Disloyal Democratic Party

By Frank Moraes 

I am very glad that Eliot Spitzer has decided to re-enter politics by running for New York City comptroller. And right on cue, Matt Yglesias has said what had to be said, "Eliot Spitzer Never Should Have Resigned in the First Place." Mostly, his article was an excuse to point out that Spitzer most likely wants this "lowly" job because it would give him control of the public employee pension funds. And that means he would have some power to go after Wall Street. Surprisingly, Yglesias does not go to the next step, which is that Wall Street is going to put big money behind Spitzer's primary opponent Scott Stringer. And it may not be that hard for Stringer to get the advantage given he isn't a bad guy himself. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how the election goes.

What I'm more interested in is the Spitzer resignation itself. As with Anthony Weiner, I think his resignation had more to do with the complete lack of support by his own party than anything else. In both of these men's cases, the scandal was relatively small. But Democrats are not a group prone to circling the wagons. They are more in the habit of waving a white flag and yelling, "We've got him here! He's all tied up! We'll bring him right out!"

This has long been a problem for me with the Democratic Party. As much as I hate just about everything the Republicans stand for, at least they are loyal when it comes to all of this non-ideological bullshit. Of course, they are like the medieval Catholic Church when it comes to ideology. The Democrats are just the opposite. A Democratic candidates can be anti-individual welfare and pro-corporate welfare and we will herald him as the greatest Democratic President since FDR. But let a sex scandal show up and suddenly the Democratic Party is as pure as Mother Teresa. In fact, I wonder if the Democratic Party would have stayed as loyal to Bill Clinton had it not been for the constant ridiculous trumpeting of fake scandals all through his presidency. (Regardless, it was only his will to fight that saved him.)

It is interesting, this comparison of the two parties. They kind of show the main ways that parties can go wrong. The Republicans have become too pure in terms of ideology and the Democrats have become too impure. Both of these failings have advantages. But what it means as a practical matter is that the very best politicians in both parties are drummed out: Republicans because they are too reasonable and Democrats because no one is ever that perfect. At least, no one who has anything going on intellectually!

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Be careful which enemies you make

By Edward Copeland 

In Charles Ferguson's outstanding documentary on the financial meltdown, Inside Job, one of his interview subjects is former N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who'd been known as the Sheriff of Wall Street for going after shady business practices long before the collapse. Toward the end of Inside Job, it makes the point that none of the financial firms ever faced investigations for their traders writing off high-priced escort services as business expenses, but the Justice Department did pursue Spitzer when it was discovered after he was governor that he used an escort service. The work that Spitzer did and the promise he held as a gifted politician that came crashing down because of his personal weakness are detailed well in another excellent documentary from the prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.

Gibney also made the great 2010 documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money as well as the similarly outstanding Taxi to Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the World. He also served in producing capacities on Ferguson's excellent No End in Sight and the brilliant Who Killed the Electric Car?

While Client 9 definitely makes the case that the political downfall of Spitzer may have been an orchestrated hit by his enemies in the business community and the Republican Party, Gibney doesn't try to downplay Spitzer's faults beyond the weakness that led him to seek high-priced sexual companionship in the first place. The film paints a broader portrait of the man's achievements and his hubris, which include a superiority complex and an approach that makes him come off as a bully, even if what he was trying to do was right.

As with the best documentaries, Client 9 teaches you things that you didn't know. It seems as if so many of the recent outstanding documentaries, no matter what their subject may be, show how spoonfed the U.S. media are, regurgitating "facts" that get handed to them while seldom checking their veracity. As far as I knew (and I imagine this to be the case with most people who heard about Spitzer and the call girl), his preferred escort was "Kristen" aka Ashley DuPre, who then turned herself into another of those freak celebrities, who ended up with a job at Rupert Murdoch's New York Post as a love and sex columnist.

Client 9, through interviews with one of the owners of The Emperors Club escort service, reveals that Spitzer saw "Kristen" maybe once but mainly went out with a woman who went by the name Angelica. Gibney interviewed her, but she didn't want her face or voice revealed, so an actress plays her part and reads the transcript of her interviews. Ironically, she's now a commodities day trader.

