Reisman: Call Cuomo's junket 'Start-Up Cuba'

The governor's excellent 26-hour adventure to a certain island-nation off the coast of Florida can be summed up in one oft-quoted line from P.J. O'Rourke.

"You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba," the political humorist said. "That's all you need to know about Communism."

At the behest of New York taxpayers, Cuomo basically found out that Cuba doesn't have wifi. He learned that at least one of those colorful 1950s-era Chevys incongruously rolling through the streets of Havana was actually powered by a puny Toyota engine. In short, he found that, a half-century after Fidel Castro's revolution, Cuba is an economically backward, debt-ridden disaster area.

All Cuomo had to do to get a sense of Cuba was revisit the experiences of the thousands of Cuban defectors who've risked their lives to come here in leaky, overcrowded boats made out of "rum cartons." (Another O'Rourke allusion.)

At any rate, had the governor stuck around longer, he would've discovered what a Miami Herald reporter observed a year ago — that Cubans still harbor nostalgic feelings for the pre-perestroika days of the Soviet Union, and some even gave their kids Russian names like Dimitri and Yelena.

Cuomo did get to drink a mojito and somebody slipped him one of those famous cigars, which he reportedly planned to smoke later. I might caution the governor about that cigar, considering the old and probably apocryphal story about a CIA assassination plot against the Cuban dictator that involved a cigar packed with explosives. At the time, the story of the exploding cigar was satirically displayed on the cover of Mad Magazine.

Not that the Cubans would do anything to harm Cuomo, but I can see them putting a little charge in one of those fine Cohibas just for laughs. Imagine a gleeful Fidel saying, "I've been waiting 52 years to pull off that joke!"

The ostensible reason for the gubernatorial junket, I mean "mission," was to take advantage of President Obama's stated intention to thaw U.S. relations and lift a longstanding trade embargo with Cuba.

Cuomo wants to get New York in the economic-exchange game early, which is why he brought along a gaggle of business types — among them high-level executives from Pfizer, JetBlue Airways and MasterCard, each of whose salaries, by the way, are probably at least 40,000 times greater than that of the average working stiff in the city of Cienfuegos. Hey, here's some export possibilities — credit cards with reward points, casino gambling and income inequality.

You could call this "Start-Up Cuba." Oh, wait. On second thought, that's a bad idea.

It sounds too much like Start-Up NY, Cuomo's controversial project to bring business and jobs to the Empire State.

Reports have it that Start-UP NY has cost $53 million, resulting in a grand total of 76 new jobs.

Assemblyman Tom Abinanti, D-Greenburgh, recently joined the bipartisan chorus of boos against Start-Up NY, calling it a big waste of taxpayers' money. Abinanti said the money could be better used for other things like filling Thruway potholes.

Well, if it accomplished nothing else, Cuomo's Cuba trip did provide a brief distraction from Start-Up NY not to mention Common Core testing, which the highly-skilled propaganda arm of the teachers union has successfully characterized as a Cuomo-endorsed corporate plot to ruin the lives of innocent children.

It's always good to get out of Dodge when the heat is on, even if it is for only a day.

By going to Cuba, Cuomo has also enhanced, albeit slightly, his international bona fides, which might come in handy if Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House somehow implodes. He's still a contender, baby!

Perhaps that's why the governor kept bragging that he was the first U.S. governor to visit Cuba since Obama's December announcement — leaving out that 10 other governors have traveled there between 1999 and 2010, according to Reuters, citing figures from the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

There is a déjà vu aspect to this. It reminds me of the many fruitless "trade" trips Andy Spano made to China when he was Westchester's County executive. He accomplished nothing, but did manage to bring home a souvenir Chinese harp.

All in all, Cuomo's trip seemed to yield little beyond one executive's tenuous dream of some day selling powdered milk to the Cubans.

That's fine. You take what you can get. But I would've been satisfied with a single straight-up deal, an exchange of one New Yorker for one Cuban.

We give the Cubans actor Alec Baldwin, and they give us a left-handed relief pitcher for the Mets.

Now that's what I would call a trade agreement worthy of a celebratory cigar.

CORRECTION

In Tuesday's column I mistakenly reported that Milt Hoffman, who died on April 7, was 85 years old. The veteran journalist was 86.

Email: preisman@lohud.com Twitter: @philreisman