Governor Andrew Cuomo has well earned the “Hamlet on the Hudson” title inherited from his father; indecisive in all but one thing – his determination to avoid decision. But, perhaps another playwright captured the scene even better in “Waiting for Godot.”

In the political psychodrama that is the natural gas debate in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has owned the role of Hamlet and played it to the hilt. His soliloquies of silence have kept audiences guessing and confounded the critics. To permit or not to permit – that is still the unanswered question begged by upstate’s continuing struggles and New York’s five-year-old moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. And though usually eager to command center stage, our governor avoids the fracking spotlight, unwilling to act, or even to seriously address the audience. His guarded indecisiveness is a long-running tragedy for the Southern Tier’s suffering economy and perhaps eventually for the governor himself.

Cuomo’s trademark “delay by delegation” has become tedious, having long since crossed the line into overuse. People are walking out on him, and on New York. His peevish and curious comments (children falling down gas wells, for example) when pressed on the subject of natural gas development suggest he is tired of Shakespearean tragedy as a guide to executive decision making. The governor now appears to be adding a newer play into his repertoire of governing styles, a modern classic that also takes full advantage of his dithering skills – Samuel Beckett’s absurdist tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot.

http://naturalgasnow.org/waiting-for-nys-natural-gas-godot-a-shale-...