That all sounds like a better case for appointing him to head some regulatory agency in the Obama administration than running him for high political office again.

I voted for Spitzer in '06; rarely have I regretted a vote as much as that one. I could care less about debating the morality of a sitting governor frequenting prostitutes; that's between him and his family. I have a serious issue with said governor breaking the law by doing so (violation of interstate commerce statutes, for starters) while conducting a very public, preening crusade to bust prostitution rings on Staten Island.

Even if you're willing to look the other way at criminal conduct, Ezra, Spitzer's narcissism and hypocrisy stink to high heaven. I'm extremely disappointed that you'd defend him.

He deserves credit for the forthright way he accepted the public revelation, rather than go the familiar route of "deny deny" and then accusing others (vast rightwing conspiracy). On the other hand, he can be accused of a double standard since he was such a tough prosecutor of the kind of behavior he engaged in. He probably needs to stay out of public life longer. His wife's attitude toward him should in no way be the determinant. That idea is just ridiculous.

He was not a good governor at all. He made a lot of enemies in the short time he was in the office. I don't think a lot of people miss him as a governor.

Soon after the Spitzer story, I read a criticism of him arguing that as a prosecutor he was too willing to try his suspects in the court of public opinion, fair trials be damned. He apparently did perp walks whenever possible, publicized high-profile white-collar arrests regardless of whether or not the case was strong, etc.

This was treated as a sour grapes, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger thing; that is, don't worry too much about this crusading Democrat being disgraced, because he's actually a glory hound. I also read it as a holier-than-thou moment, because we shouldn't demogogue and vilify the people we don't like, the normal legal system should be enough for us good liberals.

It's interesting to reflect back on that. After a trillion dollars or so in bailouts of disastrous yet sometimes legal conduct, everyone hates bankers, not just zealous leftists. Apparently, assuming I remember right and the thing I read was reliable in the first place, Spitzer was just treating financiers like shit before it was cool.

Crap, crap and more crap: Spizer's not "coming back" to anything, and his own inability to see his flaws doesn't mean we have to join in. Spitzer, still, wants credit for being tough on Wall Street, and fair enough, he turned out to be asking the right questions of the right people; that doesn't excuse all of the grandstanding he did along the way, or the "me me me" approach to coverage of his work he took. Nor, despite Exra's capacity to try and minimize misbehavior (reflecting, yet again, a free spirited sexual liberalism that ignores any difficult moral implications) is Spitzer's multiple thousand dollar escapades in prostitution ever going to be "no big deal" - he lied about it, denied it repeatedly, and only when faced, essentially, with major public humiliation did he remotely admit that it would be impossible to remain Governor (making him, essentially, not Rod Blagojevich). That does not constitute anything close to being "forthright" or direct in admitting guilt. Pardon me for thinking that, yes, we should have higher standards of expectation, and hold to them - especially in, say, District Attorneys. There is plenty of good, decent, helpful work Spitzer can do in the private sector, privately. He does not need - or deserve - our attention, nor a "second chance" in the limelight. He tried... and he failed. And now he, and we, need to move past it. And him.

and fair enough, he turned out to be asking the right questions of the right people

enough said, bring him back...since no one else will.

absolutely no second chances in politcal life for eliot spitzer.
absolutely none.
eliot spitzer and his ilk have brought this country to its knees.
we need them OUT once and for all.

entitlement, lawbreaking, putting himself above the law, the kind of judgement that puts the health of others above the decency and good sense that we try to teach to teenagers, arrogance, lack of character.....
everything we DONT want in people in political life.
and what criteria is it that his wife still loves him?
wasnt she the one urging him to stay in his post as governor?
she certainly wasnt thinking about the example her husband was setting for
his consituency.
she was thinking about HERSELF.
an accomplice in the acquisition of money, entitlement and power.
just as eliot spitzer was thinking about HIMSELF.
it doesnt matter how intelligent or prescient he and his ilk are.
people who have such deeply warped character cannot be in places of political empowerment.

and furthermore (grrr)
it is dreadful seeing people in public life who acted in extreme selfishness, arrogance and infamy reinstated by the media after they usually write a book, and then treated with deference and respectablity, as though the celebrity they have received for the awful things they did gives them some new found "buzz" and credibility.
the mainstream media picks and chooses these sordid heroes.
once they have been exiled, they should stay there, instead of getting millions for book deals and becoming people of interest for the media.

