Yesterday, I urged Gov. Pat erson to get a lawyer. Today, I amend the prescription: He should also get a shrink.
He needs somebody to help him tell the truth. He shows such an astonishing inability to be straight that he’s starting to look like a serious head case.
If nothing else, the gov is The Lyin’ King.
That’s the gist of the report charging Paterson with ethics violations. The case is persuasive.
At first, I felt a pang of pity as he got tripped up in the relatively minor legalisms investigators cited as they probed his taking World Series tickets like it was a triple homicide.
The earnest gumshoes went so far as to subpoena records from five companies selling Series tickets last October to evaluate whether the governor ultimately paid a fair price when he took his son and a friend to watch the Yankees in Game 1. They pored over Stadium maps to compare prices for different seat locations.
With the many bums in Albany constituting a native criminal class, this seemed like fairly small potatoes. I assumed they forgot to also bust Paterson for having a beer at the game.
Then I got to where his lies to investigators started. And once the lies started, they didn’t stop.
The more I read the report, the more it all made sense. Paterson is in a heap of legal and political trouble largely because he won’t or can’t tell the truth. Even when the truth isn’t necessarily terrible, he avoids it like the plague.
He did it on the Aqueduct video-slots award, where he kept changing his story about how he came to pick the group headed by the Rev. Floyd Flake. He couldn’t just say he thought they offered the best deal for the state.
First, he said he didn’t like them. Then he said others didn’t like them. Then he said everybody liked them!
The truth might have limited the damage from the domestic-violence case that will now almost certainly end his short, unhappy reign. Instead, he repeatedly misled his staff, the press and the public about what he knew and what he did.
In both cases, prosecutors are digging for the facts.
And here we go again. Although the Series issue preceded the racetrack and domestic-violence cases, it fits Paterson’s m.o. Once again, the cover-up is worse than the crime. The pattern is pathetic.
This time, the alleged cover-up was asserted under oath. It’s not another silly photo-op oath like the one he took before the cameras last Friday when he declared “I never abused my office — not now, not ever.”
This time, according to the report, he allegedly gave false testimony under legal oath. That’s risky business.
The report paints a portrait of a foolish, small-minded man who routinely tries to wiggle out of tight spots with a lie. Each lie creates the need for another, and the result is more proof of how unfit he is to be governor. Not that we needed more.
Most damning is the charge that he backdated a check to pay for two of the tickets, lied under oath about how and when he signed the check and whether paying for the tickets was his intent all along.
Implicit in his demand for five free tickets was a sense of entitlement. He didn’t bother to say hello to other public officials there, including First Lady Michelle Obama. He went for fun, took his son and others, and claimed he should get in free because he’s the governor.
Naturally, David Johnson, his closest confidant, was involved again. And naturally, Paterson dragged in others from his staff to help carry out the scam.
He had his counsel write a phony letter claiming he was going to the game in his “official capacity” so the tickets would not be an improper gift. He drafted his communications director to peddle a false story that he was invited by the Yankees, after first lying to the aide himself.
In truth, he had Johnson solicit the tickets and claim it was official business.
With his refusal to step aside despite growing calls for his resignation, Paterson must be a glutton for punishment. He seems strangely willing to continue to embarrass himself, his family and New York.
He even insisted yesterday he wishes he could tell everything he knows about the domestic-violence case, but must wait for investigators to finish. Actually, that’s not true, either.
“I would really love to tell my story,” he said.
We’d love to hear it, as long as it is filed under “fiction.”