Where Spitzer really might have earned the enemies who were determined to stop him was when as attorney general he went after the head of AIG, Hank Greenberg, for the crooked financial games that company was playing, long before that company's collapse became a major cause of the world financial collapse and cost U.S. taxpayers billions in not one, but two bailouts. Greenberg was not at the helm by then, having been removed by his own board for violating company rules, but the methods AIG employed while Greenberg ran it were still going on and led to AIG's implosion.

U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia prevented Spitzer's pursuit of Greenberg prior to that by claiming the Justice Department was building a case against Greenberg, which they never filed. However, this same Garcia intercepted wire transfers Spitzer made and started looking into escort services that led to leaks that got Spitzer's sexual habits revealed. This also came at the time the Bush Administration was firing U.S. attorneys who weren't prosecuting enough Democrats.

Needless to say, when prosecutors go after prostitution rings, they rarely go after the clients, just the owners and the prostitutes. In contrast, around the same time, the D.C. Madam case surfaced and they only pursued the madam there, even though it was revealed that two of her clients were high-profile Republicans, including Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who was just re-elected. He faced no legal inquiries.

Many believed that Spitzer had a good shot at being the country's first Jewish president. I just wonder if he'd been able to keep after Wall Street as he was doing, whether some of the mess that happened could have been prevented since no regulatory fixes have really been put in place to stop it since. Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations shall not perish from the United States and we the little people always will be the ones paying the price. Thank goodness we have documentary filmmakers such as Alex Gibney to do the job that journalists have long since abandoned or forgotten how to do.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)

Forgive and forget

By Mustang Bobby

When the news broke that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and then Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) had confessed to having extramarital affairs (and in the case of Mr. Vitter, engaged the services of a prostitute), the knee-jerk reaction among the conservatives was to respond with "Spitzer-Edwards-Clinton did it too!" even if no one had brought up the former Governor of New York, the former Senator from North Carolina and presidential candidate, or the former president. It was a preemptive attempt to inoculate them from accusations of hypocrisy by distraction. It's a juvenile response and it really doesn't work because a) it's irrelevant, and b) why would conservatives, who make a living bashing liberals or anyone who doesn't toe their line of granular morality, want to compare themselves to people they view as moral degenerates?

There are a couple of reasons I can think of. For one thing, the Republicans have branded themselves as the party of morality and personal responsibility and held up the Democrats as advocates of "divorce, illegitimacy, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality and pornography." And yet the Republicans have supplied us with ample examples of their own "moral degeneracy," as Joe Conason delineates in Salon.com:

The supposed depravity of the Democratic Party has long been a favorite theme of conservatives, dating back to the rise of Newt Gingrich, who distributed an official campaign lexicon to Republican congressional candidates that featured such defining insults as "decadent," "permissive," "sick," "selfish" and, of course, "liberal." Back then the Georgia Republican was on his second marriage and carrying on a clandestine affair with the young Capitol Hill clerk who would eventually become his third wife (after he converted to Catholicism and had his union with wife No. 2 annulled). In 2007, he admitted on James Dobson's radio show that he was cheating on wife No. 2 with future wife No. 3 while he was publicly chastising President Clinton for consorting with Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich has remained a consistent favorite among his pious comrades.

Today, in fact, Gingrich is fully rehabilitated as a party spokesman, still nurturing presidential ambitions. So why should any other Republican fear the wrath of the righteous? The disappointment in Sanford and Ensign among the devout must be particularly keen, since they have so rigorously aligned themselves with the most fervent elements of the religious right.

For more than a decade, Ensign lent his name to Promise Keepers, the all-male Christian prayer movement run by a former Colorado football coach, whose mass rallies highlighted men's integrity, purity and uncompromising domination of family life. Both he and Sanford have worked closely with the Family, a secretive Christian fellowship on Capitol Hill that maintains a brick townhouse where Ensign and other members of Congress have resided. Over the years both men have won the highest marks from the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition and the American Family Association -- and until the other day, Sanford was featured as an invited speaker at the Family Research Council's upcoming Values Voters Summit 2009. (As Pam Spaulding and Think Progress noted, however, the FRC removed his photo from the summit Web site immediately following his confessional press conference.)

Certainly there is considerable pressure for Sanford to resign in South Carolina, and perhaps he will surrender. But he might well ask whether that is fair when Ensign is hanging on and Vitter appears to be in the clear. For a while, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins had threatened to challenge Vitter in the Republican primary next year, but last March he announced that he won't run after all -- and instead endorsed Vitter for reelection. Amazingly, Perkins then hosted a radio broadcast with Vitter as his guest, where they tut-tutted over the alleged ethical problems of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Nobody had the poor taste to mention the infamous black books in which Vitter's friendly madams in Washington and New Orleans had inscribed his name and phone number.