send them all to elba,
with a staff of th
terapists and no book contracts.

she certainly wasnt thinking about the example her husband was setting for
his consituency.
she was thinking about HERSELF.
an accomplice in the acquisition of money, entitlement and power.
just as eliot spitzer was thinking about HIMSELF

The Amazing Claire Voyant speaks again!

people who have such deeply warped character cannot be in places of political empowerment.

that leaves, um, no one, or ahve you forgotten your fave, BO, has just signed on to continue Bush torture policies. Talk about warped character!

So, um, how is/was your lovelife? Cmon, fess up! Fair game!

I'd vote for Spitzer again in a second. Anna's right that he made a lot of enemies, but to me that was using his political capital to (for the most part) do the right thing with state gov't, which was notoriously disfunctional. Not necessarily the soft-touch pragmatic Obama model, but I'm not sure we had time to see whether Spitzer's take-no-prisoners principled approach would have whipped NYS into shape or not. I like to think it would have (but I guess you can also see the prostitution scandal as partly blowback from his making all those enemies). At the very least he was one of very few "fighting liberals" during the dark days of the Bush years. I for one miss him terribly and welcome him back into public life as soon as possible.

And I'd like to take a moment to stand strong for free-spirited sexual liberalism, contra weboy. Lawbreaking is of course not okay for a sitting governor, especially a law-and-order type, and prostitution is problematic at best. But I don't have any patience for the status quo, which is that blowjobs and prostitutes get you impeached/run out on a rail, but innumerable crimes against humanity go unaddressed. Screw it. Spitzer's great, who cares who he sleeps with, bring him back to kick some ass.

As a New Yorker, I really can't stand this Spitzer rehabilitation nonsense. It's not just the prostitutes, Ezra. He used the state police to spy on his political opponents. And his crusades as D.A. were a lot more effective as political theater than actual, ya know, prosecutions.

There are other people who were prescient about the financial crisis who aren't psychos like Eliot Spitzer.

"I agree, of course, that governors shouldn't patronize prostitutes. But there are bigger things to worry about."

And I'm sure Dick Cheney would agree that the government shouldn't torture people. But there were bigger things to worry about after 9/11.

Mike

Mike: I hope you're comment is meant ironically, because you make the point perfectly. The idea that these two things are somehow equivalent, just because people "shouldn't" do either of them, is ridiculous on its face. Torture and prostitution are quite different types of things that people in government shouldn't do. Just like getting blowjobs from a White House intern is behavior we can all frown upon. Duh. NOT THE SAME as torturing people. In fact it's the opposite, and what we all keep throwing our hands up in desperation about is that somehow politicians get "held accountable" for sexual picadillos but are given a pass for committing impossibly horrible crimes. jeez.

And, just to be clear, the solution to the problem is not just to throw out all the bums no matter how insignificant their offenses. (And Spitzer's was certainly not trivial.) The right thing to do is to work toward a consensus that private behavior is private (breaking prostitution laws may not fall under private behvaior). It's the screaming republicans that make this impossible, but somehow they get away with this stuff. Can someone tell me, again, how Vitter managed to hold on to his Senate seat?

Tyler, just because, say, the US Senate can't find an ethical problem with prostitution doesn't make it okay; one could point out that David Vitter is sill a Senator mostly because he hasn't faced reelection since the scandal broke - whether he can win again is an open question (though Louisiana politics is all messed up now, and even so has always favored the colorful wrongdoer).

