Text size:

Spitzer gets a view from the other side

Dan Janison

March 12, 2008

Give the man this much credit: As ill-mannered, overprivileged and impatient as Eliot Spitzer has been in his life, he does possess the kind of mind that explores both sides of a situation.

The soon-to-be-former governor found himself in hot water last summer after his aides directed state police to create records reconstructing the out-of-town trips of his political nemesis, Sen. Joseph Bruno.

So now we learn Spitzer went out of town -- presumably with state police -- and got into the biggest trouble of his life, evidently without any help from Bruno or the reconstructions of any state records.

Part of the logic in this tawdry drama seems to be that if you're going to suspect someone else of breaking rules, why not break them yourself? After all, it's you doing it, not the other guy.

Dan Janison Recent columns

In his earlier role as attorney general, Spitzer became famous nailing private business executives with their own e-mails and following their own money transfers. Once or twice he even inveighed against businesses that were nothing more than call-girl rings.

So Spitzer used text messages and phones and money transfers -- in a way that alerted bank employees -- to do business with a firm that adds up to nothing more than a call-girl ring.

It is as if Ken Starr had been caught with an intern.

Spitzer not long ago projected himself as the state's great consumer advocate.

Yet the evidence so far suggests he was paying more than $4,000 for a quick encounter with a hooker. Perhaps someday he will spin this as a pro-labor gesture. But it hardly stands as a win for the consumer movement.

Once, Spitzer made headlines driving a hard bargain with defendants and targets of his investigations, squeezing them in ways that involved embarrassing publicity.

Today he makes the opposite kind of headlines, as his lawyers apparently talk with white-collar authorities who presumably are trying to squeeze him as they see fit.

Yes, we have seen the Alan Hevesis, the Jimmy Swaggarts and the Sol Wachtlers of the world brought down from high positions in scandals. Yet the Spitzer case has an exceptional feel.

One reason is speed. He managed to destroy himself in record time, just a year and 10 weeks into his governorship. Spitzer was the one who boasted in one of his more famous phone calls that, as the personification of a steamroller, he'd accomplished more in weeks than other governors had in years.

Another unique feature of Spitzer's rapid fall: The thoroughness with which he set himself up, having spoken so much of credibility, legality and integrity -- and taking a prosecutor's stance on civil liberties.

During the strange and opaque lawyer's summation that he delivered against himself on Monday, Spitzer said: "I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family, and that violates my or any sense of right and wrong."

We can probably take his word for that much.