If Keith is renaming his segment "since some of the people did not get that the title was ironic" we can steal it and use it to announce that, nothwithstanding Gail Collins' well- meaning rankings, the State of New York has proudly re-assumed its rightful place as the most poorly governed sovereignty in the nation, if not the western world.

The New York Times, whose reporters managed to uncover the latest example of how low our state government has sunk, editorially suggested today that all of this might have a silver lining (no pun intended, though a funny one is suggested). Somebody may need to visit the editorial board to find out if they have all gone crazy or whether there is some cloud of intoxicating smoke because it is otherwise inexplicable that anyone would think that though

[t]he governor is losing clout by the day... he still has a chance to use the political levers available to any New York governor. He can threaten to pluck lawmakers' favorite items out of the budget, for example, and he still has the power of the veto. Those powers, plus the freedom from political blocs and their agendas that dropping out of the race provides, could help him push through a real ethics reform package.

Maybe they should read their own paper. We are talking about a Governor who cannot be found to be told about a plane crash in Buffalo but attributes that to aides "calling the wrong telephone," who fails to show up at events he has agreed to attend and then lies about why, and who, most importantly,

despite the state's crippling crisis, has seldom engaged with [members of the Legislature] beyond denouncing them....[and] has virtually no involvement with those he has running major agencies, only rarely participating in policy meetings.

So, right. Freed from the rigors of running for the job he said he did not want, and succeeded to under bizarre circumstances, there is a real good chance he is going to lead a reform movement and get the state out of its financial crisis. All that from a Governor who, the Times tell us

often arrive[s] at his office in Manhattan or Albany after 10 a.m. and depart[s] by 4:30 or 5 p.m.

but, of course,

"Who cares if he likes to go out and has a couple of drinks; what's the big deal?" said one friend, the private investigator Richard Dietl, who enjoys a meal with the governor about once a month. "He likes to go out. He likes to see people."

And how did he get to be Governor anyway? Legally blind, he found no need to learn braille, yet was admitted to Columbia University before he flunked out. With a well regarded father, Basil Paterson, why should he have to read anything, when he can memorize his speeches? And, elected to the State Senate, he became its minority leader, almost by appointment of the majority leader, his friend, Joe Bruno.

But Governor? How did that happen? This guy, Spitzer, then believed to be the greatest person to ever hold government office, did not want to run with the daughter of a Buffalo politician who described the imprisonment of minorities as "genocide" and settled instead on Basil Peterson's son without, as the current Governor now tells us, any "vetting.". Said greatest person got elected with this Paterson, fought a dysfuntional Legislature by getting the State Police to spy on them and referring to himself as a "fucking steamroller" thus causing useless legislators to become somehow sympathetic, before deciding it would be a good idea to launder money through various bank accounts to hide his payments to a high priced prostitute.

The Nixon-type revisionist history about the popular, successful, smart Governor who made a mistake and suddenly resigned, which dismisses the fact that his brief tenure turned a completely broken government into something worse and that his resignation took place after his unfavorables had considerably surpassed his favorables in polls taken before the prostitute story was published, no mean feat in a state that practically invented the "party before public" politics that has now drifted down to Washington.

According to the unvetted politician's son he ran with

As lieutenant governor, I had the busiest schedule any lieutenant governor ever had. And as governor, I've worked very hard.

so, presumably, his oft repeated comment before becoming Governor that

we have it in statute... What you do is you wake up in the morning at 6:30 and call the governor's mansion. If he answers, you can go back to sleep.

was a joke meant to obscure the enormous amount of work he actually did which, it is fair to say, nobody ever noticed.

We have gone sixteen years since the brilliant, but distant, mercurial and often plain mean spirited Governor Cuomo was turned from office in favor of a Complete Idiot, followed by an Above It All Egomaniac who resigned in favor of the Governor Who Wanted To Be Left Alone. We were in dire straits in 1995, and things have gone rapidly downhill since.

We have descended to the point that the State Police could try to justify its use of members of the Governor's security detail who decided it would be a good idea to try to talk to a woman who said she was a victim of domestic violence at the hand of the Governor's closest aide to tell her what her "options" were, by explaining it this way:

The State Police superintendent, Harry J. Corbitt, said he was told of the episode within 24 hours after it occurred. He confirmed that a state police officer had met with the woman, even though the episode occurred in the jurisdiction of the New York Police Department....He said that such an inquiry was customary for the department if an episode involved a high-profile person, and that it was done in the 24 hours afterward.

"It's typical if it involves anything that might involve a media event; it doesn't have to be a senior official to the governor," Mr. Corbitt said. "It could be a politician or a high-profile physician, anything that might pique interest in the press, because it's a special circumstance."

That's what the State Police does? They stick their nose in cases being handled by other agencies if it involves a "media event"?

In the day after the Times story about this incident was published, the Governor's acolytes tried to suggest that it was important to find out whether the Governor called the victim or whether she called him to be told by said Governor that

If you need me...I'm here for you

whereupon, with rumors swirling around that the Governor was about to be exposed for something that would cause him to resign, the woman decided not to appear at a scheduled court hearing the next day on the domestic violence case, which then went away, thus putting the Governor on the offensive (a tact he continued to employ yesterday, amazingly enough, telling us how difficult it has been for his family to have to deal with so many rumors).

So for today we will not dwell on how come that after a woman tells the Family Court

I'm glad you're doing this, because I thought it was going to be swept under the table because he, he's like a government official, and I have problems with even calling the police because the state troopers kept calling and harassing me to drop the charges, and I wouldn't....

and that it might be hard to serve the man who she said had assaulted her
because he

might be in Albany because sometimes he stays at the Mansion. I don't know

makes no inquiries about this possible interference and simply dismisses the proceeding when the alleged victim misses a single court date.

But this is only one of the gazillion problems left untended by the need to just "do politics" every single day. Next January, we will have a new Governor (and we may have another new one before then). The name of the Governor next January is likely to be Cuomo, the son of the Governor who left office sixteen years ago.

He is now proclaimed to be the greatest person who ever held public office.

Let's hope so.