That brings up another element in the equation. The conservatives are remarkably forgiving of their own transgressors. Mr. Vitter, Mr. Ensign, and Mr. Sanford still have their jobs, and the idea of quitting -- at least voluntarily -- doesn't get much traction with them or with their party. (The one exception was Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), who, when caught e-mailing sexually explicit messages to teenage boys, was out of a job and out of town before sundown. The difference, of course, was that he is gay. Gov. Mark Sanford's e-mails to his mistress are the stuff of bad romance novels, but he still has a job. There are even double standards in incriminating evidence.) Democrats are not so lenient. Mr. Spitzer resigned his office (as did Gov. Jim McGreevy (D-NJ) when he came out of the closet and admitted to an affair with his driver) and Mr. Edwards will never hold political office again.

Why is that? You could probably chalk the Republicans' ability to forgive and forget up to their Christian charity, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that they're just big old hypocrites who hold everyone else up to a higher standard than they are willing to hold themselves up to. (Either that or if they ran out everyone in the party who was divorced or had a fling, there would be even fewer of them than there are now.) And you can also assume that they will find someone else to blame for their own failings; back when Newt Gingrich was going through his divorce, his allies blamed it on Bill Clinton's culture of permissiveness, and now Rush Limbaugh is blaming Mr. Sanford's fling on Barack Obama and the struggle he had with the South Carolina state legislature accepting federal stimulus funds (bringing a whole other meaning to the term "stimulus package," I guess). So much for the "personal responsibility" party.

Moral failings and human frailties are oblivious to party allegiance. We all have them. So trying to exploit someone else's while holding yourself up as the paragon of virtue is destined for epic failure. That's harder to forgive and forget.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The unbearable insignificance of being Eliot Spitzer

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Eliot Spitzer, as you may know, is now a columnist at Slate. Here's the title of his latest effort:

In a State: Being a governor has become America's toughest job.

No word if the ex-governor relieved some of the immense stress by dumping thousands and thousands of dollars on high-priced hookers. Oh, and choking them.

**********

But seriously... Spitzer's a smart guy. And I actually still respect him (or, at least, his views). And he may very well be right that "[t]here has never been a tougher time to be a governor." He knows a great deal about Wall Street, and about the economic crisis, and I suppose he ought to be taken seriously.

But it's tough, isn't it, what with all that we now know about him?

His fierce moralism, once directed with such righteous intensity at the corrupt, simply lacks much credibility now. And the hypocrisy is just too humorous to ignore.

All choked up

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It doesn't look good, Eliot Spitzer. It doesn't look good.

Each to his own, I suppose, much of the time... but choking women? Sure, it may have been a playing of roles, but did the women know that? Do you not think that they might not have appreciated your little power games? That they might have thought they were in danger, that you were going too far? And you probably did, and yet you seem to get off on pushing others around, on abusing others. Charming.

And what does it say about you that you supposedly responded to allegations that you were being overly "rough and aggressive" by telling the madam who supplied you with the high-priced women you abused, playfully or not, to define "rough and aggressive"? Nothing good.

Now, I realize that all this is being reported in a gossip column in the New York Daily News, hardly a bastion of high-mindedness, and that Madam Kristin Davis and "Annie" may not be the most credible sources. Furthermore, I realize that your lawyer has already called the claim "outrageous and defamatory." Maybe they are.

But you just don't have all that much credibility yourself, do you?

When the magic is over...

By Carol Gee

When reputation is lost, things are not the same any more. -- Today's post looks at the current news about lost reputations, and the resulting loss of illusion among those who had believed in them. The reputation of former Governor Eliot Spitzer in the crusader community was shredded in just a matter of days by revelations of his alleged involvement in a prostitution ring. The reputation of Senator Clinton in the Democratic community is under attack because of the candidate's lukewarm criticism of the hurtfully dismissive comments about Senator Obama's candidacy by her former surrogate, former VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro. The reputation of the U.S. in the world community has been in decline almost since the turn of the century. In all three cases, when the magic is over, there is hell to pay.

