Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat, did a good job of looking like a governor, but he is still not telling voters enough. And the Republican, Carl Paladino, was more like the fringe candidates around him than a serious person applying for a very serious job. He just wasn’t as funny.
Mr. Cuomo, who is running far ahead in the polls and has been keeping an extremely low profile, revealed only the tiniest tidbits. He was sticking to his plan to quietly watch Mr. Paladino talk himself into oblivion.
Mr. Cuomo reaffirmed that he “strongly” supports same-sex marriage, a relief to hear after his near silence when a law allowing those marriages was on the floor of the Legislature in Albany this year and actually stood a chance of passage — if only for a moment.
His education reform ideas were intriguing. He told a high school student that he admires the Obama administration for “incentivizing performance” as part of the Race to the Top program. And he said he wanted to encourage charter schools, experimentation and competition among schools, rather than financing the status quo.
Such talk explains why Mr. Cuomo has been at odds with teachers’ unions, but we want more detail. And when he claims he is against raising taxes, we want to know exactly how Mr. Cuomo is going to pay for his programs and balance a budget in a state that is facing a deficit of more than $8 billion next year.
And therein lies the problem with the tea partiers and today's Republican Party: their lack of seriousness has created a de facto one-party government. Oh sure, the GOP is expected to take back the House (and maybe even the Senate) this year, but until they get serious about governing, the task will be left to the Democrats. And, like Andrew Cuomo, there will be no one to "hold their feet to the fire" and force them to come up with real solutions to the nation's problems. The United States needs a vibrant two-party system to run effectively and, right now, it doesn't have one.
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