David Paterson: no one likes him anymore, though he's still better than the last, like, 10 governors. We only like him more after reading his insane love letter to his disgraced former aide.

Charles O'Byrne was Paterson's Chief of Staff, and also the guy who helped the notoriously unorganized and slightly scatterbrained Guv maintain order and exercise his authority. So of course he as forced to resign because of a TAX SCANDAL and since then Paterson's been beaten up in the press and the statehouse every day for months.

Well, O'Byrne is back. He is now an unpaid "volunteer" but he is running the political operation, once again, and everyone went to his birthday party, this weekend, to prove that there are no hard feelings about that whole "running him out of Albany" thing.

But Ben Smith apparently found this awesome letter, framed, on the wall of O'Byrne's apartment. It is like an epic poem!

3/31/09

Dear Charles,

In half a century, greater than half a life lived, bred-in-the-bone prodigious talent ceaselessly cultivated, not flashed but sustained through a course varied in path but common with unsurprising success, a Renaissance man born for every era, a midwife of opportunity to unseen numbers, the seat of superlatives, taking to the oars to better the wind on the banks of the crimson sea, calming the tide beneath and below, bridging the fault between knowledge and life, building the bridge between time and generations, seeding consistent bloom in Morningside Heights, razing the bonds of idle minds, fearless bastion of pride, never looking back at the wake of night, sowing light at dawn and saying to life, "yes I will."

Our eyes and minds may drift from the sun, but it is always there, and without it we are lost. The devoted acts carried forth through your inimintable drive and enigmatic gifts have revealed an even more magnificent heart incapable of denial from even the upmost reaches of your illumination.

[Signed]
David Paterson

Holy shit. What, Governor? "Seeding consistent blom in Morningside Heights"? "The upmost reaches of your illumination"? Ok! You got our vote!