Why is the price so high? It is hard to live with disillusionment. We want to think the best about those leaders in whom we place our trust to do the right thing. We are willing to be followers of those who merit their good reputations because they are believed to be among those who will do the right things. But when we find out that is not the case, the magic is over. Things are not the same thereafter for loyal followers.

Eliot Spitzer -- The former governor of New York made his reputation by rooting out white collar law-breakers, often the last to be found out in our corporation-run society. The hypocrisy of Spitzer's apparent double standard, and the use of his own methods against him, brought this leader down in a matter of just days. To quote from Intel Dump:

Follow the money. That's the age-old guidance for prosecutors, investigators and journalists who want to get to the bottom of anything. If you can find and document the money trail for any organization, you can usually figure out what it's doing, why, and prove it in court.

According to yesterday's New York Times, that's precisely how the federal government first learned of NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer's indiscretions and alleged criminal conduct. A "suspicious activity report" was filed with the IRS — not because someone suspected him of sexual improprieties, but because his bank thought he might have been hiding cash, possibly the result of corrupt activity.

Senator Hillary Clinton -- The Clintons have had a reputation as fighters for civil rights and helpers in the advancement of opportunities for African Americans since former President Bill Clinton took office. The Clinton administration made far more progress than any other administration in integrating African Americans into positions of true power in that administration and in governance in general. And Senator Clinton's apologies may or may not be enough to repair the damage. Memorandum has the late-evening 3/12 story, "Clinton Apologizes to Black Voters," here via Breitbart.com and Devlin Barrett at the AP. To quote:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did something Wednesday night that she almost never does. She apologized. And once she started, she didn't seem able to stop.

The New York senator, who is in a tight race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, struck several sorry notes at an evening forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of more than 200 black community newspapers across the country.

U.S. President George W. Bush -- The decline of the reputation of the United States as the nation to whom all others look for leadership seems unprecedented in history. The current administration's record of torture, lying, law-breaking, fiscal profligacy, and subversion of world community institutions would be hard to top by any subsequent administration. To quote the article from the International Herald Tribune (3/12/08):

Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France and a longtime humanitarian, diplomatic and political activist on the international scene, says that whoever succeeds President George W. Bush may restore something of the United States' battered image and standing overseas, but that "the magic is over."

When the magic is over, we have several choices of action. We can deny that anything is different, hoping against hope that "this is all a bad dream." We can pile on, getting caught up in endless cycles of recrimination. Or we can allow ourselves to feel angry for a time about being disillusioned, and then move on to acceptance and forgiveness (not for the offender but for ourselves). Remember, just the passage of time alone can make things better, if we allow it by letting go.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Sex and the shitty

By Carl

I think it's about time to weigh in on a topic that's troubled me all of my adult life, but has been crystalized this week with the scandal surrounding soon-to-be former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

The topic is morality.

I think we can all agree, left and right, that the fundamental struggle for humanity is the balance between individual rights versus society's betterment.

I think we can all agree, as well, that no one gets it right. Or wrong, for that matter.

We liberals are often accused of situational ethos: what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander, depending on the circumstances.

In other words, we strive to protect the individual against the "tyranny of the majority," to use Mill's phrase.

The right wing would claim that they uphold society's rule over the "tyranny of the minority".

Well, neither side has either a lock on morality or a lock on consistency, which is where the "details devil" lies.

For example, the right wing hasn't eaten its own when it comes to Senators David Vitter or Larry Craig, two men who also committed adultery and committed crimes in executing those adulteries (Craig's was not a felony, to be sure). Yet the right wing sure was quick to level calls for Spitzer's resignation.

Similarly, rather than admit that the campaign Hillary Clinton has run is a winning strategy, liberals have painted her as a "Republican lite," as if there was some moral good to come out of running a clean campaign in the primaries, and then gearing up for the general election in a defensive shell.

Myriad other examples abound, of course, and I'll probably include them as this piece goes on, but let me jump ahead a bit.

The fundamental flaw in American society is this: the economic system and the "morality" system are nearly diametrically opposed.

America was created in a Judeo-Christian form, where fair play and compassion for one's neighbors was tantamount.

The American economy was founded in a morally disinterested theory that the individual, striving for his self-betterment, would contribute to society's overall welfare. Yesterday, I wrote how that evolved into a society where government had to step in to fix deeply entrenched social problems, despite the supposed counterbalance of America's moral code.

