Eliot Spitzer’s performance in last night’s debate offered an illuminating window into the way he would govern the state if elected governor. First Mr. Spitzer, amid a lot of typical bluster about “What I think is what I say and what I say is what I do,” promised, “There will be no tax increase in a Spitzer administration.” Merely minutes later, he defended his proposal to impose a tax on bottles of water and juice. Said Mr. Spitzer of his plan to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state revenues by taxing children’s bottles of apple juice, “The notion that the bottle bill is a tax is silly.”

Well, that explains how Mr. Spitzer can deny there will be tax increases in his administration.The first tax he is promising to impose he claims isn’t a tax, though it plainly is. In his defense, Mr. Spitzer cited the editorial board of the New York Times, which voters know has never met a tax it did not want to increase. “Every thinking editorial board is for it,” Mr. Spitzer said of his plan to increase the highest state and local tax burden in the county by hundreds of millions of dollars on the backs of helpless child juice drinkers and New York’s already hard-pressed apple growers. Well, count us as one editorial board that’s against it, and recognizes it a symbol that renders Mr. Spitzer’s promise not to raise taxes utterly meaningless.