this is one of the thing that actually excites me the most: the challenge of having to make good decisions on behalf of people who love me, hate me, and are indifferent to me. I think in so much of our lives, we are asked to care about only the people on our team, not people who may be working against us. Take business for example, how many companies try to make decisions taking into consideration not only their employees and customers, but people who would never be their customers, and even their competitors? I think the same for nonprofits, families, and unfortunately, even some religious institutions.
What I heard from Cuomo today reinvigorated my hope for politics and my hope for governance. I was in awe watching someone who, day-after-day has been holding these briefings, dealing with so many intricacies of this pandemic, stand up to protect the people in his area—all the people.
I believe one of the biggest challenges of being a leader is to defend our own humanity, the humanity of those who love us, those who hate us, and those who are indifferent to us. Thinking about that challenge makes me feel so alive.
