The timing was immaculate. His unsavory deeds were not.
And in spite of the former New York Governor's erstwhile tramping around the Mayflower in just his socks ordering call girls to do it as dirty as can be, I believe we want him back--as Governor of New York State--on his political and prosecutorial merits.
He's already appearing on legitimate talk shows and they are not talking with him about condoms. For instance, on last night's TRMS (The Rachel Maddow Show), hosted brightly but haltingly by the irrepressible Howard Dean, Spitzer was a guest and held forth on "The Trouble with Wall Street". In a cogent, cutting manner (as is typical for him), he rather eviscerated the current pay structure and mindset of Wall Street. Specifically, he said "compensation has to come down" and "these executives are fiduciaries that work for the investors; they are supposed to safeguard the shareholders' money--instead they simply took the shareholders' money for themselves while making catastrophic decisions".
Here we have an ex-Governor of the Wall Street State honing in on the Wall Street pirates like a torpedo plane dropping a steel fish into the water a quarter mile away and in the direction of the Bismarck. He clearly has it in for these guys and he should--as any American patriot ought to.
But for him it may be even more than that. I mentioned the timing above. In hindsight it now seems very possible if not likely that the sudden revelation of his sordid trysting (that came only months before the historic collapse of the Wall Street bubble which has resulted in the worst economic era in any of our lifetimes unless we are at least octogenarians), may have been engineered by his foes down on the Street. They knew he was a pit bull, they knew he didn't care for their chicanery, they probably knew he was going to be investigating, they probably suspected or knew he was going to come down on them like a bunker-busting bomb. And so they struck first. They pretty much cut his political legs off with some seriously scandalous news, and so he toppled and fell. Now somewhat rehabilitated, Spitzer is back on his feet and may be looking for a little bit of payback.
His resignation was a win for Wall Street and the right-wing in so many ways, but I will mention just two. Spitzer, a sitting governor deeply opposed to the treachery entrenched in the financial markets of his own state, was forced to resign in disgrace. His replacement, an unsteady buffoon, is about as much a threat to Wall Street as a Vermont Teddy Bear is to a run of salmon.
But now the world has changed again. The wizards of Wall Street look more like Sauron than Gandalf. Spitzer looks more like a steely-eyed (if perhaps kinky) Aragorn than the way he looked when he resigned (which was like Gollum). Americans, still gasping for air in the oily choke-hold of a class of cynical banker-thieves, cannot at this moment be overly concerned with the bedroom antics of anyone equipped to break that choke-hold. This is especially so if the potential rescuer is of the political caliber of an Elliot Spitzer. We need a defender who knows the ropes and who knows what it feels like to trade grapeshot with the enemy.
We need Elliot Spitzer again. I nominate him for another term as Governor of the State of New York.
