Eliot Spitzer, in a wistful statement, referred only to his "private failings" (we assume he is referring to his frequent flier status with high-class hookers; money-laundering really wouldn't qualify as "private") without explaining what they were. He lamented his inability to fulfill his own promise as the governor of New York, evoking nothing so much as Mrs. Clinton's recent tearful sorrow at the thought that she might not be able to serve us as president.

It was yet another non-apologetic apology from a public figure only sorry he was caught doing something he had convinced himself he could get away with. He claimed to be holding himself accountable, in the same way he had insisted others do when he was the one chasing them down. What he failed to do was apologize to all the people whose lives he hypocritically destroyed, while enthusiastically engaging in the same behavior he was ruining them for.

When will the public tire of these self-aggrandizing philanderers, thieves, and neer-do-wells whose only regret is that they couldn't "serve the public" longer or better? When will they learn that we don't need their magnanimity to survive our miserable lives as the vast American public?

Eliot Spitzer didn't deserve to be governor, though he has convinced himself that the people deserved him to be. In this--as, apparently, in many things in his life--he has deluded himself and hoodwinked the public. Were there justice to be had in this instance, it would be that Mr. Spitzer would be quickly divorced by his wife who would then become very very rich; be prosecuted for his indiscretions--all of them, whatever they may be, and not just the dribs and drabs he is willing to admit to (if he ever is)--with all the zeal he exhibited in going after stockbrokers and CEOs; and removed from the public discourse until he appears in the obituary column under the heading "Disgraced New York governor dies in prison."

But this is America. No doubt, he will have an epiphany of some sort (right now he's Jewish; he could learn to take it seriously or pick something else to convincingly convert to); act very sorry and noble; write a book all about how tortured he was all those years while he was betraying his wife and playing "naughty schoolboy and mean headmistress" with high-priced hookers; reveal himself to be gay, bisexual, a transvestite, or perhaps merely a "perverted American,"; go on Oprah to publicly repent while raking in book bucks; and sail blithely on. Within about a two-year period.

I hope I am wrong; but in our current America, I fear I am merely prescient.

Nonetheless, it is to be hoped that he withdraws from the public eye longer than Jesse Jackson did when he fathered an illegitimate baby (one week, if I recall correctly) or than Bill Clinton did when he was caught dipping his pen in the company intern (about three minutes.)

We, the American public, weary of the antics of the powerful and the morally bankrupt. We would like them to do the jobs we hire them for, not indulge their perverse fantasies on the public dime. If Eliot Spitzer wants to commit felonies, let him get a job where he doesn't have to scold so many felons. If he wants to launder money, let him join the Mafia or move to the Cayman Islands.

We have had enough of him.