A few thoughts on soon-to-be former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the latest politician to get caught in a sex scandal they were sure nobody would find out about.

1. If you’re a politician and you have an embarrassing secret life of some sort, quit.  If you’re thinking about going into politics, but you’re secretly gay, or secretly like prostitutes, or secretly enjoy sending instant messages to underage boys, stop.  Turn around.  Pick a different career.  Nobody cares when lobbyists or lawyers or corporate executives get caught on federal wiretaps soliciting prostitutes.

2. If Spitzer was a Republican, the Democrats and the late-night talk shows would quickly lump him in with Larry Craig and Mark Foley as just one more corrupt, self-loathing conservative.  Because he’s a Democrat, and has had the trail of infidelity blazed for him by Bill Clinton, he’ll only go through about half the public ridicule.

3. Speaking of the Clintons, nobody cares or has made an issue out of the fact that Spitzer has been a prominent public supporter of Hillary Clinton.  It was Spitzer whose support for drivers licenses for illegal immigrants got Clinton into trouble back in October.  But if Spitzer was an Obama supporter, rest assured the Clintons would be pushing this story hard, doing everything they could to tie it to Barack Obama (What more don’t we know about the unvetted Obama and his mysterious supporters?).

4. I hate it when people go extra hard on politicians who hold themselves or their constituencies to a higher standard.  I heard George Stephanopoulos last night on the news say that because Spitzer had such an impressive reputation for rooting out corruption and fighting white collar crime, that there was no way he could continue as governor.  As though if he had a lousy record fighting crime and didn’t care about corruption, people would let something like a prostitution scandal slide.

5. Yesterday, Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro stated that “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position… He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.”  I wonder how she feels about New York Lieutenant Governor David Patterson, who will become only the nation’s third black governor since Reconstruction and the first legally blind governor in American history.  Lucky, huh?