It might be a bit premature to think Eliot Spitzer finished on the basis of his having resigned from one political office.
Perhaps it will be more illustrative to consider a real example. Take the Chris Huhne situation. Huhne drove a car too quickly about a decade ago. If the secret police had taken note of this fact and kept it on file to use against him that would be laughable, quite worthless as blackmail material. But instead Huhne received a notice through the normal action of the not-at-all-secret police instructing him to identify the driver at the time of the offence. Huhne decided to ask his wife to sign to say she'd driven the car, thereby avoiding the penalty for speeding himself. Some years later Huhne began cheating on the same wife with a colleague. Perhaps our hypothetical secret police if they had discovered _this_ fact could have attempted to blackmail Huhne, but in the end it became public knowledge anyway, without any appreciable impact on Huhne's political career. The resulting divorce did however give the ex-wife a motive to tell the story about the speeding ticket, and in the process implicate both of them in a serious crime - perverting the course of justice. And _that_ forced him to resign, shortly before they were both sent to jail.
Thom Yorke sings "You do it to yourself, just you, and that's what really hurts". Indeed.
Posted Oct 6, 2013 12:02 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
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It might be a bit premature to think Eliot Spitzer finished on the basis of his having resigned from one political office.
That was not the goal. The goal was to remove him from position where he can “rock the boat” prematurely (remember that it happened in the first half of 2008 when he tried to start investigation of Wall Street machinations). It worked beautifully. There was never a need to completely destroy him. In fact politicians prefer to work with people they can control with some form of hidden story thus of course Eliot Spitzer is not finished. If he'll do things which work for the other politicians—he'll be respectable politician again, if he'll try to go against the establishment one more time—he can be made to resign easily. What's not to like?
Perhaps it will be more illustrative to consider a real example. Take the Chris Huhne situation.
Well, let's.
blah-blah-blah
And _that_ forced him to resign, shortly before they were both sent to jail.
…right when he tried to attack media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Thom Yorke sings "You do it to yourself, just you, and that's what really hurts". Indeed.
Well, sure, people are doing stupid things. All the time. Both small, insignificant people and politicians, too. But what makes these acts important years later? It's your choice what to believe in, but I'm yet to see anyone who's free from any minor transgressions and from observations most of them surface “in the most inappropriate time” for politicians. Often many years after the actual transgression happened. Funny, no? Some people believe that there's god, but me… I think it's more like the “hand of God”.
