New York Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo spoke dur­ing the first night of the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion Mon­day. As was expect­ed, he attacked Pres­i­dent Trump’s abysmal per­for­mance on con­tain­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Our “cur­rent fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is dys­func­tion­al and incom­pe­tent,” he said, correctly.Unfortunately, Cuo­mo is per­haps the sin­gle least cred­i­ble per­son in the entire coun­try to make this crit­i­cism. As I have out­lined in detail pre­vi­ous­ly, Cuo­mo frit­tered away weeks bick­er­ing with New York City May­or Bill de Bla­sio while the virus was spread­ing like wild­fire in the New York City metro area, only lock­ing down his state after it was too late. And as we have since learned, his deci­sion to force nurs­ing homes to accept COVID-19 cas­es almost cer­tain­ly caused thou­sands and thou­sands more infec­tions and deaths.Though New York has since large­ly got­ten the out­break under con­trol, Cuomo’s ini­tial per­for­mance was a world-his­tor­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe. His state has the sec­ond-high­est rate of COVID-19 fatal­i­ties of any in the coun­try (just behind New Jer­sey, which was essen­tial­ly part of the same out­break). If it were its own coun­try New York would have by far the high­est death rate in the world. In a sense, Gov­er­nor Cuo­mo was right to say, “gov­ern­ment mat­ters and lead­er­ship mat­ters.” His record is an object les­son in what hap­pens when that job is done poorly.More sto­ries from theweek.com Bill Clin­ton is get­ting side­lined at the DNC Notre Dame’s pres­i­dent insist­ed in-per­son class­es were ‘worth the risk.’ A week into the semes­ter, they’re shut­ting down. Bernie Sanders report­ed­ly want­ed Har­ris to be Biden’s run­ning mate, even over Eliz­a­beth Warren