Spitzer in Exile

If there's ambivalence there, it may spring from the knowledge that while Spitzer the commentator can count on the decency of strangers, Spitzer the politician will always have to answer for being Client No. 9. I asked Spitzer if he'd spent much time in the past year thinking about the fairness of it all, if Americans ought to care about their leaders' sex lives: "I could make a persuasive case that, no, it isn't fair. But … you should be smart enough to know that those are the rules, whether or not it's fair … There are other nations that have a very different set of parameters on these things. But you know when you get in public life here that you live in a fishbowl. So you've got to be smart enough to act accordingly."

The outlines of Spitzer the politician can be blurry. Clearly it was Spitzer the politician who told me that among the hardest stories for him to read are those attacking David Paterson because "he's made some tough decisions that are not appreciated." But when he told me that he loves to watch "American Idol" because "those kids are the future—they're smart, they're creative and they're … producing something," I wondered if I was talking to the unfiltered Eliot Spitzer, the nerdy dad.

But nerds lust for power, perhaps more than anyone else. I asked Spitzer if there were ever moments when he read about some problem in Albany and was glad he didn't have to deal with it. I assumed the answer would be yes. "No," he said. "I'd be kidding myself if I ever said that. No. I wish desperately that none of this had ever happened and I were there, able to do what I wanted to do. That is a burden that I just carry … I have no one to blame but myself."

On Easter Sunday, I met Spitzer in the lobby of his apartment building. The day was clear, if unseasonably cold, and we'd made a plan to go running. "Let's do afternoon," he said when I called that morning to confirm. "This is the one day of the year when Silda goes to services. I think we might do brunch as a family when she gets back." He emerged from the elevator in a gray Adirondack sweatshirt and old sweatpants with big pockets. He was dressed just as he'd been on those dog walks, but he looked older and balder and, yes, like he really didn't care.

Spitzer runs regularly, but this would be a different kind of exertion. I am two decades his junior, as he was quick to point out. He normally runs by himself; today he would have to talk while running, and to a reporter, no less. Normally, he assured me, as we made our way along the eastern edge of the reservoir, he is faster, but he'd been sore ever since a recent skiing trip to Vail. Skiing and tennis, he said, were the sports in which he was gifted; he had "big, clunky legs" and had become a strong runner only through sheer hard work.

When we'd made it almost around the reservoir, Spitzer had to stop to catch his breath. The park was packed with runners and strollers, several of whom recognized him. Today, though, it was Spitzer who called out somebody's name. "Matt," he yelled to an older gentleman, out for a walk with his wife. It was Matthew Nimetz, a private-equity investor and former undersecretary of state. He is, Spitzer would later tell me, among the smartest people he knows, someone who "should have been secretary of state." He was also an early mentor to Spitzer at the law firm Paul, Weiss. They clearly hadn't seen each other in a long time. "It's good to see you, Eliot," Nimetz said, "good to see you out running." "Yes, I'm running," Spitzer said. "I know what I'm running from. What am I turning toward, that's the bigger problem."

We wished Nimetz and his wife farewell and jogged out through the Engineers' Gate. "Hey, Spitz," said a man waiting to cross Fifth Avenue, "I'm with you." Spitzer made eye contact with him. "You're with me? Then I'm with you." We jogged down to Madison Avenue and stopped to buy a cup of coffee.

We walked down Madison, coffee in hand. Spitzer was more relaxed than I'd ever seen him; the conversation jumped easily the way it does on pretty Sundays in New York—from mutual acquaintances, to Spitzer's eldest daughter (home for the weekend from Harvard), to people like Matt Nimetz who remember everything. "Do you have a mind like that?" I asked Spitzer. He smiled. "I remember what I want to remember."

By now we were standing in front of his apartment building. The cameras and reporters were long gone. Their likes had been seen on the Upper East Side again, of course, plenty of times in the past year—outside the apartment of Stan O'Neal, the dispatched Merrill Lynch CEO, on Park Avenue, or Bernie Madoff's building, over on Lexington. They will come again, surely, to some other building, there but for the grace of God. But in front of the Spitzers' building, it was only the tourists, spilling in and out of the park. As we talked, Spitzer grew distracted. In front of the building stood a large, bronze, modern statue. A pair of passersby had stopped to take its photograph. "People always take pictures of that statue," Spitzer said. "It's amazing." He looked at the statue with real wonder, and maybe just a little jealousy. Soon, the picture snappers passed, unaware of the fallen idol a few feet away. We talked for a while longer until we said our goodbyes. Spitzer turned and disappeared into the lobby, for just that moment a normal man.

© 2009