Comebacks

Eliot Spitzer's Redemption?

Hooker scandal can't hold him down.

Eliot Spitzer’s public career seemed over when he resigned two years ago as governor of New York after revelations that he had purchased the services of a prostitute. But after an 8½-month hiatus—and without the traditional redemptive gesture like rehab or prison—Spitzer gradually began crawling back into the public eye (for respectable reasons). The New York Post reports that Spitzer has finally admitted he is "itching for a way back into politics." And The New York Times tracks his rise: First an op-ed on financial regulation for The Washington Post, then a regular column for Slate. Slowly, TV invites trickled in, and then Bill Maher had Spitzer on his show and did not grill him about the sex scandal. Spitzer’s case shows how tired the public is of the scandals of imperfect lawmakers. And now New York politicos are speculating about his return to politics. “Some thought he is making a play to come into elected office,” one said. “That didn’t get a lot of support. But they thought, ‘He’s having an influence on policy, so let’s look past that episode in his life and appoint him as an adviser to something.’ That was the consensus.”