[NYPOST] Tail end of a longer article on another guy who's never been anything but a politician, trying to make a comeback after being caught with his pants down. It's the same kind of arrogance that's characteristic of Anthony Wiener, B.O., and dozens of others, not all of them Demns.
In pursuing Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the head of the insurance giant AIG, he simply declared his target flatly guilty of "fraud" on national TV -- and while Spitzer managed to frighten the AIG board into driving Greenberg into retirement, all criminal charges against Greenberg were eventually dropped. Spitzer has never apologized for what amounted to an act of slander.
Such reckless behavior should have caused red flags to go up all over New York, but instead Spitzer was treated like a hero. Constantine, who later wrote a frightening book about Spitzer's degeneration in the governor's mansion, said admiringly in 2005 that Spitzer didn't "care whether he's found a mountain or a molehill. If he's uncovered five grams of venality and that gives him the hook to change things, fine. He uses that as an opportunity to clean house."
I'd submit this is a terrifying attitude for a government official to take -- using junk cases to compel changes in private industries. It's almost literally a license for arrogant, lawless overreach. Of one of his own wildly questionable gambits, Spitzer self-satisfiedly told Fortune magazine in 2005, "It was a stretch."
But the line on Spitzer was that he was the tribune of the little guy, a modest government official going up against the rich and powerful and unscrupulous, and he needed sharp elbows and a tough demeanor to measure up.
In point of fact, he was behaving like a goon. His supporters liked his goonishness when it came to Wall Street, and assumed it was a strategy that he'd move beyond when he came to hold real political power.
But it wasn't a strategy.
His very late entry into the comptroller's race, with almost no time to get the signatures he needs to get on the ballot, indicates that his impulsivity is still very much at work, as does the amount of time he has been spending on TV rather than being out on the streets getting people to sign on the dotted line.
If he lands on the ballot, the voters of New York City are well within their rights to choose him as the city's comptroller; crazy people have long been well-represented among elected officials. But New Yorkers should at least be under no illusions about what they're getting.
|