Reisman: Cuomo's tough-guy brand only goes so far

I just thought of a really bad photo-op — put Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a cardigan sweater and have him read "The Cat in the Hat" to a public school kindergarten class.

See, the idea would be to offset accusations that the governor's myriad efforts to reform education are nothing more than a conspiracy to break teachers unions and privatize schools.

Go warm and fuzzy with Dr. Seuss. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Only, it wouldn't work.

Cuomo simply doesn't "do cute," and couldn't if he tried.

A notorious control freak, he is uncomfortable with the unpredictable, which is what 5-year-olds are. He has a laser-like stare that could melt steel. He might make the kids cry.

Cuomo is more at home giving painful noogies to undersized assemblymen.

No one need be reminded that you can't possibly run a state like New York without strong-arming the members of the Future Felons Club, also known as the state Legislature. Forcing ethics down their throats like castor oil is a good thing. And who's really against holding teachers accountable?

Cuomo is good at bullying. It's his strength.

But it's also his weakness.

"If you disagree with him, he comes after you," said a longtime Albany insider, who asked that he not be identified. "That's OK, but you have to have a soft side.

"It's OK to get people's attention. I mean, that's the business we're in. Once in a while, you gotta smack 'em, but you also have to know when to go pat 'em on the back, and bring 'em back to the reservation."

He said Cuomo's arrogance is effective to a point. But he runs a risk of becoming as unpopular as Eliot Spitzer, who resigned from office as a result of the "Client 9" prostitution scandal. "Up here, everybody hated him, across the aisle, and the minute he had a problem, they were tripping over themselves to run away from him."

Spitzer? It can't be anywhere near that bad.

However, lately Cuomo has taken hits, and from all sides. His tough-guy brand has worn thin with Senate Democrats who may be sore that he barely gave them support during the last election, if he gave them any at all. He continues to be at odds with anybody connected to the Working Families Party, including Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has been touted by Cuomo's enemies as a possible primary challenger in 2018.

In dog years, as in politics, that's two or three lifetimes away.

Still, Schneiderman's profile as an antagonist came into high relief when he criticized Cuomo for a policy of destroying government email after 90 days. That the governor's email problem coincided with Hillary Clinton's added fuel to the perception that he is arrogant, as well as averse to transparency.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday revealed that Cuomo's approval rating stands at 50 percent, a long fall from the 58 percent rating he had in December. Most distressing to him must be that the poll also showed that voters trusted the teachers unions 55 percent to 28 percent to fix the education system.

Next month, on April 2 to be exact, the day after the state budget deadline, a party will be held at the New York Public Library for the release of an unauthorized Cuomo biography. Written by Michael Shnayerson, it's titled "The Contender."

Cuomo supposedly has presidential ambitions, but at this point it's hard to consider him much of a contender, certainly not in 2016 and who knows beyond that.

The great X factor in Cuomo's life is U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who hasn't indicted anybody since Speaker Sheldon Silver's arraignment. Bharara seems to make big-splash announcements with every change of season. With the nearing of the vernal equinox, one gets the feeling that another shoe is about to drop in the slimy Albany firmament. Who's next?

Bharara has a supreme talent for coining memorable sound bites and must be getting on the governor's nerves.

Cuomo has made it his mission to clean up the corruption in Albany, but he's been trumped by a prosecutor he can neither control nor bully, who has ruined everything by eliminating Silver in the three-men-in-a-room model of governance.

Nothing may ever come from Bharara's quest to uncover details of how and why Cuomo abruptly dismissed the Moreland Commission, which he convened for the express purpose of rooting out corruption. Nevertheless, the perception continues to linger that Cuomo has something to hide, and that somehow the resignation of his right-hand man Larry Schwartz in January is part of the untold story.

Schwartz, by the way, was spotted at the Westchester County Democratic Committee victory breakfast, which was held recently at the VIP Club in New Rochelle.

I have it on good authority that he "looked good, relaxed and friendly," just short of warm and fuzzy.

Email: preisman@lohud.com Twitter: @philreisman