Fall of the graceless.(POLITICS II)(Eliot Spitzer)

NONE of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's colleagues mourned his passing; their dislike helped grease his fall. One reason Bill Clinton toughed out the Lewinsky crisis was that he went into it with 60 percent approval ratings and cordial relations with congressional Democrats. Spitzer's approval ratings, after little more than a year in office, were in the 30s, and Democratic legislators in Albany hated him scarcely less than Republicans did. Spitzer was a driven, deeply insecure man who tried to master the world with bullying, bluster, and moral posturing--qualities that served him well enough as state attorney general, but not at all when it came to dealing with coequal branches of government.

Spitzer was led to his doom by a common male fantasy: that there is such a thing as a high-class prostitute. What Spitzer got instead was a 22-year-old coming off a series of lousy boyfriends and a nonexistent musical career. However far she fell short of his fantasy, she does indeed represent the high end of an industry that traffics in runaways, incest victims, and wretched indentured servants transported from chaotic parts of the world. The calls for the legalization of "sex ...