Spitzer: Hero or Hack?

Living in the NY, Spitzer is a familiar face; he receives copious amounts of air time on local news outlets. He castes himself as an Eliot Ness-like character crusading against the villains of Wall Street and the media eats it up.

Truth be told, he is a publicity hound and his self righteous blather is devoid of any substance. Unfortunately in New York because he has a (D) before his name he is a virtual lock to the next Governor. Even this pro Spitzer puff piece concedes the point.

Indeed, Spitzer does display an ugly side--a relish of confrontation, a lust for the spotlight--as he gropes his way towards an understanding of the potential and limits of his growing power and visibility. Here and there, Spitzer and his cavalry of legal jousters come across as power-crazed bullies. In one instance, two Spitzer lawyers give an executive 24 hours to plead guilty, threatening if he doesn't to arrest him at home in front of his child and pregnant wife. In another, an exec is sent to jail despite his bond with his severely disabled daughter.

Of course this type of behavior is not just excused but praised because the rich are inherently evil. Imagine the outcry if he was this tough on violent criminals? So what philosophy underlies his prosecutorial zeal and what would his policies as Governor look like?

As Masters points out, Spitzer himself has written that the future of the Democratic Party depends on its ability "to promote government as a supporter of free markets, not simply a check on them," and to hew to "a vision consistent with trust-busting and other progressive market measures first enunciated early in the last century by Theodore Roosevelt." Which is exactly what Spitzer has done.

What does this mean when applied to policy? If government has to "support" free market what is that but the same misguided Keynesian economic model that has animated liberal policy for the last 60 years? What trusts does Spitzer plan to take on? Standard Oil & AT&T are long gone products of the industrial age. In the information age no company no mater how large or profitable is safe from competition unless insulated by government regulations. Case in point witness the struggles of once mighty GM. Further largest most socially damaging monopoly is K-12 education. The government Education bureaucracy is an agrarian age institution that is in desperate need of competition.

Like [Teddy] Roosevelt, Spitzer doesn't see himself as an antagonist of the free market, but rather as its defender against those who would game and corrupt the system. And he is quite explicit about the fact that he sees this not just as good policy, but good politics--particularly for Democrats, and for himself.

The way to insure that no one "game & corrupt the system" is to allow producers not to be hampered by overbearing government regulation that forces them to restrict choice for consumers. Consumers in the market place respond much quicker to events than any legislative or prosecutorial act of government ever could. Spitzer may or may not understand this, but he is right that a significant constituency does exist for his anti growth view point.