Cuomo’s Approach: ‘It’s Silly to Decide Before You Have to’

The night before he ended weeks of intense speculation by announcing he would not seek the Democratic presidential nomination, New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo dissected the anatomy of his decision-making process on major issues.

“You take all the time you can,” Cuomo said at a news conference late Thursday. “You take all the time that’s available to you without being prejudicial, without damaging yourself by being dilatory.

“Why? Because you might have a new thought or a new fact. It’s silly to decide before you have to unless somebody is hurt by it. So if you are given this amount of time, you take it.

“I am very polemic in my approach because I taught, because I was in a courtroom a lot. I go back and forth with myself or if I am lucky enough to have somebody around to argue with. When strangers walk in, they can be very confused, especially if you take a different side.”

Referring to his decision on whether to run for President, he said: “This has been no different. I have been a lot more external about this one than most because I thought that is what I should do and other people should listen to it.

“It didn’t work out perfectly,” he admitted. “A lot of people catch snatches and see you going back and forth and mistake that for some kind of less-than-deliberate process.”