The End of A Political Career

By: Michael P. Riccards


The classical Greeks used to watch in awe and dread the fall of a major figure in the public arena. They knew that we are dependent on great men and that their fall is the all the more terrifying to common folk. They told and retold the tales of arrogant men who exhibited pride, overarching pride, in their lives: Agamemnon, Achilles, Oedipus, Jason, and a host of others who were the stuff of good plays and poems.

In our own time, we have seen the decline and fall of public figures of some note, most recently for sexual misconduct. The demise of Eliot Spitzer is only one chapter in an increasingly familiar story. But instead of having Homer or Sophocles to tell their woes, we now have the “New York Post” and tabloid journalists.

It is odd that in America, political leaders would be so reckless, for politicians are usually in this country rather cautious. That is how they get ahead and how they survive. A person like Spitzer, who had ambitions to become president of the United States, should have realized the perils of his adventures. Apparently, he was involved with paid women of pleasure for over a decade, even when he was the attorney general in New York and was involved in breaking prostitution rings. He surely knew the ability of law enforcement personnel to trace laundered money and the increasing suspicions since 9-11 with peculiar transactions involving wired cash. He not only knew the methodologies, but also used them frequently in his own heavy handed investigations. Like Rudy Giuliani, he rarely worried about people’s civil liberties or privacy. Spitzer leaked information to the media, made accusations about individuals’ reputations, and was a prime example of the problems that a free society faces in dealing with an overly zealous prosecutor. So Spitzer had a clear view of what was possible and what were standard operating procedure if the authorities catch a whiff of wrong doing.

Also, in the United States we have a special fascination with sex since we are still in our verbal protestations at least a puritanical culture. Our clergymen, our media, our political gurus are all so self righteous about sex, even as many of them live lives of quiet decadence. No wonder kids do not have any heroes anymore. Some political leaders are simply people who enjoy sexual liaisons. But some of them, like the late John F. Kennedy, partook of the pleasures and never lectured us about sexual practices. While others like Newt Gingrich and assorted television evangelists preach against such sins of the flesh just before they go and enjoy them in the darkness of their private lives.

Why do people like Spitzer, Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, Larry Craig, and a variety of others risk so much for sexual dalliances. The reason usually cited is that they are “sex addicts,” in the words of the New York Post, who cannot avoid falling prey to that vice any more than alcoholics or drug addicts. The answer is to call in Dr. Phil and let him explain how one can be cured of that sickness by simply spending time at some expensive camp outside of San Antonio or Phoenix.

Sex is a pretty powerful drive. Surely that is why St. Paul once said that it was better to marry than to burn. Still these men were all married, and they could not resist outside activities. Commentator Laura Schlesinger has blamed the wives since they cannot satisfy their men. One does not go to a diner when the home cooking is good. The victim becomes once again the culprit.

But the Spitzer fall from grace is not really about sex, as much as it is about power. Powerful men have always had mistresses and affairs on the side. But risk aversive politicians in the Untied States, at least, seem to want to see how close they can come to skating on the edge, how close can they come to getting caught, how close can they thumb their noses at the intrusive media and not get nabbed. As one of my close friends who is an inveterate womanizer told me—it is not the consummation but the chase that is the thrill.

There is something sad about Eliot Spitzer having to check into a fine hotel using a friend’s name and trying to find a classical music CD. It is almost like a high school kid on prom night. It is surprising he did not bring flowers and candy to his liaison.

Spitzer, unlike Bill Clinton, was a politician who had no friends to stay with him when the going got rough. He had made a career about being self righteous in his battles against Wall Street, such that he thought that was the pose that would work in the governorship. He is probably the only governor who could make Joe Bruno into a sympathetic figure in Albany. The problem with hypocrisy is that one must be very careful with that sword. Dr. Samuel Johnson once said that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. So true here. Spitzer was hoisted on his own petard.

Did he subconsciously know that he was the crusading white knight doing secretly bad things, and like the subject in “Crime and Punishment” want to be punished? We will have to leave that to Sigmund Freud or Dr. Phil. What of these wives, why do these women stand by their men on television? Former Governor McGreevey’s wife, Dina, has argued that we stop worrying why wives do stand by their man and just let them trust their own judgments. That obviously is fair, but there is a still the question of whether their judgment is in some grand scheme of things flawed. Perhaps they are still in love, are forgiving, are worried about the children, or are bothered by their own loss of roles and power.

As for these men, they were in public positions of trust, and their demise disrupts the pace of government, and more importantly the ties between a democratic electorate and the political process. Suddenly they are been replaced by successors chosen or appointed in only the most indirect ways, without having a mandate, without having promise the people major changes.. Surely no one expected that in New Jersey, McGreevey would be replaced by the Senate president who was not even known to most state residents outside of Essex County. Surely no one expected that in New York, the lieutenant governor would now be in charge of an aggressive reform agenda. Public opinion in these cases was a victim in victimless crimes.

Tragedies are supposed to be uplifting to our spirits. But these sexual scandals are tawdry, and you and I are prurient in looking so closely at them seeking not to learn about human behavior but to simply get the delicious details.