The following comments are excerpted from some of the editorials published Tuesday following reports tying New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to a prostitution ring.

Chicago Tribune: Monday, speaking briefly to reporters, Eliot Spitzer was something we hadn’t seen before: subdued. He acknowledged the severity of what he called “a private matter.” …

Spitzer didn’t respond to questions, including the obvious, “Will you resign?”

He did, though, speak words that any of us – not just lawbreaking politicians, not just hypocrites, not just fools who think they won’t be found out – should take to heart. Because none of us ever wants, for any reason, to recite these five sentences:

“I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong. I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better. I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family.”

Regain the trust of his family? Our first instinct: Good luck with that, Governor. …

Newsday: … Here is the busy governor of New York, on the phone, working out who pays for the prostitute’s use of the hotel minibar. The decorum of the office can’t withstand this man’s abuse of it. …

Should we have seen the real Spitzer more clearly? He lied about taking a loan from his father, Bernard, to fund his 1994 campaign for attorney general. His Wall Street and insurance targets, such as John Whitehead, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg and Richard Grasso, warned about the man’s temper and bullying tactics. This page endorsed Spitzer for governor. After all, as Rep. Charles Rangel quipped derisively, Spitzer was the smartest man in the room. Until he wasn’t.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: …Could there be a fall more dramatic than that from “Crusader of the Year” in Time magazine to the alleged “Client 9” in the investigation of a prostitution ring? After apologizing to his family and supporters, he struck a note that seemed to express the disconnect between those titles. “I am disappointed that I failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself,” he said.

Spitzer’s on a path that has grown well-worn in recent years: that of a public figure who stakes a career on law and order, or on morality, and then proves only too fallible. In a 2005 interview on these pages, he discussed the political value of his reputation as a corruption fighter.

“Some of the most effective governors in the nation are former prosecutors – Janet Napolitano in Arizona, Jennifer Granholm in Michigan, Christine Gregoire in Washington,” he said. “In the political context, it’s true – if you say ‘bureaucrat,’ people go cold. But if you say ‘prosecutor’ – someone who enforces the laws that allow our system to function – then I think the public supports that.”

How sad, then, to give the public cause to regret it.