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03/17/2008: "Eye from Albany March 2008"

Spitzer, they saw what they wanted to see

By Paul M. Bray

Let's face it; we rarely know what our political leaders really are about when they are first elected to high executive office like governor or president.

Sandra Day O'Connor whose vote in the infamous Supreme Court decision that elevated George Bush to the presidency thought he was going to be a benign country club Republican kind of leader. She saw in Bush what she wanted to see. If only she had been right. Little did she or we know he would become a Rumsfeld-Cheney radical.

Eliot Spitzer's rise to the governorship took this not knowing to higher level. By this I don't mean his comet like departure as a "john", or the fact that no one could have reasonably expected that he would be a serial john.

What fascinated me was how many people pinned all their ideals on Eliot Spitzer and saw him as the embodiment these ideals.

At a dinner between Spitzer's election and his taking office I had a conversation with a progressive woman who was bubbling over with enthusiasm for what Spitzer represented. There was also a wise political observer in the conversation. The woman told me that once Spitzer got rid of Senator Bruno and the Democrats took over the State Senate, unbounded progressivism would reign in Albany and the State.

I told her I voted for Spitzer and had high hopes but they were tempered by realizing who Spitzer really was. I asked her, did she know that Spitzer supported the death penalty. "No!," she responded, "He couldn't support the death penalty". The wise political observer said, "Yes he does support the death penalty." I then said, did you know that Spitzer supports civil commitment? "No!, she responded again, "he couldn't support civil confinement." The wise political observer said Paul was right again. And this repeated itself when I mentioned Spitzer being closer to the State Senate than the Assembly on criminal issues, Spitzer being fiscally conservative on taxes and spending, and on other issues where Spitzer was not the progressive this woman imagined.

Demonizing Albany, a very easy thing to do, and attacking Wall Street were all Spitzer needed to do to become the progressive's white knight. The woman I spoke with was not alone. Just read "Confession: I thought electing Eliot Spitzer governor of New York was a really good idea. Now it's clear to me why some people refuse to register to vote. You never know" by NY Times columnist Gail Collins. She wrote in her column: "Sure, you think you're up on the issues. And you watch for character flaws -- we've been watching Hillary Clinton's for so long we could give them pet names. But we don't really know. What if she has a secret life as a French undercover agent or a space alien? 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."

One of the lessons from the Spitzer affair is to not let your prejudices, in this case being anti-Albany, overwhelm your judgment. Sure, politics in Albany is messy, sometimes dirty and often ineffective. But isn't what we see in Albany what we should expect in any Capital where governing decisions are made for a population and territory that has great diversity and varying levels of needs and wants. Albany carves up a big pie of over $100 billion in the State Budget and affects a very wide range of public and private actions worth many, many times that amount. Considering the graft and corruption in democratic nations and states around the world, it is amazing (albeit, not justifiable) that state government in Albany is as clean and effective as it is.

Governance in Albany and elsewhere is a power game and for the legislative parties you either win or you are out of the game at least until the next election. No wonder the political battles are intense and campaign money from lobbyists is so precious. There was a time when a governor was leading on cleaning up water bodies like the Hudson River and building a State University System. At that time legislative leaders would fight it out when their houses were in session and then go back to one of their offices, kick up their heals, have a beer and laugh about what just happened. There was a clear agenda for the public good and civility amongst the political contestants. Those days ended in the 70s.

From day one it was clear that Eliot Spitzer was not a leader. What was wrong wasn't just that he was tough -- you know the "steamroller" thing, but that he didn't even coalesce his natural friends (they were just as subject to his knee jerk attacks as his enemies). He thought of himself as a law unto himself ("smartest man in the room") and his cause was always right. Good governance doesn't work that way. We should be grateful not that he fell. That seems like it was fore ordained. Rather let us be happy it happened so quickly leaving us with a new Governor who has a sense of humor, civility and perspective.

Sure, reform needs to be on the political agenda in Albany. It just needs to be built on the base of real leadership. We need to be much more careful not to just see what we want to see. This especially applies as we approach the national election in November.