Spitzer’s End

by Jon Mandle on March 11, 2008

A year-and-a-half ago, I wrote in anticipation of Eliot Spitzer’s election as governor of New York that I was eager to see how he handled the responsibilities of the position. In the last year, his approval rating tumbled fast, and it appeared that he hadn’t mastered the art of compromise – something that wasn’t as important when he was Attorney General.

Still, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Last week, I drafted (but didn’t post) an argument that perhaps his feud with Senate leader Joe Bruno was part of a deliberate high-stakes strategy to claim the state Senate for the Democrats. And as of last week, it looked like he might win. Bruno would become just another Senator from upstate, and Spitzer might have a much easier time with the reforms he has championed, even with a lower approval rating. Just two days ago, the NY Times editorialized that one-party state rule, while risky, might allow passage of campaign finance reform, independent redistricting, not to mention other badly needed reforms such as a new lobbying law. Alas, it turns out Spitzer was just irresponsible.

It’s still possible that the Democrats will pick up the Senate seat they need. But if Spitzer resigns, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson will take over and the Lieutenant Governor position will remain unfilled until the election in 2010. Next in line … Joe Bruno (who is himself under federal investigation).

{ 20 comments }

1

Waldo 03.11.08 at 3:43 am

You’d think that after spending so many years carefully building his clean skin image and political career, Spitzer would not have taken this kind of risk, in Washington DC, of all places.

You’d think that with his legal background Spitzer would have been alert to the possibility that these types of conversations could be caught in a wiretap.

Oh well, easy come, easy go.

2

Colin Danby 03.11.08 at 5:57 am

3

Michael Raev 03.11.08 at 8:16 am

What can one say to certain Americans except grow up? Men buy sex, and that’s unlikely to change any time soon, especially in the case of powerful men for whom power is an aphrodisiac. So get over it.

4

HH 03.11.08 at 1:31 pm

There is a systemic failure in advanced nations to conserve and enhance trust. Thus, our finest achievements in technology and organization are largely nullified by acts of deception and betrayal that are deeply encoded in human behavior.

It is a cause of wonderment to me that the specialty niches of academia have no place for the scientifc study of trust, the crucial element of social capital whose uncontrolled erosion is rapidly destabilizing our global society.

It is as though the economists, sociologists, philosophers, and political scientists had all conspired to ignore the elephant in the room. Banks, governments, churches, and industries are all slowly disintegrating because our civilization refuses to bring investigative rigor to its greatest disease: the widespread failure of trust we call corruption.

5

Steve LaBonne 03.11.08 at 2:08 pm

Spitzer was a perfect embodiment of the Peter Principle. I think the Republicans did the Democratic Party an inadvertent favor by using their politicized Justice Dept. to target him.

6

Matt 03.11.08 at 2:16 pm

_”It is a cause of wonderment to me that the specialty niches of academia have no place for the scientifc study of trust, the crucial element of social capital whose uncontrolled erosion is rapidly destabilizing our global society._”

I’m pretty sure that our very own Henry Farrell is working on this, or a closely related problem.

7

c.l. ball 03.11.08 at 2:38 pm

Re #5 indeed.

I like Spitzer’s vigorous actions as NYS A-G but he seemed like a bull in a china-shop as governor. In many ways, he reminded me of Bill Clinton — smart, hard-working, committed but also arrogant (because his certainty of his conclusions exceeded the accuracy of his judgment) and unwilling to listen to advisors). One big difference is that Clinton was seen as too willing to compromise while Spitzer was too unwilling. But, of course, Clinton was able to become a successful governor. One wonders whether Spitzer could have reformed in the way that Clinton did between his first and second, nonconsecutive terms as governor.

8

Steve LaBonne 03.11.08 at 2:58 pm

Even without this I don’t think he’d ever really have fully recovered from being caught spying on Bruno. That already put paid to his squeaky-clean image, plus how dumb do you have to be to hand your most dangerous enemy a gift like that? I don’t think he’ll be greatly missed. He had his 15 minutes, and did his quota of useful work, as AG.

