Governor Spitzer reached for Washington Irving for the central metaphor of his inaugural speech, declaring yesterday in Albany: “Like Rip Van Winkle, the legendary character created by the New York author Washington Irving, New York has slept through much of the past decade while the rest of the world has passed us by.” The central question for his administration, we predict, will be whether it comprehends who has been asleep and whether the Democrats have really awakened to all the changes that have taken place in the competing states — and in political economy generally — in the years of slumber.

Certainly the new governor spoke beautifully, even movingly, in passages of his remarks yesterday, particularly when he referred to himself as the grandson of immigrants who came through Ellis Island. “Today’s immigrants enrich our state with their vitality and their vision, in the same way as the immigrants of the last century,” Mr. Spitzer said. It was a line that could easily have come out of the mouth of Mayor Giuliani or from Mr. Spitzer’s predecessor, Governor Pataki, both of whom have allied themselves with the pro-immigration faction in the Republican Party.

Being a grandson of immigrants is one quality that Mr. Spitzer has in common with Mr. Pataki, whose grandparents came to America from Hungary, Ireland, and Italy. We were also struck by Mr. Spitzer’s acknowledgement, remarkably humble, that “No one any longer believes in government as a heavy hand that can cure all our ills.” It was reminiscent of President Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union address in which he sounded a centrist note by declaring, “The era of big government is over.”

Other elements of Mr. Spitzer’s speech were more jarring. We would have thought, particularly given all the stories about him seeming vindictive, bitter, and nasty, that he would have chosen to make his inauguration a time to be seen as the bigger person and give Governor Pataki credit for what he did manage to accomplish in the past decade. The record includes historic reductions in the crime rate in the state, low unemployment, and an economy that, at least downstate, has recovered from the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Mr. Pataki departs office with a real-estate boom in progress in New York City, a record of progress in environmental conservation, a charter schools law in place and at least the stirrings of a parental choice movement in schooling in the state, and the beginning of the end of rent control. If Mr. Pataki accomplished all this while asleep, Mr. Spitzer may want to slip some Sominex into Speaker Silver’s cornflakes — or swallow some himself.

We wouldn’t want to understate the failures of Governor Pataki’s tenure. Particularly in the latter years, it has been a catalog of efforts to buy off his potential detractors — such as Local 1199 and other interest groups — by ladling out other people’s money. The outgoing governor has all too often seemed to have his eye elsewhere, on national office, while failing to secure his early advances at home. A governor who ruled for three terms has managed to leave his own party in the state a shambles.

Yet whose fault was the legislative default? Washington Irving’s character was a fellow who fell asleep before the American Revolution and awoke 20 years later, only to be nearly pilloried when he declared himself a loyal subject of George III — “God Bless Him,” he cried — without realizing what had transpired in the years he’d been asleep. For all Mr. Pataki’s faults, Irving’s marvelous metaphor is more applicable to Mr. Spitzer’s party than to his predecessor or the GOP.

During what has been a great revolution in political economy under way for a generation in America, it has been the Democrats who have been asleep, and nowhere has the slumber been deeper than in the Democratic dormitories in the Assembly. The Democrats may have shaken themselves awake, with an energetic and idealistic governor in the lead. He ran for office declaring “Day One, Everything Changes.” But at the end of Day One, Sheldon Silver is still speaker. Senator Bruno is still leading in the upper chamber, and not everything has changed.

We are not predicting Mr. Spitzer will fail, and all New Yorkers are hoping for his success. Polls show strong support for term limits for lawmakers, a position Mr. Spitzer backed as a candidate but that was absent from his inaugural address. Similarly absent was a call to lift the limit on the number of charter schools in the state, another position that Mr. Spitzer backed as a candidate. These and other matters may be addressed in the governor’s first State of the State address, which will be delivered tomorrow. And we’ll begin to see who has been asleep and whether the new governor has really awakened and will be able to stir his party in Albany.