"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan

I was in a meeting yesterday. As the topic veered away from relevance, I pulled up the New York Times and read that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had been outed as having used the services of a prostitute.

For a generic politician, such a scandal would be difficult to survive. For Spitzer, it will be fatal. The story arc of his career is that of high-minded reformer, battling corruption and crime, including his now-ironic busting of organized prostitution rings.

It's a war one can only wage from the moral high ground, which he has now lost. His detractors couldn't have asked for better ammunition. The hypocrisy is clear. Piled on top of his already tumultuous time in Albany, he's been defanged and can't be an effective governor.

It's a sad reminder that even the best of us are human. I had admired Spitzer and his moral crusading. This is a wholly unfitting end to that crusade. Though it might be naive to be surprised over being disappointed by a politician, this scandal is a bit more disheartening than most.

Like pmed, I'm a Waxing America reader — now that Paul Soglin (the former and long-time mayor of Madison) has hung up his (campaign-)running shoes, he passes his time opining publicly on his blog.

Not that he didn't while he was office, but now this is a clearly a man no longer subject to the self-censoring restraints of a public official, and he seems to relish the freedom.

I'm at the coffee shop, cleaning out unread stories in Reader. Soglin writes a lot. And while many of the topics aren't as relevant to Wisconsin expats like me and pmed, they're still interesting. Since he's a very prolific blogger, I tend to read the entries in batch mode, picking out the ones that interest me most.

But I think we hit a new high in getting inside Soglin's head this week. He posted his dream from the previous night in which he is a lost bus driver in Seattle and comes across a bowling alley with two armies rolling bombs at each other.

Perhaps it's his subconscious telling us that we're spending too much on defense and the war in Iraq and too little on our underfunded public transportation?

The man dreams in terms of public policy.