9

HH 03.11.08 at 3:10 pm

Re #6

I took a look at Henry Farrell’s trust writing, and it seems to be just an offshoot of Professor Robert Putnam’s method of documenting the historical importance of trust. This is Aristotelian observation, not engineering. For centuries, craftsmen knew the importance and value of steel. But it took a very long time to discover how to make steel in large quantities.

There is a huge void in world academia today resulting from what appears to be a sort of specialization separation anxiety preventing the exploration of a virgin territory (Trust Studies). Nobody in academia seems to have the guts to put trust studies on an empirical basis and talk about the engineering and synthesis of trust. Nobody wants to move from observation to production, and the reason is there are no departments or chairs for “Trust Studies.”

Never before have so many scholars looked so resolutely at the wrong topics as a new era of enlightenment dawned. The very geographic basis of university organization is now an open question, but it might as well be 1908 as 2008 as far as most faculties are concerned.

Academics the world over are waiting for some untenured adventurer or fool to stumble on the key to trust synthesis. Once career risk has been tamed, they will then dutifully pursue research and teach the courses of a respectable discipline.

10

Tracy W 03.11.08 at 5:13 pm

Banks, governments, churches, and industries are all slowly disintegrating because our civilization refuses to bring investigative rigor to its greatest disease: the widespread failure of trust we call corruption.

Given that corruption has been in existance in every society I can think of for the whole of human history, if corruption causes slow disintegration, how do you think any thing got built in the first place?

If anything, I think current western countries have less corruption and more trust than is the norm throughout human history.

11

shteve 03.11.08 at 7:38 pm

Tracy, you must have taken your eye off the banking industry. And Spitzer was the man who threatened to hold them to account, literally.

Oh well, everyone dip in to the 401K to keep a roof overhead while Bernanke bails out the fantasy salesmen on Wall Street.

12

HH 03.11.08 at 7:57 pm

“if corruption causes slow disintegration, how do you think any thing got built in the first place?”

Through cycles of advance and retreat, building and collapse. But each cycle of collapse is more destructive. World Wars I and II were vastly more destructive than prior conflicts, but nuclear winter is an extinction level event.

The tension between the most advanced achievements of modern society and its most pernicious regressive tendencies is enormous. Vast resources are now devoted to propaganda efforts that are aimed straight at genocidal bloodshed (THE WAR ON TERROR). The commercialization of news makes it profitable to get people angry, excited, and antagonistic. The nuclear weapons these people may use when they go to war can kill us all. That is why some forecasters do not think human civilization can make it through this century.

It is not the same as it ever was. We are in a period of non-linear instability, facing grave risks. The rampant spread of corruption and false information magnifies the danger.

13

lemuel pitkin 03.11.08 at 8:44 pm

Let’s be clear, Spitzer had some big accomplishments as Governor.

1. He settled the long-standing Campaign for Fiscal Equity Case, in which the state had stonewalled for years on a court order to provide school funding more equitably, on terms far more favorable to high-need urban districts than anyone had expected. We’re talking about billions of additional state dollars for public school in NYC, Buffalo, Yonkers, Syracuse, etc. And characteristically he did this not by comprehensively revising the school aid formula to make it more rational and transparent as well as fair.

2. He took major steps to extend insurance coverage, including raising the eleigibility threshold for Child Health plus to 400% of the poverty line — the highest such threshold in the country. And when the feds balked at paying their share, he went forward with all state funds. (In this year’s budget — we’ll see now if it goes through.)

3. He was in the early stages of a comprehenisve state health care plan that would put New York in the lead in state approaches to universal coverage.

4. He was committed to sentencing reform and was spending serious political capital on closing a number of state prisons.

5. He appointed some fantastic people to top state posts, such as Deborah Bachrach to run the state Medicaid program and Patricia Smith to run the Labor Department. Progressives really could not have asked for better picks.

6. Unlike various triangulators you could name, he was focused on building the state Democratic party and played a big role in moving the Dems toward a majority in the state Senate.

None of which is to defend his conduct in this case. Rather, it makes it all the mroe unforgivable — he didn’t just wreck his own career but a lot of real and important work.

14

lemuel pitkin 03.11.08 at 8:46 pm

s/b “…characteristically he did this by comprehensively…”, without the “not”.

