Spitzer not a tragic figure

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: March 15, 2008

Amid the rubble of another political career felled by scandal are lessons some people are loath to learn. Reverberations from New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's ruin spread across the national landscape with the level of urgency reserved primarily for scandals of the most sordid kind, which Spitzer delivered with vigor.

The Democrat now known as "Client 9" after having been exposed as a customer in a prostitution ring adds his name to a long list of powerful people whose reputations recently have been cast into the gutter right along with their morals. Republican congressmen Mark Foley, of Florida, and Larry Craig, of Idaho, swim in the same cesspool where Spitzer came splashing down. The roster of others there is too long to cite.

Comically, with each political celeb's tumble into the muck there arises the inevitable chorus of gleeful guffaws from the opposition crowd of party panderers and false ideologues. This week, it has been the conservatives' turn to crow. Some pointed to Spitzer's endorsement of Hillary Clinton, asserting that she might be speckled by some of his mire, as if the wife of Bill Clinton could be sullied by another man's dalliances.

Almost as amusing as the race to rejoice over Spitzer's demise are the cries from pundits and assorted other gawkers calling the event a tragedy. For his wife and teenage daughters, the term surely fits. For the rest of us and for Spitzer, it is something else. Tragedies connote misfortune, which connotes simple rotten luck. That has nothing to do with Spitzer's troubles.

So what is there to be learned-

First, there is inherent folly in transforming politicians into celebrities, who, after all, have enough troubles of their own. Celebrities operate in a sphere foreign to the rest of society, a place where the rules and mores by which the rest of us live do not apply. Americans accept as routine the transgressions of celebrities of the Hollywood variety but recoil, with good reason, at the same behavior from the people elected to lead us.

Yet big-name political power players frequently are accorded star treatment. They are hounded for autographs, fawned over by adoring crowds and elevated to almost mythological status. Cloaked in the mist of celebrity, politicians and their flaws, both human and philosophical, are obscured from the view of some people who might otherwise know better. Politicians emerge from it all like athletes who rise from humble country roots or the streets to become stars only to struggle with fame's pressures and temptations.

The second lesson is that it is a fool's game to seek advantage from the scandalous downfall of those on the opposite side of the partisan fence. Recent history shows that political stars fall without regard for party or ideology. Figures such as Spitzer are not tragic but pitiable.

We hope for better from those on both sides of the aisle, for their sake as well as America's.