Remember how Eliot Spitzer was going to fix Albany, starting on Day One? Didn’t quite work out.
The former attorney general was spectacularly unfit for the office he won in a landslide four years ago — as a policymaker, as a politician and as a human being.
Spitzer’s legacy is David Paterson, an amiable fellow who in his own bumbling way was even less qualified for high office than his damaged-goods patron.
But whereas four years ago the Republican Party offered the estimable John Faso as its gubernatorial candidate, this year the man at the top of the GOP ticket is a Buffalo businessman with a towering temper and a well-documented contempt for the truth.
Spitzer Lite, in an elephant suit.
Meanwhile, the Democrats once again have put forth what appears to be an ambitious, articulate attorney general who has presented detailed plans for New York’s future which reveal a realistic understanding of the state’s problems and prospects and the seriousness of purpose needed to address them.
It is on that basis that The Post today endorses Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for governor — in the hope, if not necessarily the full expectation, that he will be the strong, reform-driven chief executive the Empire State so desperately needs.
And thought it was getting in 2006.
Let’s be right up front with our principal reservation: It is not all that clear whether anyone now on the scene is fully up to the task.
One hopes for superheroes, generally in vain.
And even Superman would be staggered by Albany: It’s flat broke, and getting broker. Jobs and businesses are fleeing. Corruption and thievery are the norm. The Legislature is in total thrall to special interests. Taxes are crushing.
A not insuperable, yet nevertheless formidable, challenge.
Certainly a discussion of issues would have been useful. Yet, scandalously, the GOP was unable to field a credible candidate in what is shaping up everywhere else in America as a strong Republican year.
At the outset, there was something refreshing about Carl Paladino, the erratic, energetic political neophyte who took down the Republican establishment.
He won the primary by showing that he understood the frustrations New Yorkers grapple with daily — and by speaking to them, directly and forcefully.
But he was long on anger and short on answers. (Throwing Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver into Attica may appeal at an elemental level, but it is not a policy prescription.)
Then a screw popped loose.
Paladino revealed himself to be undisciplined, unfocused and untrustworthy — that is, fundamentally unqualified for the office he seeks.
In addition, his embrace of the utterly bizarre Roger Stone and his execrable Sancho Panza, Michael Caputo, as principal advisers is compelling evidence of a profound ethical myopia.
And now he is silent on the issues.
Thus, Cuomo’s gotten a free pass — and that’s just wrong.
Let’s be clear: Cuomo has been an effec tive AG.
More important, he understands the underlying issues of Albany’s ingrained dysfunction and the urgent need to address them — as well as the immense challenges he’ll be facing.
His multi-part plan, among other things, calls for a 2 percent cap on property taxes; no increase in sales, income and business taxes; a freeze on public-union salaries — and a reduction of government agencies by one-fifth.
But, as has been noted in other contexts, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy — and enemies will be everywhere if he seriously tries to implement this strategy.
Cuomo’s detailed criticism of Albany mores — the decades of ingrained corruption and the transactional nature of its politics — shows that he gets it.
But his acceptance of support from the highly dubious Independence and Working Families parties suggests that he’s not above a little transactional politicking of his own.
Clearly, questions abound.
Again, Cuomo’s plan — especially re garding the need to confront public- sector unions and other special interests — suggests that he will not be following the liberal Democratic line.
We believe that the attorney general has the experience, the talent and the vision to blaze a path to reform. Whether he has the staying power — the sheer will — necessary to achieve it remains very much to be seen.
And we intend fully to monitor his progress, and to offer advice when appropriate.
In the meanwhile, we urge New Yorkers to vote for Andrew M. Cuomo on Nov. 2.