See, the thing is, money talks. It is objective, easy to measure, has great utility for everyone, thus makes the perfect vehicle for measuring the progress of a nation.

We talk often about the Gross Domestic Product.

When was the last time you heard someone talk about the Gross Moral Product of the country?

It is against this backdrop that morality plays out: my morality and your morality and the right wing morality all must compete head-to-head in an environment where winners are easily found.

You know the bumper sticker: "He who dies with the most toys, wins."

In truth, whatever moral code we have is pretty arbitrary, despite the facade that it is strict, Christian, and widely enforced by society.

It's an extension of the dichotomy you raised in Sunday School: Thou shalt not kill, but people fight wars in God's name, or kill abortion doctors, or bomb Federal offices in Oklahoma City.

There's always a loophole.

This "loopholic morality" becomes magnified the closer you come to real power: it's moral for George Bush to lie us into war, some would say, but not moral for Eliot Spitzer to pay to get laid.

(I'm disregarding the legal aspect of the case: a bad, immoral law should not be obeyed anyway.)

I've even heard liberals make the claim that it was OK for Bill Clinton to have a mistress but for Eliot Spitzer to pay for sex was wrong.

Actually, I thought of a rationale for Spitzer that made pretty good sense to me: by not getting involved with "that (generic) woman," Spitzer avoided dragging another person into his sordid psyche, but also he could portray this as a business decision to have sex for relaxation or release or because he was kinky and his wife wouldn't do whatever it was he needed, like, say diapering.

Getting caught with either a mistress or a hooker would be a bombshell, true, but there's an implied contract, I think, in hiring a hooker. It may not be enforceable like attorney-client privilege, but a hooker who blabs about her (or his) clients will soon find he has no clients at all.

All this leads to the point of this post: sexual mores.

If Bill Clinton made the rest of the world, particularly Europe, embarassed for us, what do you think the reaction is about this story in, say, England, which 50 years ago had it's own "showgirl" scandal, complete with Soviet espionage thrown in as a bonus?

Not surprisingly, they focus on Sptizer's hypocrisy, being known as a straight-arrow, no nonsense prosecutor. There is something to be said about applying one standard of behavior for yourself and then a different one for others. It's not about sex, it's about standards.

Trouble is, those standards, in this instance, wouldn't exist if it wasn't about the sex. There's the rub.

America has a pretty repressed attitude about nearly all things sexual. Most people find something someone else does abhorrent, deviant, and therefore immoral behavior.

Me, I'm pretty tolerant. I don't care if you're an athletic handsome Lothario who travels the country on business getting laid in every town by frustrated housewives, or a fat ugly bisexual domme wannabe who swaps partners like I'd swap baseball cards, that's OK.

I'd like to think that's the way most people are, but I have a sneaking suspicion, based on how sex gets manipulated and perverted by people for other advantages, that I'm in a minority.

Take the woman who gets pregnant, marries the father, then a few years later kicks him out and demands alimony and child support. Sex was a weapon.

Take the guy who demeans his rival by saying to a potential date that he's a womanizer because he has a lot of female friends who find him attractive. "Fear of sex" as a weapon: "Look at all those chicks around him! Look at how he flirts with them!"

Or just look at the gay marriage struggle. Or the abortion fight. Or the persecution of any politician who has even the slightest hint of impropriety in his demeanor.

In this atmosphere, does it surprise anyone that there are women and men, mostly women, who make a pretty good living by indulging sexual fantasies? We're terrified to ask for anything in a relationship that doesn't involve a man, a woman, and a horizontal space.

And does it surprise anyone that, in a society where normal sexual urges are repressed, channeled, and put into boxes like "marriage", "commitment", "romance", and "fidelity", that people will not only stray, but having strayed and found it exciting and good, stray even further? To the point of self-destruction in "polite" society?

I wonder when America is going to grow up?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Should I stay or should I go now?

By Carl

No doubt you've heard the tale of woe of New York's Democratic (you're welcome, Stewart) Governor, Eliot Spitzer, who unwittingly got caught up in a money laundering operation that revolved around an online prostitution ring.:

The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer's suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.

I dare say, this is one of those infrequent moments in politics when you lean back and exhale. It was only sex (so far).

Many in the opposing camp of NY State Republicans, chief among them the ethics-challenged Joe Bruno, have called on Spitzer to resign.

