#Andrew Cuomo’s new ode to himself

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Gov. Cuomo’s new book, “American Crisis,” due out three weeks before Election Day.
Matthew McDermott

Spending most of his long speech on the Democratic convention’s opening night to promote his supposedly awesome leadership through New York’s coronavirus crisis isn’t enough for Gov. Cuomo: He’s writing a book to push the same myth.

“American Crisis,” due out three weeks before Election Day, will offer “reflections” on his handling of the pandemic and his clashes with the Trump administration. He might as well have titled it “Profile in My Courage.”

The national media are playing along with Cuomo’s mythologizing out of willful ignorance: anything to bash President Trump, no matter how many New York nursing-home residents died needlessly, thanks to the governor’s lunatic decision to force them to accept COVID-positive patients.

Even now, Cuomo refuses to allow a full count of nursing-home coronavirus deaths — surely because the total will turn out to be double the current official figure of over 6,000 fatalities.

He made other early errors — back in April, for example, he questioned Mayor de Blasio’s advising people to wear face masks, only to do an about-face two weeks later. And this followed a similar reversal on closing schools.

Yes, his press conferences during the crisis were broadly reassuring and informative. But the fact remains that Cuomo’s state still leads the nation in pandemic deaths.

He can argue that wasn’t his fault: The virus was here in heavy concentrations early on, before anyone realized it. But the fact that the gov mandated lockdowns once new infections were plainly soaring is hardly inspirational.

Yet “American Crisis” will offer (the press release promises) a “remarkable portrait of leadership during crisis and a gritty story of gut-wrenching choices that point the way to a safer future for us all.” Please.

Will it include a chapter on stonewalling awkward questions as “politically motivated”? That’s been the gov’s defense on the nursing-home horrors — even as he blocks any outside review of the debacle.

By dropping his new book before those facts come to light, and while he can milk anti-Trump passions for all they’re worth, Cuomo is doing his best to ensure it sells a lot better than his prior tome six years ago: “All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics” had dismal sales and didn’t even make it into paperback.

Credit the governor with learning one lesson, anyway.