Giving Thanks to Hookers

Unwitting heroine

Just imagine, if it weren't for this young lady we may have faced the unsettling prospect of a President Spitzer. You think Barack 'Five Shows' Obama is bad for business? Just imagine what the tyrant Spitzer could have done.

Ashley Dupré didn't just topple the governor. She also dashed a 12-year game plan that was supposed to land Eliot Spitzer in the White House.

"Eliot was going to be governor for eight to 12 years, and then he was going to run for president," his former senior adviser, Lloyd Constantine, said in an exclusive interview with The Post.

Constantine, 62, an antitrust lawyer and a close friend and mentor to Spitzer for almost 30 years, had been crafting Spitzer's political career since the mid-1990s. He was positioned to become the David Axelrod -- President Obama's senior adviser -- of a Spitzer administration.

But in March 2008, when Spitzer resigned in disgrace after being caught on a federal wiretap arranging a meeting with the high-priced hooker in Washington, DC, the dream exploded.

"I was angry," Constantine said in his first sitdown interview since the scandal broke. "I love him, but I was angry."

His is a love so deep he's ready to take some cash to spill the dirt on him.

With friends like these...