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wrecked by success?

Posted on Wednesday 12 March 2008

Spitzer’s resignation speech was as expected. He’s a kind of flat-faced guy. Silda still looks like a truck ran over her – like someone who is all caught up in something that she can only endure. On CNN, the Lawyer commentators keep saying "you need to ask a Psychiatrist about that…" Of course the question is "Why? Why would a crusader for ethics turn out not to have any?" The mental health experts are going to have a field day with this one. I’m no expert on this topic, but I do have several thoughts. First, this is common – the Fall of the Righteous. It’s most common in the world of religion – Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, the Catholic Priest-Pedophiles, etc. etc. The papers are full of examples of the political versions. Passion, in the unconscious world, always swings both ways. The urge and the defenses against the urge live in the same mental space. And it’s not just with sex. Cheney is a perfect example. He’s terrified of the Arabs, and their destructiveness. He’s hateful towards the Arabs, and one of the most destructive forces on the planet. Karl Rove was terrified about voter fraud. Karl Rove was the master of voter fraud. What we hate and fear in others is what we struggle with within. It’s an equation as solid as:
e=mc2

Who knows how long this has been going on with Eliot Spitzer? But, by report, this started around 8 months ago, some six months into his Governorship. As a tough crusading Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer was a hero. As long as he was operating from a position of being clearly in the right, he was fine. As a Governor, he’s certainly not been a hero. His notion of issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens was a major political faux pas, and was instrumental in Hillary’s loss of momentum early in the campaign. Spitzer was elected by a 70% margin – an amazing feat in New York State. After one year in office, his approval rating was down to 30% – comparable to our now worst President in history. It appears that Eliot Spitzer had fallen prey to [in the terms of that 60’s book title] The Peter Principle.

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

Eliot Spitzer had risen to a level beyond his competence. Sounds to me like his finding a "hidey place" with his call girls was a way to deal with his tension, a place to be a hero again.

I wonder if Silda knew? Not if she knew about the call girls, but if she knew that Eliot Spitzer had occuppied a position that he didn’t know how to fill. In the trooper-gate incident, he was using the technology of a prosecutor, not a Governor. In the driver’s license debacle, he was acting like a king, not a politician. In the end, Eliot Spitzer’s fate is probably best for him and the State of New York. He wasn’t up to the job. But for his family, it’s a worst case scenario. His wife and daughters will never really be free of it, and one wonders if we’ll ever see those smiles again. This episode is reminescent of one of Freud’s papers from long ago, "Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work …. Those Wrecked By Success."

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