Opinion

OH, THE SHAME: BLAGO DID BETTER

AS THE ashes of Caroline Kennedy’s brief foray into politics are shoveled away, New Yorkers are left with a sad irony: Battling corruption charges and staring down certain impeachment, Gov. Rod Blagojevich did a better job of picking a US senator than did David Paterson.

In the days that follow, Paterson and his aides will try to deflect blame.

They’ll argue that Kennedy had too much scandalous baggage, that the media and other political players hijacked the process, that they needed to take the time to make the right choice.

But their protests can’t change the fact that Illinois has a new senator and New York has an endless reality-show melodrama.

Blago may be headed to prison, but in executing the same responsibility that rests on Paterson, the Illinois governor was confident, shrewd, and decisive – the very qualities absent from our governor.

Today Paterson will put the Senate selection process out of its misery. He’ll then have to deal with an aftermath of confusion, bitter feelings and outrage for which the governor has only himself to blame.

A Democratic operative familiar with the selection process summed it up like this: “The governor’s handling – or rather, mishandling – of the selection process has been a circus from start to finish. With his dithering, leaks and abrupt 180s, he’s managed to demean the candidates, the office and himself in the process.”

All Paterson had to do was vet candidates and make a call. Instead, he talked up candidates and talked them down, sometimes on the same day.

He made up his mind and changed it, and then made it up again within the span of a single press conference. He got offended when candidates openly campaigned for the job and then demanded that they be more assertive.

“Paterson was jerking them around in ways that were shocking. It’s not the way to operate. His actions were erratic,” one well-known Democratic Albany insider told me.

“There’s a growing feeling that Paterson will say whatever he feels is convenient at the moment. There’s no consistency.”

The governor trumpeted that the decision was and his alone and then allowed his disgraced chief of staff, Kennedy pal Charles O’Byrne, to apparently pull the strings.

He chided the press for feasting on the Kennedy story and then soaked up as much media attention as he could in interviews with Larry King, Katie Couric and other national venues.

“Paterson has given New Yorkers a window into his thinking, and it’s not pretty,” a Democratic operative told me.

When King asked the governor about his decision this week, Paterson replied: “Larry, I think I’ll surprise you.”

To those familiar with Paterson’s management style, the undercurrent of confusion and disorganization in the selection process isn’t a surprise.

In less than a year, Paterson has brought the same disorder to the executive chamber that permeated his old Senate office, which was hobbled by constant turnover of high-level staff and “Machiavellian bulls – – t,” as one former staffer told New York magazine.

As governor, Paterson has struggled to fill key Cabinet posts, while his most capable staffers have fled the Capitol – the state’s homeland security czar, Michael Balboni, being the latest example.

Lawmakers say privately they have no idea who’s in charge or who has the governor’s ear.

“Other senior officials are leaving,” one Democratic lawmaker told me yesterday.

Though drawing less attention than the Senate saga, the governor’s policy agenda has been a bag of mixed signals and reversals. Paterson, for example, repeatedly railed against tax hikes on the wealthy only to assert later that they would likely be “part of the solution.”

After releasing his budget, he bizarrely attacked it, saying, “I can’t believe that I became governor and I’m cutting education like this.”

There are two explanations for Paterson’s behavior.

One view has it that Paterson purposefully governs by chaos, keeping his opponents off-balance and allowing him to quietly maneuver in the fog.

The other is that the governor doesn’t have his hands on the wheel, leaving others to steer the ship in a blizzard of directions.

As a result of the Kennedy fiasco, New Yorkers are now getting a good feel of the state of affairs inside the administration.

Paterson was able to conceal it for a while as he won praise as an oracle on the economic crisis. The best thing for Paterson to do is to pick a senator quickly and hope that memories of this drama fade.

It’s more likely, however, that his inept handling of replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton will be seen as the defining moment of his accidental governorship – the point at which Democrats who had given him the benefit of the doubt began to search for a new state leader.

If they need any tips on replacing Paterson, they could do worse than to ask Blagojevich for help.

Jacob Gershman is a New York-based political reporter.

jacob.gershman@gmail.com