His Dark Journey

The Spitzer children never rebelled. His older brother, Daniel, became a neurosurgeon. His sister, Emily, became a successful public-interest lawyer. Eliot never stopped climbing the Meritocrat Ziggurat. At Horace Mann, an incubator of competitiveness, he carried not the usual backpack but a hard briefcase, along with copies of foreign-policy magazines (to bone up for dinner). Rejected at Harvard, his aspiration, Eliot had to settle for Princeton, but got back on track by gaining admission to Harvard Law and making the Law Review. At Princeton, he was politically active, but while other students marched in protest, Eliot played squash with the university president, William Bowen. In the library, young Spitzer was known as "Ironbutt" for his prodigious study habits.

At Harvard, he met Silda, a Protestant and daughter of a North Carolina hospital administrator and a homemaker. At least one friend scoffed that he could ever win such a gorgeous woman; Spitzer proved him wrong. A brainy lawyer who gave up her career to take care of their three daughters, Silda has told reporters that she had doubts about her husband's political career; she wondered whether he had the right temperament. "But Silda, who seems to view her husband as a fragile creature, decided it was important to be supportive," New York Magazine reported last summer. She apparently understood that her husband's pride kept him from going into his father's real-estate business. "My father began with nothing," Spitzer told the New York reporter, Steve Fishman. "I would have been given something wonderful with a great opportunity to screw it up. If I'd succeeded, I would have been, rightly, viewed as, 'Well, look what you started with'."

But Spitzer was not out of his father's shadow (or debt) when he ran for office. Spitzer at first concealed, then belatedly admitted, that his father had advanced several million dollars (hidden as forgiven loans) to finance his two runs for New York state attorney general. His father's ambition was not easily satisfied. Fortune Magazine reported that, when asked if Eliot would like to be president of the United States, Bernard answered, "It's his very nature," and admitted to musing about spending the night in the Lincoln bedroom.

Spitzer was a clever prosecutor. Growing up in the socioeconomic milieu of Wall Street's barons, he knew their dirty little secrets and how to shame them. He would bring a case, then leak it to the press to force a settlement, rather than engage in endless litigation against high-priced defense lawyers. He knew that after reading their more egregious e-mails bilking clients splashed in the press, stock analysts would be eager to make a deal and move on. Spitzer befriended media types and was soon earning a reputation as "Eliot Ness" and "the Sheriff of Wall Street."

His reward was Albany, N.Y. In 2006, Spitzer won the governorship in a landslide. He modeled himself on Theodore Roosevelt, whose portrait hung prominently in his office. Spitzer was, like TR, a great, belligerent Harvard man determined to rid Albany of corruption. But Spitzer seems to have forgotten that in 1899, the hacks managed to run Roosevelt out of town within a year (the Albany bosses arranged to have Roosevelt put on President McKinley's re-election ticket for the 1900 campaign). New York state, Spitzer announced at his inaugural with a few poorly chosen words, had been asleep for a decade "like Rip Van Winkle." This, Spitzer announced, jaw jutting, was "day one."

Spitzer almost immediately got into a feud with one of the toughest bosses, the Senate majority leader, Republican Joe Bruno. Bruno called Spitzer an "overgrown, rich spoiled brat who has tantrums all over the place." Spitzer may or may not have referred to Bruno as a "senile piece of s––t," as widely reported, but he definitely told the Assembly Republican leader, James Tedisco, "I'm a f–––ing steamroller and I'll roll over you." Before long, Spitzer was embroiled in a classic Albany scandal known as "Troopergate." Spitzer's aides were caught siccing the State Police on Bruno, trying to catch him using the state helicopter for fund-raising trips. Unconvincingly, Spitzer insisted he was not directly involved (an investigation of the incident cast blame on Spitzer without finding that he broke any laws).