New Yorkers who view the ugly confrontation between Gov. Spitzer and state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno as just another political mud-slinging match are wrong.
Similarly, those who see the struggle as an unpleasant but necessary crockery-smashup on the road to real reform in Albany are also mistaken.
Sad to say.
Indeed, if there were any coherence to Spitzer’s efforts to break Bruno’s grip on the levers of power, as part of a larger plan to bring true participatory democracy to the capital city, this page would be cheering him on.
Loudly.
As it is, Spitzer’s campaign seems wholly ad hoc, a mixture of verbal vulgarity and abuse of police power aimed at one individual alone – as Bruno’s co-conspirator in dysfunction, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is getting a total pass.
And that’s just wrong.
Spitzer’s apparent inability to deal with frustration – there is little reasonable doubt that he in fact called Bruno “an old, senile piece of sh–” last Friday – is shocking enough.
Worse is the effort – exposed last week by Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker – to have State Police collect “incriminating” evidence about Bruno.
None of this is the mark of a mature, trustworthy leader – which is what Albany needs now more than ever before.
Once upon a time, we saw Spitzer as just that sort of leader. This led us to endorse the liberal Democrat’s candidacy over that of a principled, conservative Republican, John Faso.
But it soon became clear that Spitzer had no strategy for “fixing Albany” – nor any concept of what constitutes decent behavior in prosecuting such a fight.
Spitzer also seems to lack the will to address core issues: Standing up to the special interests, controlling government spending, ensuring a sufficient energy supply for New York’s future . . .
Instead he’s gone to the mattresses over a silly “campaign-finance reform” that would reform little while disenfranchising voters. (Even though most New Yorkers couldn’t care less about the issue – and even though Spitzer swiftly surrendered the moral high ground by personally undertaking many of the practices he’s trying to outlaw.)
Now all that remains of the governor’s ambitious agenda is a spiteful vendetta against Bruno – and Bruno alone.
Yet if Spitzer thinks his problems will be over should he make the majority leader disappear, he’s badly mistaken.
The odds against Speaker Silver embracing any of the initiatives Spitzer says he considers essential – e.g., campaign-finance reform and Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing plan – are beyond prohibitive.
And that’s just for starters.
The fact is, Silver won’t ever be interested in real reform of any sort. The masters he serves – labor leaders, tort lawyers, deal-makers, advocates of dependent lifestyles, pro-criminal sensibilities – like things just as they are.
Bringing Albany to heel will require effective strategic planning and mature, confident tactical leadership.
But these are the very qualities the Spitzer administration has lacked from the beginning – maturity most of all.
Is it too late to turn things around?
Perhaps not.
But Spitzer has squandered the reform mandate that swept him into office.
He always needed more than that, which seemed altogether to have eluded him at the beginning.
Now he knows better – or he should.
Time to start over.