Steamrolled?

Well, I suppose grander aspirations are no more? And to think his own paper blew the proverbial whistle too.

"Gov. Eliot Spitzer was a client of a high-end prostitution ring broken up last week by federal authorities, according to law enforcement officials, a development that threatened to end his career and turned the state’s political world upside down."

The "Emperor" of New York nailed by the Feds? Bullets...

1) Irrespective of one's views on the law (I would gravitate towards de-criminalizing the "seller" and continuing to arrest the "buyer"), the governor evidently broke it.

2) Unlike a DUI, which is more serious if slightly less embarrassing, this charge opens up Mr. Spitzer to charges of hypocrisy, even, of course, by hypocrites themselves. The former NY Attorney General made his reputation on toughness and law-and-order, something in the RFK mold, while also as a devoted family man.

3) To the rest of society, he cheated on his wife, allegedly on multiple occasions. Aside from a possible crime, this is the second strike against him, although, as a Democrat, he has a better chance to survive, though he would have proven wiser (if more invidious) to choose the Giuliani-Clinton route. Electorates generally frown upon this sort of behavior. Worse, he humiliated his wife and his family.

4) Perhaps he simply lived in the wrong era, i.e., this form of Kennedyesque recklessness just does not remain behind opaque walls anymore, but what egotism to place everything he had ever worked for on the line and to do so with an organization absolutely ripe for decimation by the Vice Patrol. We learned something of this arrogance in his tumultuous first year in Albany, where he seemed at times to lash out unnecessarily at those that fought his policy initiatives.

Folks simply never learn, it's the taxes that get us.

In my estimation, his odds of actually becoming US President were surpassed only by a handful of public figures in this country--no more.

Very often what makes public figures often unmakes them to a certain degree. We saw this with Lyndon Johnson in the late-1960s, Richard Nixon in the early-1970s, and Bill Clinton in the late-1990s, with only the latter surviving politically.

I had my differences with him (mostly personality-wise, he had too much of Wilson's self-righteousness for my taste), but if it is true that this gambit will have cost him control of New York politics and his national reputation, then it is a sad day for the country. Or, perhaps more pointedly:

"Those on Wall Street who fumed at having to make their world fairer for ordinary shareholders can now chortle with satisfaction in their private enclaves. For New York Republicans, who have blocked some of the most important reforms in Albany, it is hard to imagine the private glee — especially at a moment when they are fighting desperately to hold their majority in the State Senate."

Sigh.