Another politician bites the dust

If you follow the news at all (or just happened to pass a TV yesterday) you've heard the news about New York governor Eliot Spitzer being implicated as a client of an extremely pricey prostitution ring that featured "7-diamond" rated hookers. The news didn't exactly surprise me, in the sense that politicians are getting caught for this type of thing relatively frequently (see Vitter, David ). It did, however, make me feel sightly depressed: what it is about politicians that makes them get caught up in things like this so frequently?

Clearly, there's an element of hubris involved: one can imagine Spitzer thinking to himself "sure, I busted criminals for this type of thing while I was making my name as a prosecutor in New York, but I'm smarter than those guys and won't get caught." But was this hubris a product of Spitzer's personality, or something that comes with having great political power?

I guess the question I'm generally grappling with is the following: are politicians just normal people who inevitably become corrupted by the power given them, or is the type of person who tends to succeed in politics also the type of person who is willing to believe that they can get away with blatantly illegal activities? Both are in some ways equally troubling possibilities, as one suggests that politicians will inevitably be corrupted no matter their character, and the other suggests that in order to succeed in politics you have to be somewhat corrupt from the get go. Either way we're looking at a scenario where most (or at least a large number) of politicians are corrupt and engage in these types of activities all too frequently.

Another question I've been struggling with is whether or not Spitzer's transgressions actually matter. Sure, they matter in the sense that he is probably going to have to resign for what he did. But should it really matter what Spitzer does with his personal time if he is governing New York well? I think that it does, at least when he is using his personal time to break federal laws, but one could easily make the argument that Spitzer's solicitation of seven-diamond hookers has had no effect on his ability to governor (hell, it might have allowed him to relieve some job stress and actually helped his performance). In the end I think that Spitzer should resign because a politician can't get things done when he's breaking the laws he's sworn to protect, but one could certainly make a legitimate argument that the people are making too big a deal out of this.

(A quick mini-rant: seven-diamond hookers? Reminds of the supposed seven-star hotel in Dubai. DO you really need seven different categories to rate things? Is a seven star hooker really that much better than a six star hooker? Or even a four star hooker? How does one become a seven-star hooker? But I digress).

Anyway we're left with a scenario where yet another politician has betrayed the trust the public has put in him and provided yet another example for cynics to cite when hating on American government, Washington, and the political process in general. I don't think politicians are all crooks, and I think that many people in government (both local and federal) have the legitimate interests of the nation in mind. Indeed, I even think Eliot Spitzer's heart was in the right place, at least when it came to governing, he's done a lot of progressive things for the state of New York. Its just said to think that all that work might be undone because he, like Bill Clinton, couldn't keep his pants zipped.

Youtube link of the day: Some pretty funny pranks from a Japanese TV Show (in Japanese, but you get whats going on...its worth watching the whole thing).