Gov Paterson pays an uncomfortable visit to MTP

Highlights include fencing with a clearly skeptical David Gregory over

Last week's White House intervention
Paterson goes a bit zen here and says he has no way of knowing if it happened or not. He does insist that Obama never spoke to him directly about getting out of the race.

Political viability
Paterson: "I'm blind but I am not oblivious." Paterson believes that hard economic choices are behind his low poll numbers, and that he just needs to explain them to the public

Reaction to last week's Marist Poll
Gregory is impressed by the 63% of New Yorkers who want Paterson to step down, Paterson counters with the 62% who want the White House to butt out

Overcoming obstacles
It seems - counterintuitive? - that a guidance counselor told Basil Paterson's son (Paterson pere was a very powerful politician at the state level), who burned through high school in three years despite being legally blind, not to bother to go to college.

The politics of race
Paterson says he wasn't blaming his and Obama's treatment by the press on racism. He did seem to suggest that it had something to do with negative coverage of his family

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Meanwhile, the New York Post chooses to read a deliberate snub from Obama into the fact that Paterson was not present at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner last night, although, as the Washington Post points out, Caucus member James Clyburn has gone on the record calling White House interference in the NYGov race abhorrent and sophomorically carried out, and Charlie Rangel called it "unpresidential."

Delightfully, in the course of their article, the generally liberal-averse WaPo labels supporters of a public option in health care reform as "self-styled progressives." The specific poser in question here is the head of the NAACP.

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In other possible candidate/White House news, the News opens their piece on Andy Cuomo and how much more everyone - even Ed Koch - likes him now by pointing out that he basically blew off Obama last Monday to make breakfast for his kids.