Pitiful performance: The failed potty-training of public officials
or How Eliot Spitzer Became a Bimbo
posted 3-12-2008 - 4:37 pm
amended 4-19-2008 2:55 pm; see addendum below

 
I don't envy New Yorkers right now. Two of their favorite offspring have just messed themselves in public, and the entire business smells like a soiled diaper. First Eliot Spitzer, now Geraldine Ferraro. Two politicians once above reproach, and now deep in manure because of their respective impulse control problems.

Spitzer's problem, like Bill Clinton's and so many other male politicians before him, was the inability to keep his plumbing to himself and his pants zipped while he was busy rooting out fraud and corruption, with a righteousness and rough arrogance that made voters proud but won him few friends among Republicans and Democrats alike. Ferraro's was, in the heat of a tight race, the inability to resist saying something controversial and find a less inflammatory way of making her point. And because of their intemperance and bad judgment, both Democrats had to resign their positions today; in so doing, they've damaged some of their party colleagues by proxy as well, and their Republican opponents must be thrilled.

Spitzer wasn't corrupt per se, just willfully blind and criminally stupid about his sex habits. It's as if his mind somehow compartmentalized his own bedroom behavior and decided it didn't affect the rest of his life, public or private. Clearly, he had to know that it would, given the measures he took to conceal the funds transfers that paid for his very expensive call girls — and yet he was completely mindless about the very measures he took, making the same mistakes that had earlier allowed him to catch criminals he'd targeted (sending text messages, e-mail, not sticking to cash transactions that were harder to trace). He did the very things that anyone else could have guaranteed him would get him caught, yet he did them anyway, as if he were somehow untouchable or immune to such failure.

Self-sabotage, yes, but why? Was it hubris? Self-loathing? A guilty desire to be caught in his infidelity? A political death wish? Or was he just victim to his own arrogant, undisciplined, testosterone-driven, self-gratifying folly, insistently blind to consequences and egged on by midlife crisis: an inane desire to pursue young, nubile, available beauties no matter the cost and thereby try to avoid thinking about the fact that his life — including his sex life — is more than half over, closer to death and oblivion than to birth and limitless opportunity. Trite, predictable, disappointing, and stupid. Incredibly stupid.

This was a guy we were sure knew better. Of course he knew better — but like so many other men, he thought he'd miraculously be the exception (typical:  guy hits on a girl, girl gets annoyed, throws her drink in his face and walks away; guy, still dripping wet, turns to his friend and says, "She likes me!" And he believes it as he says it, the fool). The magical thinking of the adolescent male, embarrassingly popping up in middle age, and Spitzer let himself believe it, believe that he deserved this expensive indulgence despite the fact that he knew it to be criminal, had prosecuted others for that same license, and had to know what an enormous betrayal it would be of his most sacred vows, not just to the public but to to the woman he claims to love.

Consider: he's famous, even infamous, righteous, crusading against fraud and corruption, at the top of his career, and it might easily be all downhill from here on. This is his star turn. So what does he do? He puts his brains on hold and picks this moment to scratch an itch. Incredible.

Aging celebrities like Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, and the years younger but still middle-aged George Clooney get to date and even marry babes half their age or less — because they're famous, handsome, wealthy, powerful, and they were available at the time. Not Spitzer: he had a brilliant, loyal wife who was a huge political asset; perhaps he never even thought of leaving her, would never want to — but the urge to wag that weenie one more time at a lovely, willing twentysomething, even if he had to pay plenty for it, was just too tempting for his brains to click in and save him from political suicide.

Or as one of my male friends put it, Spitzer was thinking with his other head, like a lot of men nervous about their age and lost chances. And here we come to two key words that may explain why Spitzer fell: entitlement, and arrogance. There is something about midlife crisis and the realization that this may be the last chance they ever have again to shag a sweet young thing that makes men think they're entitled to try. Well, guess what, you sluts: you're NOT entitled. You were NEVER entitled to that — that's your hormones talking, not your conscience. Just because you might be able to get away with it doesn't mean you should, most particularly if you're already married or otherwise committed to someone. And whatever happened to dating age-appropriate women so that you have more things in common?

For most middle-aged or elderly men, the yen to get laid by a overwhelmingly younger woman is moot: these men aren't handsome, famous, powerful, or rich enough for that to happen. The aforementioned Messrs. Douglas, Ford and Clooney got away with it because they are rich, powerful and good-looking enough to do it, and the women they attracted all expect to profit from the association — each of them was in a less powerful, less famous, less affluent, and less accomplished situation that was made far easier to live with by becoming associated with rich, powerful, famous and still attractive men, so the gals went for it. Their maxim, no doubt, was that it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as with a poor man, which is as cynical a statement about love as you can get. But if you're a guy in midlife crisis who IS rich, powerful, famous and just handsome enough to attract a young, nubile golddigger, you stand a good chance of being able to act on that erroneous sense of entitlement.

Eliot Spitzer not only acted on his wrongheaded sense of entitlement but at the same time realized he'd have to do it in such a way as to keep it quiet. As a powerful and influential public figure and very married, he wouldn't be able to do what Messrs. Douglas, Ford and Clooney did so openly; he'd have to settle for something concealed with no possibility of personal attachment, meaning a prostitute. And this is where his arrogance came in: not only did he think he was entitled to scratch that midlife itch, he thought he could do it illegally and not get caught. This, from a former prosecutor and attorney general. One might well ask whether he left his brains under the bed.

