Come in number 9, your time is up

There is a delightful irony in the fall from grace of the mythic Eliot Spitzer. As James Forsyth noted this afternoon in his Coffee House post , Spitzer’s done,

The problem for Spitzer is not just that he has been caught in a sex scandal but that he has based his political career on his own integrity; without it, he is nothing.

It has the makings of Greek tragedy, or possibly high farce. And in case you missed it, here is the New York Observer:

On the afternoon of March 10, 2008, The New York Times published a story positing a link between New York governor Eliot Spitzer and an ongoing investigation of a prostitution ring.

It was later confirmed that affidavits referring to one of the prostitute’s clients, Client No. 9, were referring to the Governor.

Within a couple of hours, Gov. Spitzer appeared with his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, at his Manhattan offices and, without specifying what he’d done wrong, admitted that he had been very, very bad and needed to regain the trust of his family. Reporters expected him to resign during his speech, but he didn’t.

It just brought that nursery rhyme to mind: “And when he was good, he was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid”.