This latest Spitzer scandal had me wondering if the world had gone mad. I heard people on radio programs talk about how they were shocked that someone who was such a moral crusader could do such a thing. Even the Wall Street Journal’s lead article on Tuesday talked about a “jarring contrast to the governor’s carefully crafted image.”
Don’t these people remember the real scandal from just last year, the one that should have got him booted from office for abuse of power? The prostitution scandal is certainly worth noting. But even if he was using government money to pay for prostitutes (and I haven’t heard that he was) it’s not nearly as serious a violation of public trust as to what he was doing when he was using the power of his office to wage a personal vendetta against Joe Bruno.
But nobody was talking about that. The print edition of the above WSJ article has a timeline about the Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer which doesn’t even mention the 2007 scandal involving the state police and Joe Bruno. All it has for 2007 is “Inaugurated New York’s 54th governor.”
New York is not the center of my universe, so I was starting to wonder if I was mistaken and had the players and events all mixed up in my mind. But I see that at least John Fund at the WSJ hasn’t forgotten the real scandal:
As the political career of Eliot Spitzer melts down, many will lament that what the governor on Monday called his “progressive politics” fell victim to his personal foibles. If only he hadn’t made mistakes in his private life, they will moan, New York could have been redeemed from its squalid, special-interest dominated stagnation.
That’s nonsense. More is at issue here than a mere private mistake. The governor’s frequent use of a prostitution ring was of public concern — because, notes Henry Stern, head of the watchdog group New York Civic, “people could easily have blackmailed him, you can’t have that if you’re governor.”
True enough, New York’s dysfunctional and secretive state government desperately needs fumigation, with both political parties sharing in the blame. But Mr. Spitzer’s head-butting approach to redemption — involving the arbitrary use of power and bully-boy tactics — was no improvement. …
Mr. Spitzer seemed to excel only in the zeal with which he would go after perceived adversaries. Last summer, his staff infamously used the state police to track the movements of Joe Bruno, the Republican president of the state senate, in an effort to destroy his career. Mr. Spitzer then ferociously fought investigators who wanted to examine his office’s email traffic for evidence the governor himself may have been involved.
Carefully crafted image, indeed.