Geek Soap Box

When historians compile a list of New York’s greatest leaders one day, it seems unlikely that our current accidental occupant of the governor’s mansion, will find his name etched into inclusion.  Despite his near blindness, alleged infidelities and drug abuse, David Paterson built himself a steady if unspectacular life as a career politician in one of the most dysfunctional legislatures in the fifty states — only to be thrust into the unexpected role of Governor after his running mate himself became embroiled in his own sordid sexual scandal.

Now, Paterson finds himself commander of a state hemorrhaging tax revenues and even contemplating withholding or deferring payments to vendors and debtors to keep from having to declare total bankruptcy.  With the specter of an extremely difficult primary challenge on the horizon at the hands of current Attorney General Andrew Cuomo — and possibly a November showdown with 9/11 hero Rudy Giuliani to follow — it becomes difficult to fathom the Governor’s political career surviving past 2010.

I guess nobody told that to him, though, because since mid-November Paterson has unleashed an array of campaign spots that rank as among the best I’ve ever seen. The one I have chosen to embed here, “When,” stands as the best of the bunch.

Simple, heartfelt, and compelling. Paterson is immediately rebranded as a humble, hard-working man thrust into an untenable situation and doing the best he can with the impossible.  And, after repeated views, it’s hard to disagree on a certain visceral level; Paterson has inherited a massive debt and out-of-control budget built for decades by Democrat and Republican officials alike, and with the rank and file of the Assembly and Senate filled with corrupt and shady politicians of the worst kind, the Governor comes off as a sympathetic figure.

NY has a lot of real problems, and much like with government at the Federal level, it’s hard to see how anything but a complete revolution and 100% turnover of office-holders will bring about the change required to keep our democratic republic going for another three centuries.  But in this one instance, its good to see an official displaying the sort of inner-city yeoman attributes that the state desperately needs.

Pretty extraordinarily unlikely that I’ll vote for him, though.