The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : What Was Spitzer Thinking?

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The arrogance and supidity of public officials never ceases to amaze me, but in Eliot Spitzer's case, it is even more mindblowing than usual. Putting aside the fact that having sex with prostitutes when you're a married man with three kids is disgusting behavior, from a practical perspective, any ambitous politicians should know that in this media age, they'll get caught and destroyed as a result of doing it. But for Spitzer especially, who actually prosecuted prostitution rings and served as the state's Attorney General, there was absolutely no doubt as to the consequences of his actions, or the tools available to prosecutors that could expose him. So what happened here? Was it simple arroagance on his part? Did all his years as a successful lawyer make him think that he was smart enough to get away with it? Were the $5,500 an hour hookers at Emperors Club just so alluring that his mind turned to mush and he simply forgot the fact that he was destroying his family and a political career that had taken decades to build? Were the risks he was taking part of the allure? Did he have some sort of latent self-destructive tendency? The political ramifications of this story are momentous. In the poetic justice department, it is simply delicious that a man who made his name by sanctimonously destroying the reputations of his enemies by attacking their ethics, would go down in disgrace over a salacious scandal. But above all, the psychological element simply fascinates me.

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Law