Shortly after taking office, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer placed a now infamous phone call to the Assembly minority leader, Republican James Tedisco, referring to himself as "a fucking steamroller." That outburst, occasioned by the Assemblyman's criticisms over being left out of negotiations on an ethics bill, was the defining moment of Spitzer's year-old administration. It has served as both a sobriquet and an epithet, depending on whether the utterer admired the governor's signature no-nonsense, no quarter style or despised his particularly arrogant brand of self-righteousness. Had Spitzer someday realized the sweeping transformation of New York politics he promised when running for governor, it would have served as the cornerstone of his legend, and eventually, his epitaph. Now it is a cat-call.
Spitzer was today connected with an international prostitution ring, captured on a federal wiretap arranging for the services of a high-priced call girl while in Washington, D.C. last month. In a brief press conference at his Manhattan office, the governor apologized to his family and the public, citing only "a personal matter"; he did not deny the prostitution story, first reported by the New York Times. For a man who has positioned himself as a tireless crime fighter above reproach, the accusation is ruinous. It exposes Spitzer as a pious hypocrite, setting a stringently high standard of conduct for others while flouting the law in brazenly lurid fashion himself. His credibility is destroyed, and his ability to govern effectively is probably beyond repair.
Spitzer's greatest antagonist, the Republican Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, will live to fight another day. It was Bruno, a legislative maneuverer of the old school (incidentally not without legal problems of his own), who most spectacularly stood up to the Steamroller, using his leadership position as a cudgel to bring Spitzer's agenda to a grinding halt. Furthermore, it was the majority leader who was inadvertently responsible for Spitzer's previous big stumble, his staff's improper leaking of state police records concerning Bruno's possibly inappropriate use of state aircraft for political travel. Yet, despite Bruno's best efforts, Spitzer was closing in on the G.O.P. Senate majority, using his influence and control of the state Democratic Party's coffers to narrow the gap in the upper house to one seat. Just yesterday he appeared poised to unify the state government under Democratic control for the first time since the Great Depression; that grand political project, which would have drastically altered the landscape of the New York politics and perhaps given the governor the requisite clout to remake Albany in his image, is now deferred at best and dead at worst.
I expect that Spitzer will do the honorable thing and resign. It is this end he seemed to foreshadow in his comments today, saying, "I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good, and doing what is best for the state of New York." By failing to live up to his own ideals in such a spectacular fashion, he has done potentially irreparable damage to the project he personified, and betrayed the trust of millions of New Yorkers who invested their hope for desperately needed change in him. Falling on his sword is the least he can do.
