Happy New Year, everyone

In yesterday's entry, I wrote about a story in this month's issue of Vanity Fair, one that concerned Mayor Giuliani's campaign for president and, in consequence, the law firm in which he is a name partner, Bracewell & Giuliani.

Today I'd like to stay within the four corners of VF. For it has another story with at least a tangential relationship to the themes of this blog: David Margolick's article on Governor Elior Spitzer of New York, and the tough year he has had in Albany.

The reason that's of interest to Proxy Partisans, of course, is that in his last job, as state attorney general, Spitzer put himself front-and-center as the "sheriff of Wall Street." In his view, the SEC wasn't doing its job, so he would.

Margolick contends that Spitzer developed a model of "strategic craziness" -- planned tantrums, really -- for getting what he wanted in terms of changes in the way business is done on Wall Street, but that this model, become a habit, has backfired on him.

He quotes an unnamed source explaining the difference between being a prosecutor and being a governor -- a difference that (this is the gist of the piece) -- Spitzer has yet to grasp: "If you're a C.E.O. at a company and I call and I say, 'I'm going to fuck you, I'm going to destroy you, I'm going to indict your company,' and I sound totally crazy, you hang up on the phone, and you go see your chairman of the board, and you say, 'This guy is crazy, we need to settle,' because you're given no option. If you're a state legislator and you get the same thing, you hand up the phone, you call the Albany Times Union, and you say 'This guy is crazy,' because you don't give a shit."

Perhaps tomorrow I'll look back upon Spitzer's days as New York A-G, especially in connection with two high-profile scandals (a) "market timing" in regard to mutual fund shares, and (b) the relationship between research and underwriting.