Here’s the thing I don’t get about Eliot Spitzer. (If you have not heard of him, here’s a quick recap: He’s the squeaky clean, corruption-fighting governor of New York who yesterday admitted some personal infidelities involving a high-priced prostitution ring.)

Spitzer has not been charged with a crime. At least not yet. He apparently was captured on a wiretap arranging to meet a call girl in a Washington hotel room.

It was Spitzer who as New York’s attorney general conducted a ruthless hunt for corruption on Wall Street. He vowed to act in a similar manner after capturing the governor’s mansion. No doubt the financial movers and shakers are delighting in this turn of events.

Now the talk is whether Spitzer can survive. The odds are against it, even if he’s not charged.

Still, none of that is what really bothers me. Men have been seeking out hookers forever, although I’m not sure how many of them were governors at the time. The dollar figure also raises a few eyebrows. What exactly do you get for $4,300? And how is a guy who spent most of his life as a public employee tossing around that kind of cash for sexual favors?

No, it was something else Spitzer did yesterday that I find almost as distasteful as the actions that landed him in this predicament in the first place.

Late yesterday afternoon, Spitzer stood in front of a microphone to offer a terse statement describing how he had “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.”

You think? Spitzer is married and the father of three teenage girls.

Of course, Spitzer did not face the music alone yesterday. That’s right, there at his side was his wife. I’m surprised Spitzer did not trot out his daughters as well, to maybe further their public humiliation.

I don’t know whose idea it was to have his wife at his side, but it turned my stomach. There’s a part of me, I guess, who can empathize with Spitzer’s fate, even if I don’t understand it.

But for the life of me I cannot fathom why he couldn’t simply face the music alone. Why did he have to drag his wife out there as well?

Maybe it was her idea. Maybe that’s part of the deal in politics. For better or for worse, and all that. If so she’s a better woman than I’ll ever be a man.

Somehow I just don’t see myself asking my wife to do that. And if she volunteered, I think I would try to shield her from my oafish actions.

It reminded me of then New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, in his famous “I am a gay American” speech, trotting out his beleaguered wife, as well as his mom and dad.

Be a man, guys. That’s what got you into this spot in the first place isn’t it?

It was Eliot Spitzer who put Eliot Spitzer in the national spotlight yesterday. You’d think he’d be able to face the music alone.

His wife deserved better. Then again, apparently she’s deserved better for some time now.