Your defenses of Spitzer as the "hey, it's just hookers" defense are pretty wanting. I don't know about Governors or Presidents buying sex (i'm not, generally, in favor of it), but I'm pretty sure the state's top legal officer - responsible for enforcement of laws against procuring, selling sex, and sexual exploitation of women should... oh, I don't know... not be allowed to break those laws (and yes, clearly, he was using prostitutes as New York's Attorney). And all of that is before asking the questions liberals don't like to think about with prostitution - like the exploitation of certain women (i.e. class issues) for sex, or the moral questions of being married and paying others for sex... questions that don't just get waved away - you can say vows don't matter, or relationships are complicated... but I think one should, actually, be forced to sya them, and consider their meaning (and ask, reasonably, if that's a standard one is prepared to accept personally in one's own partner). Are there degrees of behavior? Absolutely... but Spitzer's behavior isn't just a one time escapade in prostitution or even a question of simply having a "hooker problem" in a vacuum; Spitzer's cavalier notions of enforcing rules on others while ignoring them for his own behavior stretches across a variety of acts, both personal and professional, and do not, no matter how one dresses it up, speak well of him (nor, would I add, do people who dealt with him in New York). I'mn not asking for the man to suffer any more indignities - he resigned, it's over, we can all move on. But no, he doesn't get a "do over." and Yes, I think he best course of acion now would be a private life of private service and any number of ways he could prove himself decent of character and worthy of admiration. That he continues to equate his salvation with public approval, I think, simply underlines what he hasn't learned from this scandal. There's lots of ways to do good - why can't you acknowledge that Spitzer has plenty of ways to "make a difference" without returning to public life?

you can say vows don't matter, or relationships are complicated... but I think one should, actually, be forced to sya them, and consider their meaning (and ask, reasonably, if that's a standard one is prepared to accept personally in one's own partner).

One should be forced to say vows?

Utterly ridiculous.

I completely agree with your post Ezra; we made a short-sided mistake by pushing Eliot Spitzer out of office. We needed strong, smart leadership in New York during this time of economic crisis.

Wow, talk about IOKIYAR. Or INOKIYAD.

John McCain is the most frequent guest on the Sunday talk shows. I don't know Newt Gingrich's rank, but it has to be in the top five.

Both of those men were beyond crummy to their ex-wives, yet neither paid a political price.

I really don't care what Spitzer did in his private life. But as I recall, the FBI had no business looking into this in the first place. It was Roger Stone ((I think, or some other Republican party ratf---er extrodinaire) who bragged about busting him.

Here's a question.
Can a single non-monogamous(who's honest about it) straight man be elected in this climate? Are there any in Congress? Governor's houses?

As long as we live in a culture of "beards," I imagine these non-scandals will continue.

Weboy -- I don't disagree that prostitution is not unambiguously okay, and that insofar as it's a crime it is very much not okay for a sitting governor to participate in. And, moreover, that it exposes a particular hypocrisy on Spitzer's part which is that he railed against prostitution *specifically* while AG. But I think the charge of hypocrisy is limited to that; it doesn't "stretch across a variety of acts".

Do my argument is not "hey it's just hookers". I'm happy to recognize the extend of Spitzer's offense against the public. And as someone who was strongly invested in his governorship, I was let down personally and felt betrayed by what were clearly selfish acts. I don't think prostitution is unambiguously bad (and the fact that johns are rarely prosecuted suggests that has ambiguous status under the law), and it's clear that Spitzer could have foreseen the consequences and avoided them -- to me, *that* is the betrayal.

But, no, the idea that by violating his marriage vows (and do you have the text of what he swore to his wife, btw?) he somehow violated the public trust is absurd and tremendously offensive, and you need to rethink this notion that people should be "forced" to say vows, as anonymous rightly flags.

In the end my argument is that Spitzer is and was GREAT. This failing does nothing to diminish that, and we let a minor concern over prostition (not okay, but not the worst thing in the world either) push out a tremendous leader who we surely need in these times. Weighing all the factors, I think we got the wrong outcome.

Since he was never prosecuted for any crimes, there's no set-in-stone reason that he should have resigned. His resignation was about slippery moral judgements.

Finally, of course there are plenty of ways Spitzer could make a difference without returning to public life. I just don't see any reason to exclude him from public life, and that's the affirmative argument you have to make. Which is my issue with Vitter. I've got no problem with Vitter remaining in his position -- my question is why wasn't he hounded out of office like Spitzer was? Who are the gatekeepers? It should be the voters, and Spitzer's second betrayal, I think, was resigning and not facing up to his failings and doing the hard work of leading New York through this economic crisis, and letting the voters decide whether his personal scandal amounted to a disqualification for office.

I'd feel better about it if it wasn't prostitution. If it was just cheating, that's a family problem. But here, he broke the law.

