Jousting for Justice

Eliot Spitzer was one of my political heroes. He was a hard-charging do-gooder prosecutor who tried to inject the law into the Wild Wild West of Wall Street. His political hero was Teddy Roosevelt, and he spoke eloquently about ethics, responsibility, and the public trust.

He was also a complete fraud.

As a Democrat it wasn't that difficult to forgive Bill Clinton for his indiscretion with Monica Lewinsky. It said nothing good about Clinton's private character, but it was fundamentally not about his ability to govern. To be frank, we knew he was a philanderer when we elected him. Bill Clinton never went on any sanctimonious tirades about sex scandals, never wagged that finger in condemnation of anybody else's private failings, and himself broke no laws whatsoever until he was improperly forced to answer unethical questions in a private civil suit.

Eliot Spitzer is another matter altogether. His private failing was also a public one--the violation of the laws against prostitution which he vigorously upheld in his climb to public office. Whatever your thoughts on the legality of the profession, it's clear that Eliot Spitzer not only knew what he was doing was illegal, but put people in jail for it.

In fact, as an Attorney General, he was so familiar with the Mann Act, I can't fathom how this could have happened. How could someone who was so intimately familiar with these laws, be so colossally stupid as to break them in such a way as to create maximum legal liability for himself? He ordered a hooker over the internet using his own friend's name. There's not a teenager in America who doesn't know how easy it is for people to spy on your internet transactions.

I can only conclude that Eliot Spitzer was either so arrogant that he thought he could not be scrutinized, so emotionally damaged that he could not control himself, or in such a complete melt-down over Lou Dobbs being mean to him about drivers licenses for illegal immigrants that he subconsciously sabotaged his whole life.

Maybe he couldn't take the heat. Maybe he's a sex addict. I don't know. But it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is that he violated the public trust and the good will of Democrats everywhere who believed in his cause. He has made it ten times harder for any Democrat to follow in his footsteps, he has eclipsed his own political message, and he has cost the party a rising star.

I for one, am done with Eliot Spitzer.