What's so depressing - disgusting, really, but that's not a word I use comfortably - about the unraveling of New York state politics is how predictable and overdue it all is. I haven't written about Governor Paterson's recent run of bad press - or, more precisely, the growing examination of his chief aide David Johnson - because it just seemed like piling more on top of a conclusion I reached months ago: there was no reason for Paterson to run for a full term, and he probably shouldn't be Governor at all.
It's this kind of obviousness, like the fact that, even this week, his closest political allies could barely muster the frank words to tell him its over, that says more about what really dogs New York politics than anything else. In the end, it's not the scandals, which are so plentiful, or the number of politicians who benefit from the rusty broken Democratic machine still churning away across the state... it's the depressing (disgusting) fact that there's almost no one who will to stand up and try to stop it.
With Paterson, it seems clear that the reluctance to really call him out had everything to do with, well, poltical correctness of the worst sort, the sort that causes Democrats to flinch at having to be critical of a black man with a disability for fear of offending someone. Wanting to see progress for black people, or smashing old notions of seeing disabilities as limiting, becomes meaningless when we can't set minimal standards for expectations of competence, never mind hold onto expectations of excellence. We will one day, find a wonderful blind black man who will amaze us as a great Governor. That man is not David Paterson.
We can comfort ourselves, in New York, with the fact that no one, really, elected David Paterson Governor; this isn't a state where we carefully look at our Lieutenant Governor candidates (though many will now, I suspect) and they have been fascinating disasters (remember, we produced Betsy McCaughey). We've long put up with the fact (I've been watching this for more than 25 years, and I remain amazed) that Albany is corrupt, poorly run, and seems to suck the life and decency out of almost anyone who goes there. You learn not to get your hopes up. You learn to pretend it's not so bad and that minor efforts at progress can be looked at as major accomplishments. And when the next scandal breaks, you shake your head, and remember... it's always been thus.
I think Eliot Spitzer up-ended a lot of that cozy, sleepy acceptance; his dynamism, his energy, really did cause a lot of people to hope for some shaking up of Albany with his election, and his spectacular fall caught almost everyone short. Even now, there's a hearty band who insists that a former Attorney General who basically broke the laws he was sworn to enforce can somehow "come back" into elected politics; hope springs eternal. We won't be getting Spitzer back, though; we'll be getting Andy Cuomo, who by name and by reputation represents little hope for a fresh approach to changing the culture or improving the operation of state government overall.
Paterson could yet resign - he's clearly the lamest of ducks, and further revelations of scandal are bound to come - but that leaves us with the dubious prospect of Richard Ravitch, who was "appointed" to the Lt. Governor spot in a controversial, not entirely constitutional process. Making him Governor - with all the promises that he'd "do no harm" and "just serve as a placeholder" - will never be as simple, or as benign as some suggest. It's just another example of how New York government keeps getting made up as it rolls along, heedless of any connection to rational standards, or, you know, laws. Just ask Michael "third term" Bloomberg.
Paterson's no isolated example; he's the latest in a long line of disasters waiting to happen, like the State Senate that collapsed under his watch, like the Senator - Kirsten Gillibrand - he will have saddled us with for years and years to come. A lot, I suppose, will unravel as the house of cards of our state budget implodes under a weight of debt and poor choices stretching back years and years (an $8 billion shortfall this year, and surely worse news to come, both statewide and at local levels). And, as a passionate Democrat, if it means an unraveling of the sad, sleazy spectacle of my state's party... like many, I won't mind that so much (it's not as if state Republicans, flailing around with choices like Rick Lazio for Governor and George Pataki for Senator represent any kind of improvement). The real fools, now, are the people convincing themselves, still, that it's not so bad, that hope lies just around the next corner, in the persona of our next shining new pol. The water churns, the river rolls on... and if we maybe keep our heads above the water, we can put off drowning just a little while longer. Nothing, really, will save us.
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