LET’S just assume, for the sake of argument, that nothing further will emerge from the sorry tale of the New York governor’s office trying to drop a dirty dime against the state’s leading Republican politician.
Assume, in other words, that there will be no revelation of Gov. Spitzer’s involvement in or direction of the sordid campaign against Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno – a revelation that would almost require Spitzer to resign from his office at this point.
Assume, as well, that no charges will be filed against Spitzer’s suspended staffers or anyone else, and that as the weeks and months pass the story basically fades away.
The lack of new information could be the result of a successful stonewall effort by Spitzer’s aides and (since it is he who would benefit most especially) Spitzer himself.
Or it could be due to the fact that there really is nothing more to say about the siccing of the state police on Bruno and the leaking of false information to the Albany Times-Union than has already been said.
Perhaps then, this is just a tempest in a teapot – a regrettable incident owing more to the fact that Spitzer’s now-suspended communications chief, Darren Dopp, and his former homeland security aide, William Howard, couldn’t get themselves out of campaign mode and into governing mode.
Or is it maybe a moment from which Spitzer can rise stronger and better than ever? After all, on Tuesday he declared that his administration had “forgotten” the “principle” that “without vigilance and humility, righteousness can become self-righteousness.”
He and his people, Spitzer said, “allowed our passion to get the best of us.” They were “fighting so hard for what we believed was right that we let down our guard.”
So: Is this a sadder but wiser Spitzer rising from the ashes of scandal like a political phoenix? A man who will continue to fight for what he believes, but with his guard up and a deep sense of humility about the dangers of power of the sort counseled by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr?
You may put down your barf bag now.
For Gov. Spitzer to say that people in his administration did something wrong because we “were fighting so hard for what we believed was right” is Rube Goldberg logic. The idea destroys itself as it goes along.
In the end, Spitzer is precisely not saying he did anything wrong. He’s saying he and his people were just so committed to goodness and fairness and all manner of wonderful things that, regrettably, they got carried away.
Now, how exactly were Spitzer and his aides “fighting so hard for what we believed was right that we let down our guard”?
He was locked in a stalemate with Bruno over a campaign-reform proposal.
When ordinary politicians have disagreements, they fight over them and try to win the argument by working public opinion. Spitzer, elected by the largest margin in this state’s history, was uniquely in a position to do just that. Only he didn’t.
Instead, Spitzer’s cabal decided the only way to get what they wanted was quite literally and conveniently to transform their political opponent, Joe Bruno, into a criminal.
There’s no way to put lipstick on that pig – no invocations of Reinhold Niebuhr can gussy up that rotten behavior. Nor can self-righteous promises to be “righteous.”
Only weeks after Spitzer’s own colossal self-righteousness was laid bare for all to see, he concluded his speech with the bald statement that “there is no place for self-righteousness in my administration.”
Sorry, governor, but right now New Yorkers would sooner believe a Lindsay Lohan guarantee of sobriety.
Yes, there may be nothing more to come out of the Bruno scandal. But New Yorkers have gotten a pure, untempered, raw, shock-and-awe look at Eliot Spitzer and the way he does business. They are appalled by what they’ve seen. Spitzer knows that, which is why he’s trying to calm them down by acting humble.
The key word here, though, is “acting,” and he isn’t good at it. In fact, when it comes to being an actor-governor, Spitzer makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like Laurence Olivier.
jpodhoretz@gmail.com
