The Note: Eliot's Mess

March 11, 2008 -- Here we thought a proposal on driver's licenses was about all the damage Gov. Eliot Spitzer, D-N.Y., could do to his favored candidate.

With apologies to Mississippi -- voting in presidential primaries on Tuesday, with polls closing at 8 pm ET and 33 Democratic convention delegates at stake -- the day's politics are being swamped by a plotline that would have been rejected by the producers of "The Wire."

It turns out Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., didn't need a Ken Starr impersonator -- here's the reminder of scandals past that she'd rather not be coping with just as she's gotten control of the campaign's trajectory again. (Once she's learned what she needs to about this case, does she denounce, reject, or -- the Clinton Standard -- denounce AND reject?)

The Spitzer thunderbolt appears to mark the stunning, early end of a once promising political career. Even if he chooses to stay in office (less than likely, at this point) he forever wears the scarlet sobriquet "Client 9."

It's too delicious a storyline to live down, not when you've made as many enemies -- and done so as gleefully -- as Spitzer. Sen. Barack Obama may not ever have to go to the gutter, not if the gutter decides to show its rusty face on its own, in the personage of Clinton's home-state governor (and superdelegate).

"He stands close to ruin's precipice, this tireless crusader and once-charmed politician reduced to a notation on a federal affidavit: Client 9," Michael Powell and Mike McIntire write in The New York Times. "The tawdry nature of his current troubles -- to be caught on tape arranging a hotel-room liaison with a high-priced call girl, according to law enforcement officials -- shocked even his harshest critics, though not all were surprised that he would risk so much."

After the apology -- complete with the political ritual of an uncomfortable wife at a podium -- Spitzer "returned to his Fifth Avenue apartment and remained there on Monday night, receiving counsel from his advisers and weighing a possible resignation," Danny Hakim and William K. Rashbaum write in The New York Times. "One law enforcement official who has been briefed on the case said that Mr. Spitzer's lawyers would probably meet soon with federal prosecutors to discuss any possible legal exposure."

The New York Post: "HO NO!"

The New York Daily News: "PAY FOR LUV GOV."

If consignment to tabloid hell is the first piece of punishment visited upon political scoundrels (and good luck controlling a media firestorm in Gotham) what's next for Spitzer?

It's his (not to mention Clinton's) misfortune that this comes in the hyper-politicized heat of a presidential race (one his name has already been close to), in that stage of the game where every possession takes on added meaning.

Clinton, who counts Spitzer among her superdelegates (though she also has the support of his would-be replacement, Lt. Gov. David Paterson), gets the next move. Until or unless Spitzer resigns (or is run over by the campaign, like Mitt Romney, who deftly maneuvered his bus right over Sen. Larry Craig) he will be a walking, talking distraction to a campaign that would rather not revive memories of marital infidelities.

"However devastating this is for the Spitzer family, it can't exactly be good news for the Clinton campaign," Katharine Q. Seelye writes in The New York Times. "One is the human level of family anguish for the Spitzers. For Mrs. Clinton, it has to be a painful reminder of her own family saga. On the political level, the intense focus on the drama in Albany may divert attention and sap energy in New York State, Mrs. Clinton's home base."

Clinton, so far, is no-commenting. "It was a blow to Clinton, who recently had intensified her criticism of rival Barack Obama's relationship with Antoin 'Tony' Rezko, a political patron on trial in federal court in Obama's hometown of Chicago for alleged fraud and corruption," AP's Beth Fouhy writes.

"While not personally close, Clinton and Spitzer have been friendly colleagues since the former first lady first ran for the Senate in New York in 2000. Her aides said Clinton deeply respected Spitzer's work during his two terms as state attorney general, where he became a national crusader against corporate corruption and Wall Street investment excesses."

The real damage comes with laughter. No. 1 on Letterman's Top 10 list of Spitzer excuses Monday night: "I thought Bill Clinton legalized this years ago."

And the political blowback has begun: "The National Republican Congressional Committee called on five Democratic candidates in swing districts in New York to disavow Mr. Spitzer and return donations he made to their campaigns. The messages also included photographs of the Democratic candidates appearing alongside Mr. Spitzer at public events," Nick Confessore writes in The New York Times.

Confessore continues, "Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, watched the news unfold with morbid fascination, according to one campaign official. Some felt sorry for the governor, the official said, and some did not, recalling how Mr. Spitzer's controversial plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants caused Mrs. Clinton to stumble on the campaign trail last year."

Even the location of the alleged tryst brought its own (uncomfortable) historical memories. "In selecting the Mayflower, he chose the same hotel believed to have been used for assignations by John F. Kennedy, and the very place where Monica Lewinsky stayed when she testified about her tryst with Bill Clinton," The Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes. "A couple of blocks in either direction are the Jefferson, where Clinton adviser Dick Morris met a prostitute, and the Westin Grand, where defense contractors were said to have provided prostitutes to government officials."

Quick resolution is the option Camp Clinton most desires -- even the juiciest of tabloid stories need oxygen, and a resignation would take most of the air out of Room 871. It's hard to imagine Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., hoping to get much traction with attacks based on Clinton's associates -- but this is one of those cases where the scandal speaks rather sufficiently for itself.

And it comes as Obama starts to learn to speak up for HIMself. He's grown tired of this condescending talk of a "dream ticket": with his 111-delegate lead, it's he who should be in the position of making suggestions of offers, he told Camp Clinton on Monday.

"I don't know how someone in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person in first place," Obama said in Mississippi, per ABC's David Wright, Sunlen Miller, and Andy Fies. "If I'm not ready how come you think I'd be such a great VP?"

"They are trying to hoodwink you," Obama added, per Scott Helman of The Boston Globe.

Per The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny and Julie Bosman: "Mr. Obama felt compelled Monday to try to stop the chatter by offering his most expansive answer yet on the issue. With a steady smile, his tone ranged from amused to mocking to derisive."

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times: "The Obama campaign is trying to solidify Obama as the front-runner -- important in wooing the superdelegates -- and the vice president talk from the Clintons was seen as presumptive and diminishing."