(Wall Street Journal) — David Paterson, the current governor of New York, has a message for his successor: You’re doomed to fail.
In a 70-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal, the governor cast himself as a scapegoat for the state’s problems, blamed an “organized smear campaign” for ruining his political career and pinned his inability to repair New York’s ailing finances on a dysfunctional budget process.
“Whether the governor is David Paterson or Rick Lazio or Andrew Cuomo or Superman, we don’t have a structure that empowers a single leader to get his or her state out of a major conflict,” said Mr. Paterson, who isn’t running in November. “It’s kind of like being in quicksand. You can move around a lot, but it just makes the problem worse.”