Within the Margin

Yes: I just wanted to be sure that somewhere on the web for all eternity would be an article referencing “the Pataki Moment.” Slate has a delightful piece today about the former governor of New York’s latest attempt to be part of a fun-filled Republican presidential primary saga. And bingo: not because Pataki is showing up at bingo halls to connect with seniors, but because his web presence is poorly managed and thus overrun by internet bingo advertisements. A thing I learned today? The world is full of internet bingo sites – which seem inherently self-contradicting – and they like to advertise on derelict political sites. Not this one, though: Within the Margin is a bingo-free zone, though maybe there’s a business model to be found here…

But I digress. Anyone who’s talked politics with me in recent years has heard me mock this guy’s quadrennial presidential flirtations. You see, I’m too young to really remember much of the Pataki governorship: I just remember him sort of being in and around the 9/11 response, but those are really the Giuliani and Bush “moments.”  And then I remember him preparing to leave office with a 30% approval rating according to the best collegiate pollster in the business. That was the precursor to the Spitzer moment, which went poorly for New York, and it was also the precursor to the first (that I’m aware of, anyway) Pataki presidential campaign “buzz.”

That first foray never became a moment, though we did have Pataki-in-Iowa reporting from the Times. Most notable: Pataki’s desire to visit a country fair. I can relate: I enjoy a good fair. Many trips to Iowa and New Hampshire followed, and presumably many fairs visited, but no formal campaign materialized. The country would plod along without him for a while, but our fears were briefly allayed in the summer of 2012, when the Post noted that Pataki was back on the Iowa picnic circuit and preparing to jump into the nomination race. But no dice; he again opted to stay out, meaning that he would never join the likes of Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum in topping GOP primary polls at some point in the 2012 campaign. And the American people have once again had to struggle along without his leadership.

The 2016 field has a somewhat more serious mix of personalities, though not universally so: Trump is “seriously thinking” of running and Palin is “seriously interested” and Mike Huckabee is seriously warring with Beyonce and Ben Carson is seriously proposing that homophobic bakers might poison same-sex couples’ wedding cakes. Those clowns aside, Pataki likes to think of himself as a thinker and innovator and may find the tone in 2016 a bit more amenable to policy discussions. Now 69 years of age, Pataki needs to act soon if he wants to be able to say he once ran for president. He’s running out of time to create the Pataki Moment that our country, err, George Pataki, so desperately needs.