It was ridiculous. We need Eliot Spitzer not in spite of his character flaws, but because of them. We need a man so reckless, so willing to knock heads together, so heaving with bull-like malice that, yes, his veins may be coursing with more testosterone than he can reasonably use.

OK, so maybe he doesn’t always follow the Marquess of Queensbury rules. Does Wall Street? In fact, the aforementioned character flaws were what made Spitzer so perfect in dealing with Wall Street, back when he was Attorney General of New York. Though he had never worked in finance, he was a common personality type that one sees on Wall Street and in hedge funds all the time. He was a super-Type A personality, aggressive, hyperambitious. He was one of them. It was not surprising when stories leaked out about Spitzer threatening Wall Street executives, using four-letter words, and allegedly abusing his office to target the former State Senate majority leader, Joe Bruno. Still, the same hyperaggressiveness that made him a mediocre governor made him a one-man B-1 Bomber as New York’s AG, attacking Wall Street symbols of authority like Dick Grasso and AIG’s Hank Greenberg.

The people he scared the most were not bankers but bureaucrats. He put the fear of God into the SEC, spurring that somnolent agency to action. The SEC sorely needed competition, and got it from Spitzer and his skeletal staff, especially on the all-important issue of Wall Street analysts. The SEC under Mary Schapiro is an improvement over its sorry state during her enforcement-averse predecessor, Chris Cox, but it still needs the kind of motivation that can only come from an outside force making it look bad, as Spitzer did a decade ago.

Since all the best jobs are taken, Obama would have to create a new one. Special prosecutor investigating Wall Street crime, perhaps. But it really doesn’t matter what post they put him in, as long as he is in a position to put the heat on the Street and his fellow regulators.

Sure, there will be abuses. There will be leaks to the media (he never gave one to me, by the way, though I forgive him). Some Wall Street execs will get yelled at. There may be some four-letter words exchanged. Oh, dear. But as the Spitzer Bull rampages through Wall Street, more than just the financial-services industry and sleepy regulators will be sent a message. The public will start to feel better about the capital markets. If that’s all he accomplishes, it will be enough.