15

Angry African on the Loose 03.11.08 at 10:39 pm

If only Spitzer was French. Would that have worked? Would his prostitution been okay? Most likely yes. But he isn’t. He isn’t French or English or South African. He is American and he is a Democrat. And with that comes a set of rules that are different than for Republicans. And for that reason his actions can’t be tolerated. Not now. He should go. For the good of the party. And most of all for the good of the people and his family. http://angryafrican.net/2008/03/10/if-only-spitzer-was-french/

16

Bush pilot 03.12.08 at 12:30 am

“It is not the same as it ever was. We are in a period of non-linear instability, facing grave risks. The rampant spread of corruption and false information magnifies the danger.”

I guess I don’t see it. Yellow journalism had its share in the 19th century (Remeber the Maine!). Corruption? The political machines are shadows of what they were, and anyone with a computer can now report to an audience of millions. The risk and ease of exposure of corruption is far higher. Bribery is frowned upon (at least in the US and parts of Europe) as a means of deciding public contracts, and penalties for individuals and firms that are caught can be severe.

I might agree that the end of the cold war shook up a unifying theme for many americans and let’s us sit back and debate bushs’ sins vs. clintons’ – while this has non-linear instability and is a lot of fun, you have to admit the stakes are a lot smaller than Kennedy in Cuba or Reagan in Reykjavik.

17

Tracy W 03.12.08 at 9:31 am

Tracy, you must have taken your eye off the banking industry. And Spitzer was the man who threatened to hold them to account, literally.

I’ve read quite a bit of history and as far as I can tell the banking industry has always attracted its share of fraudsters, charlatans and thieves. The people in the South Sea Bubble hardly impressed me with their moral uprighteousness. You appear to be implying that there is something special about recent history. Can you please state the dates and country where the banking sector was run by honourable, upright men, immune to the temptations of corruption?

Can you also please state the dates and the country where no upholder of public morality was found to have been doing the dirty?

Through cycles of advance and retreat, building and collapse.

I do not believe that the cycles of advance were characterised by less corruption than the cycles of retreat.

It is not the same as it ever was. We are in a period of non-linear instability, facing grave risks.

Given that people have been saying things like “we are in a period of non-linear instability, facing grave risks” for all of recorded human history, I would say that it is the same as it ever was.

The rampant spread of corruption and false information magnifies the danger.

This is hard to believe, as corruption has not been spreading, rampantly or otherwise. Every society I know about has problems with corruption, right through human history, and there strikes me as nothing special about this particular time.

Look, you’re not going to convince me by making vague grand pronouncements of doom. So many people make those that I stopped caring years ago. Come up with some evidence that there’s been an increase in corruption.

18

lemuel pitkin 03.12.08 at 3:04 pm

The interesting question going forward is what happens in the State Senate. Under the New York Constitution, there’s no new election for Lieutenant Governor; instead the Senate Majority Leader (currently Republican Joe Bruno, who’s been having some legal troubles of his own) assumes “all duties” of the office for the remainder of the term. Well, one duty of the LG is to break ties in the Senate, but surely Bruno won’t get two votes?

What makes this of more than theoretical interest is the Rs have only a one-seat majority. If, as seems likely, the Dems pick up a seat in November, it will be 31-31. Giving bruno a second vote seems absurd, but without some tie-breaking mechanism the legislature can’t function. In fact, it wouldn’t even be clear that Bruno still *is* majority leader come Jan. 1, 2009. So on top of everything else Spitzer may well have left us with a constitutional crisis…

19

jj 03.13.08 at 11:40 pm

“Come up with some evidence that there’s been an increase in corruption.”

Well, thirty years ago, Nixon was nearly impeached and subsequently resigned for spying on the political opposition. Today, political surveillance is just another ordinary function of “total information awareness” and the “war on terror”.

20

jj 03.13.08 at 11:52 pm

And never mind that being impeached for getting a blowjob in the Oval Office was meant to provide the Republicans with the necessary moral momentum to secure the popular vote for the following election, which failed and finally forced them to throw the entire procedure to a stacked court.

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