I'm sorry too.

Where have all the good guys gone?

By now you've heard that New York Governor Elliot Spitzer issued an apology yesterday for behavior that "does not meet my or any standards of right and wrong."

I suppose we should be used to this. Getting caught in a sex scandal is becoming a rite of passage for the self-righteous. Somehow though, we believed that this guy was different. He presented himself as a crusader of sorts, pursuing Truth, Justice and the American Way. You know the drill. His manner, and of course his name, so invited comparisons with Elliot Ness that you could almost see the fedora.

It's not so much the sex, as it is the alleged hiding of money, disguising of transactions, and engaging in something he was prosecuting others for. It was the fact that this was so calculated. The irony is punishing. I'm not just disappointed, I feel like someone has died.

Having lived in both New Jersey and the Boston area, I'm no stranger to political corruption. I sort of accepted it as a way of life. Big Business would continue to have too much influence over our government and would continue to ride roughshod over its employees, its shareholders and in the case of the defense industry, a balanced budget. Writers like me would continue to point this out, try to effect some small change here and there, but that this was the way the world worked. Period.

Elliot Spitzer made me believe that it didn't have to be that way; that someone was really watching out for the little guy in a way that didn't involve protectionism, or socialism, or anything more drastic than enforcing existing laws. This was apparently too much for Big Business. It speaks volumes that a cheer went up on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the news of Spitzer's troubles.

But while Spitzer was making enemies, I was entertaining hopes that he might run for President someday; that there was still a good guy who could be a leader on the national stage. That there was someone to believe in.

I've been watching and participating in politics for a long time now, and I'm used to supporting and voting for flawed, multi-dimensional, candidates. I should have known that these expectations were too much to place on one man's shoulders. Yet, I hoped, until of course, it turned out to be too good to be true.

Just as Elliot Spitzer's public career has more than likely come to an end, so has my belief in good guys going into politics.

And that makes me very sorry.