Spitzer Reconsidered

My first reaction to Eliot Spitzer’s involvement in a call girl ring was surprise. I still do not have a sharp image of Governor Spitzer or an auditory memory of his voice. He was perhaps the most behind-the-scenes public figure one could imagine. He only seemed to come forward when he had a major conquest to report—a crime ring broken, a conspiracy smashed. It was as if Governor Spitzer needed a dramatic pretext to come before the people. He set out to win our approval since he could not win our affection. He made enemies because he could not tolerate opposition or frustration. He was tightly strung, narrowly focused and intolerant of the imperfection that marbles human nature.

But it wasn't only Spitzer's credential as an Olympian prosecutor that made his new role so incongruous. He did not seem to be a man of uncontrollable appetites. On the contrary, he was too controlled, too serious, too cold to lose himself in frivolity or vice, and too intelligent and aware to indulge and rationalize a deviant act. Governor Spitzer had a keen intellect and was doubtless aware of his actions. That he based his reputation on a radical revulsion for crime and vice made his downfall ironic, but his vicissitude is only a fresh variation of a very old story.

The familiarity of Eliot Spitzer’s trajectory makes one wonder about the disproportionate outcry against his act. Hypocrisy spices any crime and Spitzer was a hypocrite. But politics breeds hypocrisy and we do not clamor for every politician’s ouster. Lubricity, likewise, is not a quality we admire but we have tolerated it in other public figures. The Kennedy brothers all were permitted their indiscretions. JFK swam nude with young women in the White House pool and dallied with Judith Exner and Marilyn Monroe out of media censure and public view, although he was married to a worshiped first lady. Ted Kennedy drove a car off a bridge and his young female companion, a secretary in his office, drowned in Chappaquidick. Still, he was able to weather this mysterious and sordid incident to become the unofficial dean of Senate Democrats. President Clinton’s public lechery has been documented, yet he remains one of the most popular public figures the world over. And our society’s attitude toward sex combines hypocrisy and lasciviousness to which the Spitzer scandal gives eloquent proof. In the same week that we demanded the downfall of a governor for seeing a prostitute, five million people visited the prostitute's website and hundreds of thousands paid to listen to her music, enriching her by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So why did we pillory Eliot Spitzer?

In the media, broadcasters and people in the street wondered aloud how Spitzer could shame his wife and family, and why his wife would stand by him. These incredulous people overlook the obvious—that Spitzer paid for sex precisely to protect his family and to show his love for his wife—albeit in a twisted way. By paying for sex Spitzer thought he was ensuring that there was no ambiguity to the act. It might have been unethical, it was definitely illegal, but it could not be construed as love—it was sex simple. That was all it could ever be. Spitzer’s wife might be humiliated by the act, but her place and her family could not be threatened by it. Would it have been preferable for him to have sex with an intern, a reporter or a pole dancer and have the woman later sell her story to a tabloid, or hold press conferences in which she claimed that he loved her?

There is a difference. A man who has an affair with a subordinate or another woman might be a cad, but he is no criminal. Prostitution is illegal in most states and considered depraved and pathetic by most people. And this underscores Spitzer's blunder. His most calculated rationale for buying sex rather than having a clandestine relationship with a consenting and amateur party was the most naïve presumption a former prosecutor could make. By limiting sex to a business transaction, Spitzer probably believed it would be kept quiet since it would be in both parties’ interest to be discreet. But this inference was the ultimate irony for a former prosecutor—he forgot his alter-ego, Spitzer the Inquisitor, , and other law enforcement professionals like his former self driven by an unquenchable zeal to flush out and eliminate vice.

The archetype of the flawed prosecutor transcends our era and is one with which we are familiar. We do not need to go far to find a fraternity brother for Eliot Spitzer in the Who's Who of inquisitor-rogues--Rudolf Giuliani will serve nicely. Eliot Spitzer bears an uncanny resemblance to the former U.S. attorney and mayor. Both were implacable crusaders bent on purging society of miscreants and parasites from the white-collar world of Wall Street and the sleazy streets of dealers and prostitutes. Both had highly publicized extra-marital sex. However, we ignored Giuliani’s peccadilloes. It could be that the romantics in us sanction infidelity with female subordinates and divorcees but revile paid no-strings sex with professionals. Or we practice a moral double-standard, approving sexual indiscretion by an Italian American but not a Jew on the basis of ethnic stereotypes. Or did Giuliani's cross-dressing antics on stage and later his stolid leadership at 9/11 give him a toe-hold in our hearts? If Eliot Spitzer had done a turn on Saturday Night Live, would we have liked him enough to have forgiven him his indiscretion?

A clue to our attitude to Eliot Spitzer at his moment of weakness comes not from American politics but from France. There was a French prime minister in the French fourth republic who did not last long although his regime was no less successful than those that came before or that followed. This was Pierre Mendez-France. He was noted to be an intelligent and able leader. But the French did not like him. He was a Jew for one thing and he did not drink, for another. Rather than raise a glass of red wine like a good Frenchman, he drank milk. It was no wonder that Mendes-France could not last as a leader of the French.

Eliot Spitzer had a similar problem in American politics. Most New Yorkers voted for him almost out of a sense of gratitude and admiration for the corruption he fought. Most considered him bright, capable—and incorruptible. Yet, it was hard to remember any good works that Spitzer had done for ordinary folks. No public projects, no popular initiatives, no visionary schemes. He was more like an action hero clashing with corrupt titans than an actual leader of people. It was almost as if he were a prosecutor for its own sake. It was hard to remember any light Spitzer moments or any Spitzer speeches. The kind of natural, affable gesture at which Mayor Koch excelled, like “How’m I doin’?”, which raised no one’s standard of living but lifted spirits instead, was alien to Spitzer.

History is full of powerful men abusing sex. Nobles had the right to sleep with virgin brides before their husbands, a practice so inveterate that is documented in Gilgamesh, from ancient Sumer as well as The Marriage of Figaro, in pre-Revolutionary France. Austrian nobles meanwhile supported “arbor maidens”, young women from their domains whom they housed in cottages in their wooden lands and visited at their pleasure. King Louis IV had his notorious deer park, an estate populated by nubile young women, and our own JFK had his swimming pool of women from the secretarial pool.

Eliot Spitzer is in many ways an improvement over these figures. His act was illegal, irresponsible and tragic in its consequences for his career. But it was honest, it was neat, and it left no victims but himself.