There’s a school of thought in management that “process” needs to be emphasized, that “continuity” and a methodical, organizationally sensitive approach is the best way of tackling any managerial headache. President Obama has taken that stance toward the nightmare known as “Wall Street,” naming two career bureaucrats—Mary Schapiro and Timothy Geithner—to the crucial posts of head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Treasury Department, respectively.

These are veteran Washington infighters, politically savvy, cautious, consensus builders. Reasonable people differ over whether they’ve accomplished very much, but what seems indisputable is that they have failed to inspire the public, failed to show bankers what they need to see: the red eyes of a bull, snorting and foaming, ready to plunge at them if they fail to change their ways.

Geithner has done such a poor job of projecting the required animus that he is the subject of bipartisan calls for his resignation. Meanwhile, the process-obsessed administration has proposed a regulatory-overhaul plan that has crept slowly through Congress.

The president clearly has a problem. He needs to forget about process for a moment and focus on leadership, and send a message that the status quo is over. I can think of no better way of doing that then by appointing a snorting, red-eyed bull to some kind of position of power—it doesn’t matter where—to get the Street back on track, get bonuses in line with sanity, light a fire under the regulatory apparatus, and above all to convince the public that the markets are in good hands.

For that job, I nominate Eliot Spitzer.

Yes, Eliot “Hire Hookers and Curse and Yell and Threaten” Spitzer, the notoriously nasty, disgraced former New York governor, the man whose fall was so rapid that his eardrums practically ruptured from the change in air pressure. Yes, that Eliot Spitzer, now consigned to—how’s this for a comedown—writing financial columns when he is not walking his dog on Park Avenue and occasionally giving interviews that show that, while not the kind of man you’d want dating your sister, he definitely knows what he is talking about.

Not long ago, at just the time we needed him the most, Spitzer was even more of a pariah than he is today. Some months back, just as the financial crisis was in full agony, I was sitting in a back row of Carnegie Hall during a classical concert, and in came Mr. and Mrs. Spitzer, taking seats right behind me, creeping in after the concert began and making a quick exit at intermission. The markets were heaving like a tuberculosis patient at the time, and here was a man who could make a difference, so disgraced that he couldn’t even show his face in public.