Spitzer in Exile

Still, the move away from public life was jarring. Alone in the apartment, he felt "a terrible sense of loss." He tried not to read the newspaper. He stayed away not just from stories about the scandal, but from the great hurly-burly of American political life. Reading too much about the world he'd left behind, he feared, "would not be a healthy endeavor." Usually, he ended up reading the news anyway. "I have to balance the fact that it may be difficult with the sort of magnetic urge my hands have toward the newspaper in the morning. Which is just hard to undo."

It was an awful time to give up an addiction to politics. That spring, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were in the throes of their marathon primary battle, and when he would go out with friends, the topic would inevitably turn to the presidential race. "One of the hardest things to accept is that we are replaceable," he says. "Intellectually, I think we all know it. But it's harder to accept it emotionally. And, to a certain extent, you feel like saying, 'But wait a minute, how can things be continued without me?' "

Early this year, Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York, sent Spitzer an e-mail. When Spitzer's scandal broke, Koch wondered on TV if the governor had a "screw loose." But in New York political circles, hard feelings soften. "I like him very much and I'm sorry that his career was interrupted by his inability to restrain himself," Koch says. The former mayor and the former governor agreed to lunch. Koch made a reservation at the midtown restaurant Trattoria Dell'Arte: "We had a secluded table; I didn't know if he was out and about." But the Spitzer he found waiting for him was in good spirits. "I thought he'd lost a little weight, which I told him," says Koch. "But he wasn't dour, he wasn't depressed … I tried to convey to him that his career is not over. I think he had come to that conclusion himself."

Spitzer had come out of hiding. In November federal prosecutors announced that they would not press charges. "I think I would have been the only person in the history of the federal government pursued for that," says Spitzer, "so it struck me as odd that it took that long. But so be it." Still, it was a relief; he was free to return to regular life. He was the hit of the Slate holiday party at the downtown lounge Happy Endings, debuting a new self-aware, self-deprecatory Spitzer. A Vanity Fair writer quoted him responding to a joke that Bernie Madoff, the alleged Ponzi schemer, was "worse for the Jews than anyone since David Berkowitz." Spitzer: "Well, I was New York's second Jewish governor. Look what I did."

By spring he was ubiquitous. On the first Wednesday after the anniversary, he was on NPR talking about the financial crisis. A day later, he taped a CNN interview with NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria. The next day, he lunched at Michael's, the midtown restaurant, where the media "A-list" gathers to gawk at itself.

By this point, Spitzer had grown accustomed to the gaping. "It doesn't matter if it's at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street or in Salt Lake City," says his friend and former adviser Lloyd Constantine. "People recognize him. And it's a full range of emotions: I love you. I hate you. You're a son of a bitch. You're the best. He handles it with incredible grace and equanimity."

For most people, maybe even for most politicians, it would be unimaginably difficult knowing that every stranger you encounter knows the intimate details of your greatest shame. Spitzer says it doesn't bother him. "I think cabbies must be among the best-informed members of our society," he says. "They love to talk to me about every issue … A lot of them either don't want me to pay or want me to sign the bill that I pay with … Literally, twice in the last week they've gotten out with their cell phones … to take a picture. It's very nice and I don't read anything into it."

He has come to rely on the kindness of strangers: "They respect this notion of, yes, we all absorb the media and read the stories of other people's lives. But when we see them, we think, hey, there but for the grace of God go I. Show the guy some decency." As the weather grows nicer and the days longer, he sometimes meets Silda outside her office on Madison Avenue in the evening. They walk 20 blocks uptown together, toward home.

What's ahead remains a mystery. Spitzer's friends say, for now, he is happy with his role as a commentator, that he is tickled by his ability to have an impact on the debate. "I'm just writing a story that I think is pretty good," he said when I called him in his office one day. "I'm sure all writers think that." He has, in fact, carved a niche for himself—a Democrat who owes nothing to, and does not expect anything from, the Democratic establishment. He worries about populist overreaction on both sides of the political spectrum: "I think the whole thing about bonuses was faux populist. Scary. Really scary. I have no problem with people getting extraordinarily rich when they've taken real risk and been creative."

This outsider's view could give Spitzer a position of relevance—and maybe more. "I got two calls today saying, 'Are you running for governor?' It's like, what?" (For the record: no way, he says.) Spitzer is still a young man in a country with a short memory. While the 2010 governor's race is unimaginable, other races—say, New York City mayor in 2013—are not. When I asked him if his reemergence meant he could run again for office, he responded, "I don't know if I could, but I can tell you that is not what this is about." For those not skilled in politician-speak, note that he didn't say no.