Eliot. No. Don't do it. There is no legitimate rationale, based on what's been made public thus far, for you to resign and indeed, to resign might hamper New York politics far more than the battles you will face going forward.

You have a short window of opportunity to put this behind you quickly. From all accounts, this was money you spent out of your own pocket, and the time taken away was your own time. There have been no allegations that state police accompanied you to the DC hotel or stood guard over you.

The real damage you have done is to yourself and more, to those whose trust you have earned over these past forty eight years: your family.

You've made a general apology, no doubt on the advice of your attorney, and kept it ambiguous, again, on the advice of your attorney. That attorney is likely in negotiations with Federal prosecutors to swing a deal.

Here's the deal you should swing:

-- A blanket but specific apology to the people of New York, to your family and your friends.

-- An acknowledgement that you exhibited poor judgement in your personal life.

-- A refusal to resign. Personal weakness is no reason to give up what could yet be a great governorship. Promise to double your commitment to the job and more, to your family.

-- Personally see to your administration's involvement in the budget negotiations (New York's fiscal year ends March 31). Convene the Council of Three (Senator Majority Leader Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and yourself) and hammer out the deal. No surrogates. You won't let this distract the state from its business.

This will probably satisfy the DoJ (particularly once Bush is out of office), who are more interested in the money laundering than in counting coup. There is no profit for them in pursuing a two-headed case of prostitution and money laundering. They'd rather focus resources on the real felonious behavior.

One more thing: insist that no charge be levelled against the prostitute in question, the so-called "Kristen". If you walk, she should walk, barring any knowledge of money laundering.

The public humiliation and refocus on your job, particularly in light of your now-dimmed reputation as a stand-up guy, will serve you well.

And make damn sure you remember your wife's birthday this year...

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Hypocrisy and moralism: The fall of Eliot Spitzer and the rise of the double standard

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(See my earlier post here. The updated NYT article is here. ABC looks at the FBI/IRS investigation here.)

Greenwald asks: "Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?" -- "[A]re there actually many people left who care if an adult who isn't their spouse hires prostitutes? Are there really people left who think that doing so should be a crime, that adults who hire other consenting adults for sex should be convicted and go to prison?"

Well, yes, I suspect there are many people who care. America's retrograde views on sex and sexuality are still quite prevalent, after all.

Now, whether such views should or should not be prevalent is another matter, and Glenn is right to question those views. As I mention in my previous post, I think prostitution laws should generally be relaxed -- or, let's be blunt about it, overturned (with restrictions, of course, and highly regulated).

I certainly agree with Glenn that sex with a prostitute (consensual sex for money generally) does not warrant prosecution and imprisonment, and, legally, Spitzer should be treated like anyone else. But I do not agree that, non-legally, he should be treated like anyone else. He is the governor of New York, after all, a prominent politician, a democratic leader. Like it or not, we do need to hold our leaders to higher standards than we do most private citizens. We must be able to trust our leaders -- and is not one of our key criticisms of Bush and those around him? And we certainly do not want our leaders hiring prostitutes.

As liberal as I am on sexual matters -- and I am extremely liberal, I suppose -- I think Spitzer was right when he said he broke his obligations, including his public ones.

Now, does this warrant resignation? No, maybe not. I'd like to know more about what happened before answering that question. My initial reaction is: probably not. (And the same goes for Republicans like Craig and Vitter.)

Is Spitzer a hypocrite? Yes. That much is clear. But, as I wrote in a comment to my post linked above, what bothers me is that he is being treated differently than Republicans (and conservatives generally) who find themselves in similar situations. What they do is deny, then un-deny, then find God and repent (sincerely or not), and express contrition (genuine or not), then blitz the media seeking forgiveness, looking and sounding pathetic and forlorn, then go on with their careers, all forgiven, all forgotten. And what about someone like Gingrich? While Bill Clinton was being persecuted by Republicans, Gingrich among them, he was engaging in rather inappropriate behaviour, at least from the perspective of the moralists. And did Gingrich suffer for it? Hardly. And he is not alone.

This is not to excuse Spitzer, just to note that the hypocrisy is political as well as personal. Republicans, including (or especially) the rabid moralists among them, seem to be able to get away with it, hiding behind their God and lashing out at the "liberal" media when their "sins" are exposed, while Democrats like Spitzer (or Gary Hart, or Bill Clinton, etc.) are treated to the moralistic wrath and partisan hypocrisy of the right and the blatant double standards of the media -- and the hand-wringing of some on the left.

