HUBRIS BITES BACK

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, ensnared in a prostitution ring, resigned Wednesday, leaving behind a tattered reputation and lots of questions. Aside from what $5,500 an hour gets you from a call girl, the most asked question is “Why?” Why would someone who spent years rooting out corruption and misdeeds be foolish enough to arrange numerous expensive rendezvous with a prostitute?

In his brief resignation speech Gov. Spitzer offered little insight.

“Over the course of my public life I have insisted – I believe correctly – that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct,” he said. “I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.”

It appears that like Achilles and Oedipus and countless figures through history, Mr. Spitzer was done in by hubris.

Hubris – excessive pride that often blinds a hero to his limitations – is one of the oldest literary devices. Icarus, for example, is so enamored of his power to soar above the land that he ignores his father’s warning against flying too close to the sun. The sun melts the wax that holds his wings together and Icarus plunges to his death in the sea.

Mr. Spitzer’s fall was less literary but no less spectacular. He spent years as New York attorney general busting prostitution rings and closing loopholes and upping ethics standards for Wall Street. Some of the financial disclosure and tracking put in place because of Mr. Spitzer’s investigations were used to monitor his transactions, which allegedly include moving large sums to pay for his trysts.

Law enforcement officials say Mr. Spitzer was a client of the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. where hourly costs are as high as $5,500.

“The same thing that makes a person imagine they are big enough and bold enough to go be a CEO of a major company or the governor of the state of New York or the president of the United States is probably the same sense of grandeur that allows them to imagine they’ll never get caught. … It’s about being bigger than the normal rules,” Rabbi Brad Hirschfeld, author of “You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism,” told USA Today.

The type of people we tend to elect to public office also are the type to take risks – big risks, Frank Farley, professor of educational psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, told the paper. “They believe they control their fate,” he says. “It’s the thrill of it.”

For Mr. Spitzer and his family that thrill came at a high price.