That being said, prostitution strikes me very much the way the drug war does. That is, we're not going to ever get rid of it. We should accept that and decriminalize it so we can manage the more pernicious aspects of it.

If prostitutes are prosecuted, then the johns should be too. Since Spitzer wasn't, he shoulda kept the job, and faced judgment through re-election.

Politicians need to be held accountable either through the courts or the ballot box. There should be no other standard of public opinion. Charge 'em, impeach 'em, vote 'em outta office or shut up.

no more lowering the bar of accountability for people in political life.
lfor goodness sakes, who cares how smart he is, if we cant find better quality people for political life than eliot spitzer, we are in serious trouble.

being smart has nothing to do with conscience, accountability and right action.
this man has no conscience, not to mention, not a shred of respect for women. it doesnt matter whether he remains married or not, he still has not a shred of respect for women.
we are in serious trouble, because we have been turning a blind eye to ethics and right action.
go find the last surviving hedge fund or join your friends advising sovereign wealth funds.
just go away,eliot

Boy, weboy sure has his blue nose out of joint today.

Wattadouchebag.

this man has no conscience, not to mention, not a shred of respect for women. it doesnt matter whether he remains married or not, he still has not a shred of respect for women.

proof please as well as details of your entire sex life...this IS a public blog after all...geez, go back to Salem circa 1600 w/your puritanical shit.

Posted by: Too Ugly To Fuck | April 20, 2009 3:41 PM

fixed!

"fixed"
i dont think so.

~i have no immediate plans to run for governor or president.
~if my private life was interfering with my ability to do my job, i would quit.

there is nothing puritanical about having a conscience, and in striving to live in a conscious and honorable way.
we ask this of schoolchildren, we should be able to ask the same of politicians.
character matters.

Anonytroll's cruising for a banning.

Bring Spitzer back? Something tells me you don't, like, live in New York. A majority of New yorkers wanted him gone BEFORE he proved to be the kind of John who refuses to wear a condom.
It's illegal to patronize prostitutes, whether the patron's wife cares or not. The man should be prosecuted with the same diligence he would have exercised himself if it were one of his many political enemies who was doing Dupree.
Betcha didn't run this idea past your JournList mentors first! Please, as a New York voter, I'm beggin ya! No more advise.

fuck character, I want results not preening do gooderism

Nice, EKlein can forgive Spitzer for recent criminal acts and an inability to practice what he preaches and yet he still considers Michelle Malkin some sort of paleofascist for one opinion ten years ago.

I guess politics is the decider.

Spitzer obviously has a lot to contribute right now, as the entire country remains in crisis. (Until we stop losing 500,000+ jobs every month, I think the term "free fall" is appropriate). We really need the best economic minds we can get right now.

there is nothing puritanical about having a conscience, and in striving to live in a conscious and honorable way.

Right. But that has absolutely nothing to do being in a mutually exclusive monogamous relationship.

i have no immediate plans to run for governor or president.

I'm sorry; I missed the married/monogamist requirement; is it in the Constitution somewhere? This notion that public figures have to agree on when/where to have sex w/religious zealots is nuts.

"fixed"
i dont think so.

I knew you were anti-HRC-obsessed, jacqueline, but even you have to agree that Posted by: Hillary Clinton - Too Ugly To Fuck crosses a line, insulting ALL women.

I am more worried about Spitzer's fantasies about "predatory lending" than about the prostitutes.

The notion of predatory lending would make sense if the borrower's default actually benefited the lender. But as we've seen, default has been catastrophic for the lenders and for society as a whole.

If Spitzer believed in faeries and goblins I wouldn't want him back either.

Good god. This wasn't a Clinton-esque witchhunt into a private affair. The man broke the law. Using taxpayer money.

Are you serious? I loved the guy too. Until I found out he was a fucking criminal.

I feel the same way about Spitzer as I do John Edwards: the level of how goddamn stupid his actions were ESPECIALLY in the current political situation only MAGNIFIES how sever his punishment should be.

Anna:
"He was not a good governor at all. He made a lot of enemies in the short time he was in the office. I don't think a lot of people miss him as a governor."

Ouch. Yeah, right because we choose and evaluate our Gov by the number of friends he makes while he's in office, right Anna?

What an incredibly irrelevant and stupid comment.

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