The fall of Eliot Spitzer was, for some, a matter of glee. He rode a much higher horse than other politicians. Told on Friday that Mr. Paterson was dropping out of the race, Mr. Spitzer said, “Oh, of course.”

With all that has gone on in the last two years, did he have any regrets about quitting so quickly? Mr. Spitzer clearly has given the subject a great deal of thought, but he did not want to discuss it on Friday.

He made enemies — the right ones, in his estimation, on Wall Street — and held a job that he had fought hard to get, but he also had a wife and children who had suffered humiliation.

Had he remained in office, any strengths that Mr. Spitzer might have brought to Albany were sorely needed. Every state has been reeling from the recession. The New York State Legislature has done little to address economic circumstances that are likely to have changed forever.

“What happened in the last decade was a massive redistribution of wealth to people who did not create value, but simply moved assets around,” he said. “You look at where we were in 1945 — we were the only place in the world with skilled labor, with education, the rule of law, a middle class with the capacity to consume. Now we’re not the center of the universe. All that has moved east, to China, and Asia. Albany is a footnote issue.”

In place of real engagement, Albany has a cult of faux piety that is deranged. In 2007, Mr. Spitzer’s office gave out records that showed the use of helicopters and state troopers by Joseph L. Bruno, then the leader of the Republican majority in the State Senate. It was evident that Mr. Bruno was using expensive state resources for political purposes. Yet a series of investigations focused not on what Mr. Bruno was doing, but on the role of Mr. Spitzer and his staff in making the information public. Telling the truth became a scandal.

“There were 10 different investigations,” Mr. Spitzer said. “There’s an expression in corporate litigation, the Pac-Man operation — each investigation would go after the investigation before it.”