A Maverick at the S.E.C.? Try Eliot Spitzer.

In a 60 Minutes interview aired yesterday, John McCain threw out a suggestion that some may find bold: He'd consider appointing Democrat and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

If a prospective McCain White House wants real reform, however, it might opt for an even more radical choice. How does Eliot Spitzer, the Straight-Talk S.E.C. Steamroller sound?

Spitzer could leverage the reform-minded climate in Washington to expand the S.E.C.'s powers to bring criminal prosecutions instead of just the namby-pamby civil charges it trots out these days. And once he's in, it's Ashley Bar the Door Until Wall Street is Squeaky Clean.

We can see the headlines now:

S-E-See Ya in Court, Shady Analysts!!!

S-E-See Ya in the Pokey, Corrupt Hedgies!!!

S-E-See Ya Dragged in Front of Military Tribunal, Dick Fuld!!!

The case for Spitzer is apparent:
-He's a Democrat, so McCain gets to keep his bipartisan K Street Kred by replacing George Bush's hand-picked California conservative, Christopher Cox, with a Jewish, Ivy League-educated New Yorker born to unfathomable wealth.

-Everyone on Wall Street already hates Spitzer, so they won't be currying favor with him and won't even attempt engaging him for fear their personal emails will end up being read by Charlie Gasparino on CNBC's Power Lunch.

-Spitzer already hates everyone on Wall Street, so he won't be looking to hang around San Pietro with them, either.

-With the Fed and the Treasury now in business with Wall Street giants, they have to play the "good cop" when it comes to regulation. That would leave an SEC boss Spitzer as the "bad cop"--or more likey, the "very, very bad cop."

-He's done this before. Say what you want about Ashley Dupré and Client No. 9, but Spitzer was the only regulator in the country who even tried to hold anyone on Wall Street accountable for the damage of the late 1990s.

-The country really needs a self-aggrandizing, self-promoting Democrat to run the S.E.C. We haven't had one since Arthur Levitt, in, well, the late 1990s.

-Spitzer needs the work and Silda really needs some "alone time."

At the very least, Spitzer employs the kind of fiery rhetoric necessary in such desperate times.

He once told former General Electric C.E.O. Jack Welch that he'd "put a spike" through the heart of New York Stock Exchange Director Kenneth Langone; threatened the stately John Whitehead, former Goldman Sachs chairman, for publicly defending Hank Greenberg; and derided the ranking Republican in Albany, 78-year-old Joe Bruno, as "an old, senile piece of s---."

Now, that's the kind of straight talk this country needs.

Dan Colarusso

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