"It's Schadenfreude time on Wall Street," reads the first sentence of today's Wall Street Journal article. The traders and the executives can hardly contain their glee, which really, really makes me want to see Spitzer survive. But it also underscores the idiocy of his actions. Corporate titans have lots of money and, presumably, lots of private investigators. It's a bit bizarre that this was discovered by the Feds rather than used as leverage by an executive Spitzer wanted to regulate. I almost guarantee that the next politician to go against corporate America won't be so lucky. Indeed, what irks me about Spitzer's actions is similar to what I've always held against Bill Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal -- it's not the act, but the audacity and selfishness of committing it when so many powerful adversaries were watching so closely. To be sure, it's hard to live your life with the knowledge that the public good is more meaningful than your private pleasure. These are men, after all, and they slip. But at the end of the day, they chose this road, they asked for our votes, and our support and our defense. When they let these appetites get the better of them and destroy everything they've worked for, they betray their supporters, and then humiliate many of them by asking for their continued defense.