Let us await more details before judging Spitzer, but let us not accept how he is being treated, and how he will continue to be treated, by the moralists and hypocrites on the right and in the media.

Spitzer, prostitution, and superdelegation

By Michael J.W. Stickings

NYT: Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring

**********

Chait at The Plank:

Clinton Loses Superdelegate?

Eliot Spitzer is about to have a news conference, allegedly regarding his involvement with a prostitution ring. (As a customer? Prostitute? Did he handle their finances? We'll see.)

Anyway, let me be the first to go there: Spitzer is a superdelegate and has endorsed Clinton. I assume he may lose his superdelegate vote.

Still waiting for him to speak...

**********

The NYT article has been updated: "Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation."

Spitzer = Client 9.

Whoops. Nice job, Mr. Crusader.

(Whatever my views on prostitution -- I do think prostitution laws should be relaxed, but, obviously, it doesn't look good when a crusader against prostitution rings gets caught in one himself.)

**********

Spitzer has apologized (via CNN): "I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, to whom I promised better... I am disappointed that I failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself."

Alas. I have always liked Governor Spitzer, but this looks to be a pretty damaging scandal.

**********

New NYT: "Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a law enforcement official and a person briefed on the investigation."

**********

Update (5:37 pm): It is being reported that Spitzer could resign as early as this evening. Lt. Gov. David Paterson would be sworn in as governor.

What a sudden, and dramatic, political fall.

Poetic license

By Carl


For my part, my position on undocumented workers has always been clear: immigrants are the single biggest economic engine this country has ever had, bigger even than the westward expansion (which was caused and created mostly by immigrants anyway... it wasn't white Anglo-Saxons saying "there goes the neighborhood").

Ergo, any unnecessary restriction on immigration in my book is stupid, nevermind unenforceable. For the record, I am first-and-a-half generation American.

Then comes Tuesday's debate, where Hillary was lambasted for giving a realistic, practical answer, if clumsily worded and even more clumsily defended later on, where it appeared she flip-flopped on Eliot Spitzer's licensing plan for immigrants. Under his plan, which was defeated by the state Senate, undocumented immigrant workers would be allowed to obtain driver's licenses.

There's an awful lot of sense here, even if at first blush it seems unpalatable to people who don't share such a generous view about immigration as I do: encouraging them to get legal documentation to drive means they'll be more likely to purchase insurance for their driving, and that means a smaller insurance hit to the rest of us. As it is, they can't buy insurance.

If even a small percentage of "undocumentarians" get their licenses, we've made some headway against one of the more intractable problems of this issue: the costs to society.

Since Congress has abrogated its responsibility on the issue, as Hillary took pains to point out during the debate, Spitzer's plan makes an awful lot of sense. You're not giving anything away to anyone, but you are giving something back to the people who were here first: more security.

Obviously, if Congress later decides to take a stronger anti-immigration stance, Spitzer's plan can close up shop quickly. No harm, no foul.

So what this argument really is all about is the perception that, by having a driver's license, you are making an undocumented worker more American by making him more documented.

Rubbish. A driver's license is not a replacement for a tourist visa, much less a work permit or a green card. And now that the State Department has initiated a "passports for all international travelers" policy, it's not even like a driver's license will get you back into the country at the border.

When most people think of undocumented workers, they think of the day laborers at the corner 7-11 or gas station, waiting for pick up to a menial job (that pays so little, you couldn't get an American to do it anyway).

But many undocumented workers have been here for decades. They own and run businesses: bars, dry cleaners, subcontractors for the construction trades, vegetable stands, restaurants, newspaper delivery services, daycare, private school buses.

In other words, they already drive with the risk of knowing that even one accident can drive them out of business, and knowing that one accident will be unrecoverable to the person or property owner that is damaged.

And they contribute to society, especially to the economy. Believe it or not, they DO pay some taxes: sales tax, for example, or gasoline taxes.

Now, I'm not proposing throwing the borders wide open to anyone who has the gumption to clamber across, or throw out the visa program and let people stay as long as they like. We need some form of bouncer standing there, deciding who can and can't come in: who's going to add to our society while tossing those who means us harm.

But lets not blame immigrants for our own paranoia.