It’s over.

Turns out New York’s “Accidental Governor” is no more capable of understanding the responsibilities that come with the job than his predecessor. But while Eliot Spitzer’s fatal flaw is hubris mixed with a wee bit of sex addiction is seems, David Paterson’s problem is simply ineptitude.

Paterson and his supporters have been making the claim for months now that he has been unfairly targeted by the media, and certainly the ugly coupling of sloppy bloggers and immoral tabloids produced a pathetically irresponsible miasma of “a rumor from a single unconfirmed unreliable source” “reporting”. But as it turns out, there was even more fire than smoke.

That the sitting Governor would call the victim of an alleged assault by one of his closest aides (his people say she called him but DP declined to make that case on the radio this morning) after she had been pursuing legal redress is unfathomable to those of us who haven’t been CEOs. It’s just strange how power seems to erase a person’s (presumably) natural ability to use his brain. It’s not like he was turning up aces before this happened. You’d think with all of his troubles he might have thought picking up the phone and calling this woman was maybe not the best idea. Or not.

Paterson was never suited to be the boss. To his credit he said all the right things about the state budget and the economy and did his best to shame the hucksters in the Legislature to take the crisis seriously. But they never took him seriously and for good reason. What happens behind the scenes in politics is way more important than what goes on in public and everyone in Albany knew Paterson was the captain of a rudderless ship.

Let’s be fair: “Steamroller Spitzer” didn’t do any better with the Legislature either but there was no question he, and everyone else, at least knew what he wanted to do. Paterson has shown no such inclination.

The political establishment has been waiting for him to declare he wasn’t running for (re)election and Democrats have been fretting about his unwillingness to take a fall for the sake of the party. Seems like that’s all about to take care of itself.

And so now it’s in the hands of Andrew Cuomo. Haven’t we seen this movie before? Cuomo — the guy who wants to be Governor so bad we can taste it — was given the opportunity to screw Spitzer with Troopergate (Spitzer ended up screwing himself instead…well someone ended up screwing Spitzer but she’s not important right now) and now Cuomo has the power to finish off Paterson. There’s definitely something Shakespearean going on around here.