The eagle has landed, in a manner of speaking.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who’s been flying lazy circles over New York’s shipwrecked government for months now, yesterday formally announced his candidacy for governor — the office held by his father from 1983 until 1995.
If he succeeds, he will take custody of a drastically diminished state — its circumstances constrained by decades of profligacy; its politics crippled by corruption and complacency and its expectations arguably at their lowest ebb ever.
Why anybody would even want the job is a bewilderment, but Cuomo does and this can only be a good thing.
That is not to be taken as an endorsement, but rather an acknowledgement of the fact that — by virtue of experience, energy, inclination and native intelligence — Andrew Cuomo is indisputably well qualified to seek New York’s highest office.
We expect, in fact, that his formal presence in the race will bring discipline — if not order — to the chaos that passes for business as usual in Albany.
He is, after all, the near-prohibitive morning-line favorite to win in November, thus odds are that the boodlers who now run Albany will be dealing with Cuomo after Jan. 1 — and they know it.
There is an obvious parallel here — that of an equally inevitable reformist attorney general headed for the Executive Mansion just four years ago: Eliot Spitzer.
Of this, we would note:
* Please, Andrew: Take great care with your lieutenant-governor selection, and;
* Spitzer approached his incumbency brimming with hellfire but demonstrably short of a coherent strategy for reform, and the political skills needed to achieve it. Cuomo seems clearly to have thought through the strategy; time will tell about the political skills.
Do New York Republicans intend to be a substantive part of the coming campaign? If so, they first must settle daunting political and policy differences.
We hope they do just that, because New York state can only benefit from a vigorous — yes, partisan — political debate.
Yesterday, Andrew Cuomo formally entered that debate.
Good for him.