BRIDESMAID CUOMO: AT LONG LAST, HE DECLARES, `I LOVE NEW YORK'

Two chartered jets, so it was reported, were sitting on the runway at the Albany airport, waiting to fly him to New Hampshire. A certified check for $3,000 to pay the filing fee was already prepaid. The former New Hampshire Democratic state chairman had already carefully rehearsed his spontaneous demonstrators to greet the governor at the state capitol. But only 90 minutes before the filing deadline, Mario Cuomo sang "I Love New York." The Mario scenario is ended forever.

Twice now he has flirted with the presidency and twice he has withdrawn on the step of the political altar. This time he even made a down payment on the wedding ring. He had political professionals calling around the country as late as the day before he pulled the plug. "I can't say he's a go, but everything indicates he'll run," his political operatives said.

Cuomo wanted a quick settlement of New York's $5 billion budget impasse. New York never resolves its annual budget crisis very quickly. Cuomo knew that. The Republican majority leader of the state senate had repeatedly told Cuomo that no immediate resolution was possible. Cuomo, in effect, gave a New York Republican state senator the veto right over his candidacy for the presidency. Strange politics.

Cuomo is an unusual politician: brilliant and articulate; testy and moody. He's a man who would almost like to be president, but doesn't have the fire in the belly.

Modern politics, especially presidential politics, is a mixture of exhilaration and agony mostly the latter. The exhilaration comes from thinking about the substance of the issues; planning a campaign strategy; devising the messages that can portray the candidate and his views; and, of course, contemplating what one might do for the public good if elected.

The agony comes in spending 20 or 25 nights in dumpy New Hampshire motels and pretending that you are absolutely thrilled to be talking to the 80 members of the Rutland Rotary Club. In New Hampshire, you run for president the same way you run for sheriff village by village, service club by service club. Ask any former presidential candidate and he will tell you that a typical New Hampshire voter is a pain in the neck. He needs to interview you three times in person before he makes up his mind.

There are lots of other agonies out there. On March 3, there are primaries or caucuses in Colorado, Idaho, Maryland and Minnesota lots of jet time with little sleep. A week later, there are primaries or caucuses in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas. From sunup to midnight, the candidate moves from airport to airport getting the pulse of the plane mechanics.

Then there is the insidious agony of fund-raising. Interspersed with all of the New Hampshire bores and the jet lag is the fat-cat massaging. You've got to romance the checkbook wielders from New York to Los Angeles with lots of stops in between.

Cuomo sings "I Love New York" and won't budge from Albany. We take him at his word. He will miss the presidency for which he had only lukewarm aspirations. He won't miss the motels, the Rutland Rotary Club and the fat-cats. They made him love troubled old New York all the more.