Marist poll <\/a>released today shows David Paterson bumping along at a 20% approval rating.<\/p>\nHe’s been stuck there for months. <\/p>\n
You could have a lot of morbid fun riffing on just how crummy those numbers are. <\/p>\n
When seventy percent of New Yorkers think you’re unelectable, it’s time to think about turning the ship toward shore.<\/p>\n
I’ll admit to a certain ambivalence about our collective response to Paterson. Has he hung the moon during his tenure? Of course not.<\/p>\n
But he has emerged as sort of the Gerald Ford of our political moment: an essentially decent and good-humored man, elevated in crisis and saddled with some untenable choices.<\/p>\n
He’s done what even Republicans have failed to do in New York, which is wrangle with the public employee unions.<\/p>\n
At a time when nearly every other politician in Albany was sinking into the mire of the state Senate controversy, Paterson maintained a sort of bewildered sanity.<\/p>\n
New Yorkers don’t care. They want their massive government — jobs, benefits, the whole shooting match — without paying for it. If a Governor can’t deliver, he’s out.<\/p>\n
Does that make New York state ungovernable?<\/p>\n
My guess is, No.<\/p>\n
But it does look like Paterson lacks whatever chemistry it is (a mix of charm, wealth and savagery, I’m guessing) that will get the job done.<\/p>\n
It may be that, like Ford, he will be remembered for what he is able to get done in a single term, with a poorly-dealt hand.<\/p>\n
If so, he needs to get busy with that agenda, the one that pushes New York forward without regard to surviving in 201o.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Increasingly, the responsible answer to this question appears to be No. A new Marist poll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}