Lawmakers thought of Eliot Spitzer as if he were an abusive parent whose spittle-flecked tirades masked deep insecurities and personal demons. They resented him, rebelled, and flouted his will. Initially, they feared him. Then they laughed at him. In the end, they felt sorry for him.

David Paterson is the cool parent. He’s been there in their shoes. He can relate. He had problems with money, women, and drugs and isn’t pretending otherwise. Lawmakers know that despite his fancy governor’s mansion address, he’s still one of them at heart. He’s not really governor as much as he is the Legislature’s representative in the executive chamber.

A senator for more than two decades, Mr. Paterson feels their election-year pain, sympathizes with their fear of budget cuts, and, when they seriously get out of line, gently nudges them toward fiscal responsibility.

Mr. Paterson remembers when he was minority leader of the Senate and he called on Governor Pataki in 2004 to add $1.5 billion to the education budget and restore hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts. “We adamantly oppose any cuts to services or limits on access to health care,” he wrote in a press release, the same one in which he urged Mr. Pataki to raise income taxes on the wealthy.

Budget talks have turned into an after-school special. “We have had to resist, I think, heartfelt and realistic points, many of them very important and, quite frankly, heart wrenching issues that our colleagues have raised,” the governor told reporters on Friday.

That may be the first time a sitting governor has described budget talks as “heart-wrenching.” What’s going on behind those closed doors? A lot of hugging? Mr. Paterson is asking them to keep the rate of spending growth below 5% and bear in mind that New York’s economy is in a recession.

In Albany, that’s what you call tough love, but cool parents are capable of laying down the law when things really spin out of control. “I’m going to crack the whip,” the governor said. That doesn’t mean he’s going to threaten lawmakers with consequences. That’s the Spitzer way, and that’s not cool. It means he’s going to again ask — this time with more insistence and fewer wisecracks — that they wrap things up and close down the budget. He’s not angry, just concerned. The shrinking of New York’s governorship is the legacy of the Spitzer administration. It’s now two men in the room: Sheldon Silver and Joseph Bruno.

Mr. Pataki wasn’t a strong executive and often failed to bend the Legislature to his will. But the gridlock that marked his tenure reflected a clash of powers in which neither side managed to seize much territory. Mr. Pataki, after his first term, accepted the stalemate.

Mr. Spitzer rejected the limitations of the office and suffered tremendously. The Legislature turned on him, leaving him without any political safety net when disasters struck.

Now, a senator is governor, another one is acting as lieutenant governor, and an assemblyman is comptroller. New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, is the only statewide officeholder who isn’t a career legislator.

The state inspector general’s office and the Commission on Public Integrity, which have functioned largely as tools of the governor, are in ruins. State investigators are now untangling the cozy relationship between the executive chamber and the New York State Police.

Lawmakers are picking through the remains of Mr. Spitzer’s agenda. They will decide what to keep or to discard, not Mr. Paterson, who has no mandate other than to serve out Mr. Spitzer’s term.

His support for congestion pricing mattered more to the governor, who was trying to build a relationship with the Bloomberg administration, than it did to the mayor.

The political world is wondering whether Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, or Mayor Bloomberg will run for governor. The assumption is they would want a job that deposited Mr. Pataki into obscurity and that appears to have driven Mr. Spitzer crazy. The days of super-star politicians as gubernatorial candidates in New York are over — at least for now.

The challenge for Mr. Paterson or the next governor — whether it’s Tom Suozzi, Pete King, Andrew Cuomo, or John Faso — will be to assert the executive power without losing the Legislature.

Legislative power “will expand until it has been stopped from expanding,” a former top aide to Mr. Bloomberg, William Cunningham, told me. “Governor Paterson needs to act like a governor to stop the loss of any more authority, and the Legislature will respect that. You have got to show them that you won’t be rolled.” It’s a difficult balance. Mr. Paterson hopes to win respect by representing the opposite of Mr. Spitzer. But we’ll see how far the “cool parent” routine has taken him when the governor proposes something that lawmakers don’t like — say, pension reform or a school property tax cap. That will really be heart-wrenching.

jacob@nysun.com