There's something very up-to-date and post-modern about the Spitzer implosion. Here's a guy who publicly modeled himself after  Thomas Dewey (and even Robert Kennedy) before him: He established his chops as a crime-fighter in the Manhattan DA's office when he successfully busted the Gambino family, as Dewey had nailed Dutch Schultz (and Kennedy had gone after Jimmy Hoffa).

Then he moved on to sexier, zeitgeistier targets like Wall St. hedge fund scammers, I suppose for public currency the equivalent of Dewey's prominent bootleggers. (And, like Dewey's prosecution of ex-NY stock exchange head Dick Whitney, Spitzer's anti-Wall St. greedheads campaign stood him out as a blueblood willing to turn his back on class loyalties to stay true to his scruples and the public good.) 

And from there, of course, like Dewey, Spitzer went on to NY governor. Here, supposedly, was an old-school, starched-collar public crusader--the return of the incorruptible patrician on a white horse.

Except it was all a front! Actually, the guy was spending $100,000 a year on high priced prostitutes--happily granting himself exactly the kind of the-rules-don't-apply to-me license he celebratedly decried in others.

Call me cynical--and yes, who knows what Dewey, let alone Kennedy, was up to behind the scenes--but I'm wondering if maybe there was no there there. That, really, Spitzer thought the image was the whole thing, and that he WAS following the rules, the rules of today's game: just make it look good.