Opinion

Anthony, Eliot and anger

When Anthony Weiner bizarrely used a forum sponsored by the American Association of Retired People to deride Republican George McDonald as “grandpa,” it wasn’t the first time his anger got the best of him.

Though his legislative achievements as a congressman were thin, his anger was legendary — whether for heaving a staffer’s Blackberry against a wall, for a vitriolic exchange in the House that had him disciplined for inappropriate language or for his angry initial insistence that anyone who said he was sexting was a liar.

In this, Weiner has much in common with the other candidate whose sexual exploits keep our headline writers busy, Eliot Spitzer. As with Weiner, the candidate for comptroller has had many crude blowups that ought to give voters pause.

* Only weeks into his term as governor, Spitzer screamed at then-Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedesco, “I’m a f—ing steamroller, and I will roll over you or anyone who gets in my way.”

* Speaking to an aide about leaking dirt derived from the illegal use of state troopers to track then-Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, Spitzer roared, “F— him. He’s a piece of s—, shove it up his a– with a red-hot poker.”

* As attorney general, Spitzer threatened former Ambassador John Whitehead for writing a letter to The Wall Street Journal that supported AIG’s Hank Greenberg, a Spitzer target.

“I will be coming after you,” Spitzer told Whitehead. “You will pay the price . . . You will wish you had never written that letter.”

In short, it’s not just their sexual scandals that make Weiner and Spitzer unsuitable for office. It’s their unhinged personalities.