All's Not Quiet on This Northern Front

“Politics is like trench warfare. Defense wins. We don’t have the political equivalent of a tank that lets you roll over the opposition. The question for Spitzer is, can he develop the tank?” (Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker quoting Bruce Gyory about Eliot Spitzer's rocky first year at New York's governor).

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“Like Rip Van Winkle,” [Spitzer] pronounced, “New York has slept through much of the past decade while the rest of the world has passed us by.”

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Spitzer is fond of saying that politics is like a sporting contest: you go out, play hard, and shake hands when it’s over.

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"I told the Governor, ‘The Legislature is like your in-laws. You’re stuck with them.’"

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Every summer, [Joseph] Bruno, along with Senate colleagues and staffers, decamps to Saratoga, where he presides like a kind of feudal lord.

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After meeting with a gathering of Democratic assemblymen, whom he'd asked for another chance, [Spitzer] told me, “It’s like I am merely an object being moved, subject to poking, pushing, like an unknown in a science lab. Everyone’s trying to push at you, figure out ‘What is it?’ ”