10 March 2008

This Eliot Spitzer business is an especially bitter pill to swallow. Spitzer, more than any other politician in the past decade, was able to take on the most powerful people in the country and hold them to account for the wrongs they committed against the general public. His crusades against white collar criminals belied the idea, so prevalent these days, that government is by its very nature slower and more incompetent than private industry. I suppose my dreams about working in a Spitzer-led Justice Department aren't very likely to come to pass.

2 comments:

Alec said...

For some reason, the Spitzer affair reminds me of something that Don Siegel, the director of Dirty Harry, once said to journalist Nick Tosches: "If you're going to be a whore, be a high-priced whore."

Anonymous said...

What about the prevalent idea that government, by its very nature, is less corrupt than private industry? Did you misjudge Spitzer, or misjudge the nature of the system in which he was working? I am curious about this bitter pill of yours; is it the philandering or the hypocrisy that sticks in your throat?