The NYT’s expose on Governor David Paterson is riveting and ultimately damning. This is the kind of journalism we need more of. Maybe individual pieces of evidence suggesting Gov. Paterson is a narcissist and a flake wouldn’t hold up in court, but the preponderance of the evidence is conclusive on that score.
To sum up:
He can’t be reached during disasters, he spends a lot of time vacationing in the Hamptons with wealthy donors, he doesn’t have much to do with the state legislature and doesn’t provide it any direction, he has encircled himself with under-qualified cronies who question other staffers’ loyalty, he doesn’t engage with state agency heads, he doesn’t spend much time in the office, he flakes out on public events and then apparently lies about his reasons, his campaign spends a lot of money at fancy NYC restaurants and then he lies about whether he attended those events, he goes on vacation to Florida but offers other rationales for the trip before copping, and he appoints unqualified ex-girlfriends to important government posts.
Again, even if one or two of these things can be explained, all together they paint a damning portrait. I’m going to have to disagree with Elizabeth Benjamin of the New York Daily News: this stuff is resignation-worthy.
If my old governor Jim McGreevey had to resign (and well he should have) for appointing his boyfriend to head an important state agency, David Paterson should resign. If Eliot Spitzer had to resign for having an affair with a prostitute, David Paterson should resign. I know that there are different standards in, say, South Carolina, but in the mid-Atlantic we obviously have pretty stringent requirements for our governors, and David Paterson has failed to meet them. It will say something very sad about our politics if his various transgressions are dismissed as small potatoes. We need leaders who have the confidence of the people, of their staff, and of their subordinates. When they lack all three, they should go.
Photo credit: Flickr stream of azipaybarah.