On Monday morning, it seemed as if our long Empire State nightmare was over. David Paterson was sworn in as New York’s governor, replacing Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace last week after reports of his alleged dalliances with prostitutes emerged.

Paterson even seemed to wipe all those bad memories away in just a few moments during his inaugural speech — heck, we even declared him the best politician ever.

Then came the New York Daily News article. Monday night, the paper reported that David Paterson and his wife, Michelle, had revealed in interviews that both of them had extramarital affairs “during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.” For the moment, this likely won’t have much of an effect on Paterson, as there’s no allegation of wrongdoing beyond the infidelity yet — but Paterson obviously did want to get out ahead of this story by admitting to it in advance, and he’ll reportedly be speaking publicly about the matter later Tuesday.

We think the saga of New York state government that has gone on over the past week just proves the truth of a colleague’s admonition Monday night: Please, have your elected officials spayed or neutered. It’s the most important thing you can do for them.

We’ve been thinking: Sure, this whole “Quote of the day” feature in War Room has had a good run. But now David Paterson (as of Monday afternoon, New York’s new governor) is wiping everyone else off the page. Frankly, we’re wondering whether it’s even fair to subject the rest of the political world to comparison with Paterson, who is obviously the best politician ever.

On Thursday, asked whether he’d ever patronized a prostitute, Paterson responded, “Only the lobbyists.” And Monday, during his inaugural speech, Paterson brought down the house with one joke poking fun at himself for his blindness and another at the expense of Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, a Republican who’d had notorious run-ins with Paterson’s predecessor and fellow Democrat, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.