Buenos Airhead

11 June 2009



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Governor Sanford Wrecks Career with Cover-Up

South Carolina's governor, Marshall Clement "Mark" Sanford, Jr., was a rising star in the Republican Party. Then after having 10 of his vetoes over-ridden by the Republican-controlled state legislature as its session ended, he announced he needed time off. He left Thursday June 18 in a state-SUV without his security team and vanished. His wife and mother of his four sons said over the week-end that she had no idea where he was (and Sunday was Fathers' Day in the US). On Monday, his staff said he had gone hiking along the Appalachian Trail (a footpath that extends from Maine into Georgia). Yesterday, he came back from Argentina, not Appalachia, and confessed to an affair with a woman in Buenos Aires. Politically, he might have survived the affair, but he won't survive the cover up. Does no one remember Watergate?

Mr. Sanford and the rest of the Republican Party are in an extra bind when it comes to extra-marital affairs. Democrats have sexual trysts and then resign in shame, but that never harms a party that stands more for free school lunches than for pre-marital abstinence. Standing as the Party of Family Values, each scandal makes the GOP appear to be ever more hypocritical. Indeed, it is worse than chicken-hawks like Vice President Cheney demanding war in Iraq-Nam for any reason that works. America is still conflicted about service in the 1960s; the party's base has no doubts about the traditional nuclear family (invented in the 1950s).

Like the rest of the human race, Mr. Sanford is not responsible for his emotions, be they rage, love, anger, hate, sadness or any other. One cannot control what one feels. However, one can control how one deals with such emotions. Love need not result in a violation of one's marriage vows anymore than rage need result in a fist fight. Mr. Sanford's misdemeanor here is not that he fell for a woman other than his wife but that he yielded to temptation. In other countries, that isn't even a misdemeanor, not even a parking violation. America's puritanical streak does make this an issue.

Yet, had Mr. Sanford, whose wife told him to get out of the house (actually the Governor's Mansion) two weeks ago, simply told the press that he and his wife were separating, much of what ensued would have been less toxic. He could have gone to Argentina, seen his paramour, and come back with his constituents disapproving, but not laughing at him. It would most certainly have been painful, down to the photos in the tabloids, but it would have been a clear case of a public man trying to work out private problems. Indeed, he might even have divorced his wife, married the other woman, and survived politically. At very least, he would have been counted a modern-day Edward VIII, giving up the throne for the woman he loved.

Sadly for all concerned, he didn't do that. He violated his oath of office by abandoning his post without arranging for the administration of South Carolina in his absence. He betrayed the trust of his staff (whom he made to look like uninformed bumpkins). He also may have done it all with public funds. At very least, he is guilty of dereliction of duty, and possibly embezzlement or misappropriation of state money. There is only one way for him to preserve the slightest shred of dignity. He must resign his office before he is impeached.

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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