Which is to say, Spitzer wasn't thinking at all: his brains were on hold, and he lied to himself that it wasn't a problem, never mind that he surely knew the consequences of breaking the Mann Act, a federal law all prosecutors should be familiar with. It's cost him everything he's ever worked for and may have seriously harmed his party during an election year (that's still to be seen; there may be enough time for his fellow Democrats in the state legislature and those running in local elections to recover). Lucky for the Democrats that his lieutenant governor seems to be as well liked as Spitzer is despised and that he was up front about having strayed years ago himself. Unlike Bill Clinton, who likes just about everyone he meets and is liked by many in return, Spitzer alienated so many people there's hardly anyone sorry to see him go; whereas Clinton managed to hang on and still govern, Spitzer politically castrated himself and has no future left.

If Spitzer's was a classic male blunder kicked up a notch, Geraldine Ferraro's mistake was one many women have made: the inability to resist taking a possibly overconfident man down a notch in public and not paying enough attention to either the timing or the way she did it.

She may have put Sen. Obama's success in a certain perspective that may or may not be true, but at least Ferraro did it in a way that didn't break any laws — unless you mean the unwritten ones about political correctness during a touchy and groundbreaking primary campaign. Naturally, it came back to bite her in the butt, no matter how she tried to restate what she'd said or justify it. And like Spitzer, she did damage to a friend and political colleague locked in a close race. Ferraro is gone from Sen. Clinton's finance staff, but the damage is done. She did nothing illegal, just something highly imprudent.

That's a lot of apologizing there to be done. At least Ferraro still has friends in her own party, friendships bought with years of good will that may not have been quite completely negated yet. Besides, she can still be wrong about some things regarding Sen. Obama yet oh so right about what a beating women candidates take in the way they're covered. It's not an either/or thing.

Spitzer, however, made himself so disliked by both parties in NY state that almost nobody has any sympathy for him. He's turned out to be an enormous hypocrite in his private life, and those he offended must be gloating. In every other way, he may have been an anti-corruption, anti-graft, good-government governor, yet at the same time he's a walking cliche who can't manage to keep his pants zipped and his dick reserved for his wife. And he just threw away a political future during which he might have continued to do so much good for his constituents, leaving it doubtful that any successor will be able to accomplish half as much for years to come.

This leaves us in a strange place with a bad taste in our collective mouths and one more thing to hold against politicians in general. As attorney and legal scholar Alan Dershowitz said on Charlie Rose, we don't want things like federal wiretaps meant to uncover fraud, abuse, corruption and other big-time felonies to be used merely to find prostitution rings or guys who can't keep their weenies at home (that's overkill when you can easily find ads for high-end 'escort' services in the ads right in the back of New York magazine, as Dershowitz pointed out). Nor should we want impeachment proceedings to be used to punish moral failings that qualify as minor misdemeanors in a lot of states (meaning, the johns get fines, if they're punished at all) instead of reserving impeachment for the high crimes it was intended for, like fraud, corruption, and treason.

On the other hand, this was a betrayal of the public trust just as much as it was a betrayal of Silda Spitzer. And Dershowitz was out of his frakking mind when he tried in typical male fashion to justify his take on Spitzer's Folly by saying Spitzer was caught in a victimless crime that wouldn't raise any eyebrows in Europe (apparently, he hasn't kept up with recent political scandals in France). Prostitution and infidelity were never victimless crimes (a topic reserved for further discussion on another occasion).

Impeachment or resignation might be inappropriate punishments for another man's foibles in his private life, but not for Spitzer. He ended up being forced into resignation not just because he's a former prosecutor and a goody two-shoes in every other way, but because he's been arrogant and abrasive with members of both parties, and his Republican opponents as well as many of his own party members want to see him humiliated for their own reasons — ones that have nothing to do with his 'fitness' to be governor.

As for Ferraro, I have a feeling she's still unhappy about the way things went down years ago. She's a woman who knows something about having a husband who misbehaves — except that hers was involved in a felony or two, and her campaign was badly affected by it. Not that the Reagan-Bush train didn't have momentum on its own. But until today, Ferraro was still thought of kindly in her own right. Frankly, if she'd said that any man, black or white, would do better than a woman of any color in a presidential race and had stopped there, she'd probably have been okay; but she went that extra little bit too far, got herself into deep water without a life raft, and sounded more like a bitter former contender who got cheated by circumstance than a woman stating an obvious fact. In the process, she did her candidate no favors.

Righteousness sure can be convenient sometimes; but when it's coupled with arrogance and abrasiveness, it usually backfires. There's been a lot of that going around lately. Makes you wonder when McCain will slip; it's still a long campaign ahead ... Now, if only Obama and Clinton would start focusing on him instead of each other — otherwise, he gets a free pass for five months. BAD IDEA. Very bad. One of many in a sea of bad ideas.

 
Addendum: Geraldine Ferraro made her misstep, then faded after a week or so as Sen. Clinton went on to other blunders. Former governor Spitzer similarly faded from view about two weeks after his resignation. But Sen. Obama made a misstep of his own in Pennsylvania while trying and failing to connect with hard-pressed blue-collar voters there, while Sen. McCain is indeed getting a pass, from the press and from his opponents. More on that later.