Gov. David Paterson is Doing Just Fine, Even if "John Boehner" Isn't

Imus turned interviewing responsibilities this morning over to “John Boehner,” who was deeply saddened to learn that guest David Paterson is no longer Governor of New York.
 
“Oh no!” he cried. “What happened?” Informed that Paterson’s term had merely expired, “Boehner” said, “Was there anything we could have done to prevent that from happening?”
 
Not unless the “Speaker of the House” could have somehow cancelled the recession. “I wouldn’t get so broken up over it,” Paterson said. “There are other things to cry about. The Mets are going to have a bad season.”
 
Why Paterson felt the need to be so negative when pitchers and catchers had just reported to spring training was beyond “Boehner.” But being a Mets fan will do that to a person.
 
“The Mets didn’t have any pitchers,” Paterson said. “They had lawyers and catchers report.”
 
On a happier note, Paterson gave his successor Andrew Cuomo major props for making clear his priority of getting the economy back on track, and for not hiding from voters his plans for the budget during the campaign.
 
“He told people what he was going to cut, and pretty much where he was going to cut from,” Paterson said. “So when he introduced the budget, there was absolutely no surprise.”
 
Asked about the uprisings in Egypt that resulted in President Hosni Mubarak stepping down last Friday, Paterson replied, “Changes of power are usually good, when the person in power is dictatorial. But the situation is so vulnerable in Egypt—we don’t know if the people’s desire to have democracy is actually going to work.”
 
Kind of like how Imus didn’t know whether it was going to work to have Rob conduct guest interviews as Rep. John Boehner while Imus’s voice healed. Sick of being a bystander, Imus mustered the energy to ask Paterson a few questions, starting with his opinion of his predecessor Eliot Spitzer’s show on CNN.
 
“I think the show’s actually very good,” Paterson said. “He’s very bright, he’s glib, he has an opinion about everything and he expresses it well.”
 
But hey, if the whole thing falls apart, you-know-who is waiting in the wings. “I’m always there to take his place,” Paterson joked.
 
Since leaving office in January, he has been teaching at NYU and doing some work with the National Federation for the Blind, something Paterson, who is legally blind, has always wanted to do. In fact, he told Imus, just a few weeks ago a blind man drove a car around the track at Daytona using a car fitted with special technology to avoid hitting obstacles in its path. The event’s purpose, Paterson explained, was to show that people without sight can do things that were unimaginable years ago.
 
Along those lines, Imus commented that he once read that Ray Charles flew his own plane. Not amused, Paterson said, “I find that disturbing, actually.”
 
-Julie Kanfer