by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
City Journal<\/em><\/p>\n C<\/span>ommentators are already calling the rise and fall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer \u201ctragic.\u201d The tragic arc, as the old Greeks articulated it, goes something like this: talent and drive lead to success, but success breeds arrogance and blindness to one\u2019s human limits. Then comes the fall from power, engineered by the gods to teach mortals once again that even the mightiest and most brilliant of us are in the end defined by our common flaws. But the fall has something grand about it: in Sophocles, for example, Oedipus\u2019s angry pursuit of knowledge about his horrific crimes is admirable, too, for it ultimately saves his city from a devastating plague. His excesses also come to some good by illustrating Aeschylus\u2019s dictum that \u201csuffering teaches\u201d \u2014 teaches that for all of our abilities and achievements, we are still mortals subject to time, chance, and our own chaotic passions.<\/p>\n Like most scandals that bring down modern American politicians, however, Spitzer\u2019s lacks the grandeur of tragedy. True, his talent and ambition, like Oedipus\u2019s, led him to significant public achievements and fame. As the \u201csheriff of Wall Street,\u201d he relentlessly pursued alleged financial evildoers, earning along the way a reputation for toughness and results that swept him into the governorship. And also like Oedipus, he overreached because of hubristic arrogance and self-righteousness \u2014 \u201cListen, I\u2019m a fucking steamroller and I\u2019ll roll over you or anybody else,\u201d he once warned Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco. Even before his current troubles, he had been wounded by allegations that his staff ordered state police to track Republican State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno\u2019s travel records, in an effort to damage him politically.<\/p>\n Yet Spitzer\u2019s downfall \u2014 sordid trysts with high-priced prostitutes, complete with grubby financial hijinks to cover up his deeds \u2014 is ultimately the stuff of low comedy and satire. For insight into the departing governor\u2019s troubles, then, we\u2019d be better off looking to the Greek comic poet Aristophanes, who uses sexual crimes and excesses to dramatize his characters\u2019 inability to subordinate the body to the mind and do what is in the public interest. Like Aristotle, Aristophanes saw politics as \u201cpublic virtue.\u201d And the paramount virtue is self-control: the ability to resist one\u2019s appetites for a higher good. The politician who gives in to appetite \u2014 especially sex \u2014 is unfit to rule, for his failure to control himself shows that he is a slave to his passions. Once such people obtain political power, like the Sausage-Seller in\u00a0The Knights<\/i>\u00a0or Bdelykleon inThe Wasps<\/i>, they use it to indulge themselves at the expense of the community. How can we trust such people with political power and responsibility, Aristophanes asks, when they will sacrifice even their own honor and reputation for the sake of more immediate pleasures?<\/p>\n Do Americans really care any more about sexual indiscretions among our public officials? Sometimes we seem to have severed the link between political power and virtue. Many now see virtue as belonging solely to the private realm, and we\u2019ve tended to reduce political power to questions of technique and policy\u2014as if knowing the name of the prime minister of Kazakhstan qualifies one for political leadership. It\u2019s easy to imagine Spitzer\u2019s ending up as neither a tragic nor a comic figure, but rather a therapeutic one: hawking his tell-all bestseller on\u00a0Oprah<\/i>\u00a0after a suitably groveling public apology, while the audience experiences neither pity nor fear, nor even scornful laughter, just the tears of cheap sentiment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a92008 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The understand the disgraced governor, brush up your Aristophanes. by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal Commentators are already calling the rise and fall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer \u201ctragic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,838],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1ov","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5339,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/troys-literary-offenses\/","url_meta":{"origin":5363,"position":0},"title":"Troy’s Literary Offenses","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 6, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers As a movie,\u00a0Troy\u00a0is okay.The fighting is fun, and the scenes with the ships arriving and those showing us the city of Troy are convincingly real. But as an interpretation of Homer's\u00a0Iliad, the movie is an abomination. Everything significant and interesting about Homer and his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6606,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bruce-thornton-on-secure-freedom-radio-with-frank-gaffney\/","url_meta":{"origin":5363,"position":1},"title":"Bruce Thornton on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Seth Jones, Bruce Thornton, Peter Pham, Diana West October 9th, 2013\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Comments SETH JONES, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, joins guest host DAN BONGINO, to help explain the terror threat from and historical background of the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. BRUCE THORNTON, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5435,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fighting-at-a-disadvantage\/","url_meta":{"origin":5363,"position":2},"title":"Fighting at a Disadvantage","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Bad cultural habits plague the West in the War on Terror by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal Six years after the terrorist attacks of 9\/11, we continue to hunt for those whose blunders let them happen. The latest addition to earlier investigations such as\u00a0The 9\/11 Commission Report\u00a0and television\u2019s\u00a0Path to 9\/11\u00a0is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5514,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/just-deserts\/","url_meta":{"origin":5363,"position":3},"title":"Just Deserts","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Separating Hussein's execution from therapy. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers In Mark Twain\u2019s\u00a0Tom Sawyer, a \"committee of sappy women\" petition the governor to pardon the murderous Injun Joe.\"If he had been Satan himself,\u201d Twain snorts, \u201cthere would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5516,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-sense-of-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":5363,"position":4},"title":"The Sense of Good","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"American confidence necessary to succeed in a war for freedom. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The execution of Saddam Hussein should be a moment of celebration for Americans. Because of the blood and treasure of United States citizens, one of the worst dictators in recent history \u2014 a psychopathic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2298,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/holders-destructive-investigation\/","url_meta":{"origin":5363,"position":5},"title":"Holder’s Destructive Investigation","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Whether for partisan advantage or out of delusional utopianism, the jihadists win. We can speculate endlessly on why Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor to investigate interrogation techniques and detainee abuse by the CIA, a charge already investigated by the Justice Department\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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