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Gail Collins reaches for a link:

The Spitzer scandal has completely undermined my confidence as a voter. You pull the lever for your feisty clean-up-the-government candidate with years and years of experience putting the bad guys in jail, and it turns out he's into high-risk, high-priced hookups. Or, if we go back to the Rudy Giuliani era, he has a meltdown and calls a press conference to announce he's divorcing his wife so he can marry his mistress.

No more electing prosecutors to high office, people. Too high strung.

Such a comparison is risable. As disgraceful as Giuliani's behavior was toward his second wife, it didn't violate laws that he enforced as prosecutor and took an oath to protect as a public executive, as Spitzer's foray into the dark underworld of illegal prostitution quite possibly did. Whatever your view is on whether prostitution should be legal (I happen to think yes), the current law is the law.

But more importantly,while Spitzer vowed to clean up the state and failed, Giuliani actually succeeded in cleaning up New York City over the course of his two terms as mayor. If anything, Spitzer's failure to make the transition from prosecutor to chief executive only makes Giuliani's accomplishments as mayor all the more impressive.

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