Vanity Fair Does Spitzer

The question now is no longer how many miracles he can perform but whether he can get anything done at all. Spitzer is at one of those proverbial tipping points, poised somewhere between formidable and vulnerable, redeemable and incorrigible. His stumbles could furnish him the only ingredients he lacks—humility and empathy and wisdom, for starters—or prove they’re forever beyond his reach. A great drama will now play out in Albany, one that will determine whether Spitzer is still a comer or what, in another generation, would be called a busted phenom.

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Though he doesn’t say so himself, Spitzer clearly feels that the Times has forsaken him, leaving him to be eviscerated by the Post’s Dicker. Day after day, in dribs and drabs of 347 or 565 or 478 words on the Post’s second page, the paper’s longtime Albany-bureau chief has gone after him, most notably with the first Troopergate story, on July 5. What drives him? Spitzer aides offer many theories: Spitzer hadn’t paid him proper homage; he’s doing a Republican newspaper’s bidding; he’s miffed that Spitzer’s office leaked word about Joe Bruno’s state-funded helicopter rides to the Albany Times Union rather than to him. More likely, it’s simply that the Spitzer saga is just so damned juicy. Few stories beat those of Mr. Clean doing dirty tricks or Mr. Competent screwing up. Or of a role reversal: Utica and Syracuse and Binghamton taking down Manhattan (the Upper East Side overlooking the park, at that), Skidmore College knocking off Harvard Law School.

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Felicity Huffman played Spitzer in the film Reversal of Fortune. Hey, it’s Hollywood.