Democrats from Shelly Silver on down are apparently in a tizzy about Eliot Spitzer's criticisms of Andrew Cuomo, although it's hard to see anyone stopping Cuomo from following in Spitzer's footsteps to the governor's mansion. The Times story that broke this installment of the Spitzer-Cuomo feud is not a trove of substantive scoops. It says the former AG thinks the current one should have appealed the Grasso decision, and didn't like the Troopergate report. There's no hint that the two Democrats have any substantive policy differences -- or that either of them knows how to reverse the state's decline.
There is a persistent myth that as governor Spitzer was a hard-charging reformer undone not just by personal failings but by an inability to compromise high-minded principles and stoop to the petty politics of Albany. In fact, Spitzer's campaigns were as dubiously funded as anyone's, the ethics bill he signed in 2007 was a counterproductive farce, his budget reform law was and has remained a dead letter; and in Troopergate he got down and dirty, then lied to protect himself, leaving aides to take the fall. Maybe he retains some credibility regarding the national financial system, but in Albany his record is, to put it charitably, unimpressive.
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