It’s easy to write off the Spitzer administration as an unmitigated disaster. The former governor’s legacy was best captured by Albany’s one-man think tank, E.J. McMahon, who described it as a “parking lot whirlwind — stirring up the trash and pushing around shopping carts, but leaving no fundamental change in its wake.”

What we forget though was the presence of an actual whirlwind. To Eliot Spitzer’s credit, he wanted to be a tornado and kick up dust and debris while lawmakers raced for cover. He succeeded in only blowing himself to bits, but no one said he didn’t have ambition for this state.

The Troopergate ethics charges handed up last week in regard to four Spitzer aides now seem anachronistic, invoking memories of a far away time when a governor and legislative leaders were rivals instead of sleepover friends.

Governor Paterson seems to think that it’s not his place to push the Legislature to do something and that the hallmark of good governance is the absence of conflict. The way Mr. Paterson talks about his close relationship with lawmakers, you’d think that New Yorkers are more concerned about whether he is showing proper respect to Sheldon Silver than, say, about high taxes.

Betting that a minimalist governorship is the safest way to say in office, Mr. Paterson does not want to place his 2010 election bid at risk by pursuing serious policy change, particularly anything that would antagonize major interest groups.

You have to wonder how much you can get done in Albany if nobody is angry with you. Even the state teachers’ union, New York State United Teachers, is refraining from attacking Mr. Paterson, though the governor has seemingly defied them by expressing support for a property tax cap in the suburbs.

Maybe they know the Assembly will refuse to pass a tax cap and that the governor won’t press them on it. If Mr. Paterson were serious about getting the cap through the Legislature, he’d be traveling the state talking about it, as Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi is doing.

Mr. Spitzer set a long-term goal of universal health care, sought to redistribute education aid to poorer areas, pushed for tighter campaign finance laws, set in motion a property tax cap commission, and tried to come up with a way to pay for the hiring of 2,000 faculty members at SUNY and CUNY.

One might not have agreed with every plank of Mr. Spitzer’s agenda, but the former governor took a hard look at the big-picture policy problems in Albany and tried to do something.

Mr. Paterson was sworn into office four-and-a-half months ago and still hasn’t told New Yorkers what he would like to accomplish in the remainder of his term.

For example, New Yorkers want to hear how does he intend to change the structure, leadership, and faculty of SUNY to make it more competitive with public systems in California, Michigan, and Virginia? It’s going to take more than low-cost student loans.

How does he propose lowering medical malpractice costs? How does he intend to get spending under control without squeezing money out of education and Medicaid? How does he begin to attract businesses to New York without having to bribe them with sweetheart deals that don’t make an iota of economic sense?

Instead, Mr. Paterson has confused talking about New York’s woes with doing something about them.

In his speeches, the governor toggles between two styles: jokey and apocalyptic. In one moment, he’s a stand-up, disarming his audiences with his deadpan. Then he becomes the prince of darkness. He has a habit of describing New York as if the Empire State were a developing nation. Everywhere, it seems, New Yorkers are confronting catastrophe and “struggling for survival.”

Though dispiriting, this language of crisis wouldn’t seem so overblown if Mr. Paterson ever followed through with a substantive policy proposal.

Take his speech last week before the National Lieutenant Governors Association. Mr. Paterson said the presidential candidates were failing to acknowledge the dire condition of the national economy and then recited statistics of doom: the soaring interest rates of Malaysia, Argentina, and Venezuela; the number of Americans with mortgage costs greater than their home values; and the number of barrels of oil produced by America.

Once again, he didn’t articulate any specific policy proposals or opinions. But a crisis is not an opportunity if all you talk about is the crisis.

To Mr. Paterson’s credit, when Mr. Spitzer self-destructed, he stepped in and calmed a state government that had gone into shock. Mr. Paterson brought a sense of regularity to the business of Albany that had never existed in the brief Spitzer era.

There’s a fine line, however, between order and lack of ambition. Mr. Paterson may not be picking any battles with his easy-listening leadership, but he’ll wind up just like Mr. Spitzer with a record short of accomplishment that is — how to put it — gone with the whirlwind.

jacob@nysun.com