David Paterson has the ball. There he is, our legally blind governor, on the court at a rec center in Harlem, on top of the key, playing three on three. He fakes right, then jumps in place for no discernible reason and does a balletic half-twirl, followed by a behind-the-back pass to a teammate.

Then he takes off again, whirling around the arc, into the paint, trying not to trip, all the time calling the action in a sort of parody announcer’s voice—“ … And Paterson has the ball!”—when suddenly he does have the ball again, senses an opening, and takes off. He’s charging down the court on a fast break, and he’s all alone, the reason he’s all alone is he’s dribbling the wrong way, and now he’s at the wrong rim, and he jumps off the wrong foot. But he scores.

It’s hard to say if it is a blunder—or joke. Maybe it doesn’t matter. This is Paterson’s game: charming, messy, disarming, and adaptive. In 23 years in public life, he’s been popular with his party, the other party, the journalists, the ladies, and pretty much everybody else. Unlike, say, his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, Paterson hasn’t spent his life honing himself into an exemplar of hard work and public-service rectitude. Instead, he was known among staff for playing “Secret Agent Man” on his guitar and his favorite drink—amaretto on the rocks, slice of lime.

He certainly wasn’t planning on becoming governor when he accepted the spot on the ticket as Spitzer’s No. 2. He thought the job might increase his national profile. And while he tried to be more aggressively involved in state policy, he’d still joke that the job of lieutenant governor was traditionally “to wake up very early and call the governor’s private line. If he answers, go back to sleep, your work is done.”

These days, he’s got to get out of bed early. “Five-thirty, six in the morning,” he complains the day of the game. “I never did that before. I’m not a morning person.” And he must inhabit the role of governor in a way that he has never had to for any job before, even as the minority leader in the State Senate—safely buried in the dysfunction of Albany. He now has to lead the state, and it’s got to be in the right direction. Six months into having the governorship thrust upon him, the state economy is teetering. Late last week, his budget people informed him that the worst is yet to come. As of October, the estimated hole in this year’s budget is $1.2 billion. That’s after he’d already cut $1.5 billion over the summer. On October 3, he called the Legislature back for an emergency session on November 18, seeking an additional $2 billion. There are no easy solutions, just difficult decisions.

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