Spitzer's splat permanent? Not if history is any guide

NEW YORK — When Democratic New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer exited a packed conference room last week after announcing his resignation, the door that closed behind him signaled more than simply the end of a three-minute statement. Spitzer's political career also slammed shut.

But one of the favorite sayings from the "glass-half-full" camp is that whenever one door closes, another one opens.

It is a sentiment that has been proved right repeatedly in American life — in politics, in entertainment, in business. There are bountiful examples that defy F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said, "There are no second acts in American lives."

"In fact, F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong," said Michael Weis, an American history professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington. "It happens all the time."

Of course, in the wake of revelations that the upright, crusading Spitzer may have spent $80,000 on prostitutes, the author of "The Great Gatsby" may look like he knew what he was talking about.

The New York press spent the week outdoing itself to reveal the lurid details of Spitzer's liaison with Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the 22-year-old singer identified as the $1,000-an-hour prostitute whom Spitzer met in a Washington hotel room. With each day's revelations, the governor looks like a longshot at ever finding another open door.

But remember that stained blue dress? Remember that cigar?

Those two infamous items featured prominently in former President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which overshadowed his second term in office, led to his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives, and made him the butt of late-night talk-show jokes for months.

And yet today, Clinton runs his own foundation, holds a high-powered annual meeting of world leaders and corporate titans, campaigns for his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton's run for the Democratic presidential nomination, and is credited by many Americans for presiding over an era of peace and prosperity.

Or, to take an example from the Republican column, how about Richard Nixon? His political career was such a high-wire act that he wrote a book about himself called "Six Crises." After losing his 1960 presidential bid and the 1962 California governor's race, he fumed, "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore."

But he came back to win the White House in 1968 and score a landslide re-election in 1972. Less than two years later, the Watergate scandal forced him to resign in disgrace. Then, after a lengthy period of seclusion, he gradually re-emerged as an author and elder statesman.

Part of our roots

The country's history has a lot to do with such turnaround stories, said Weis, the history professor.

"It's partly the fact that people had to come here to the New World, and they were common people in England, or wherever they came from," he said. "But from the minute they got here, they had new lives and they weren't bound by tradition."

And in the 19th century, if your business in New York failed, you could pull up stakes and start again in one of the up-and-coming towns to the west, such as Chicago.

"We're a forgiving country," said David Johnson, the head of Strategic Vision, an Atlanta public-relations firm, and a political consultant who worked on Bob Dole's 1988 presidential campaign. "We always have been. We've always been willing to give somebody a second chance if they're really repentant."

Johnson thinks that tendency can be linked in part to the country's religious traditions. Christianity offers forgiveness to the repentant sinner.

And so whether it's Michael Milken, the junk-bond king, or Bernardine Dohrn, the 1960s radical, there has proved to be a way back from the wilderness. Both served time in jail — Milken for securities fraud, Dohrn for refusing to testify against a fellow member of the Weathermen anti-war group — and built new lives.

Milken, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer, became a philanthropist and founded a prostate-cancer research foundation. Dohrn became a professor at Northwestern University's School of Law.

B.J. Gallagher, a Los Angeles author of motivational books, thinks there's another reason we're willing to let past transgressions fade with time.

"We love to root for the guy who is down on his luck," she said. "On some level, we identify with him."

Successful comebacks

It may be hard to identify with a high-tech multimillionaire like Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, who was recently named CEO of the year by the financial newspaper Investor's Business Daily. But in 1985, he was booted out of the company he founded as a 20-year-old. The upstart had gotten his comeuppance.

Twelve years later, Apple was looking a little wormy, with rival Microsoft ascending. Jobs came back, and thanks to its sleek computers and iPod music player, the company now sets the standard for cool design.

Sometimes a career change is called for: Al Gore, after losing the 2000 presidential election, went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize for calling public attention to global warming.

Sometimes, it's simply a matter of getting back on the same horse that tossed you into the brier patch. Martha Stewart reclaimed her domestic-diva crown with nary a pause after being released from jail, where she served time for insider trading.

And sometimes, the second act seems little short of miraculous. Vanessa Williams thought being crowned Miss America 1984 — the first African-American to win the beauty contest — would help her fulfill her show-business ambitions until nude photos of her surfaced, forcing her to relinquish the title.

But in the decades that followed, she built a multifaceted career as a singer and stage and screen actress, most recently as a shrewish magazine creative director in the TV series "Ugly Betty."

Spitzer's future

In announcing his resignation, Spitzer gave little indication what his second act may be.

"As I leave public life, I will first do what I need to do to help and heal myself and my family, then I will try once again, outside of politics, to serve the common good," he said.

But Gallagher is not counting him out. Most people, she points out, say they learn more from their failures than they do their successes.

"Eliot Spitzer is a prime candidate to achieve even more in the future," she said. "His second act is bound to be really interesting, all the more so because of his dramatic fall from grace."