Mark Sanford is engaged…
…in campaigning for a vacant House seat in South Carolina as the official Republican nominee, having won the runoff election.
Yes, that Mark Sanford, the one who sort of lost his mind and ran off, not to the Appalachian trail as he originally said, but to an adulterous liaison in Argentina. Who said there are no second acts in American lives (F. Scott Fitzgerald, actually, but what did he know about politics)?
Oh, and Sanford is also engaged to be married; his latest press conference featured his fiancée Maria Belen Chapur at his side. Yes, they are intending to marry, four years after the debacle. I can’t imagine what they’ve been waiting for, but here they are (she looks a bit like Ali McGraw to me):
One of the reasons Sanford was disgraced is that he didn’t go the usual route of successfully keeping the affair quiet (or at least continuing to do his job without interruption), divorcing his wife, and then marrying his lover. Instead, he went on walkabout and went AWOL from his job as governor for a few days. So this wasn’t just an ordinary peccadillo, this really seemed to affect his job directly rather than indirectly.
Shortly thereafter, I wrote a post about infidelity among politicians in which I observed:
The list of erring political husbands (yes, it’s usually husbands, although no doubt there are woman in public life who do the same) is long. But usually love’s got nothing to do with it. I wasn’t in their bedrooms to find out for sure, but I think we can safely say that for John Kennedy and Elliot Spitzer and John Edwards and John Ensign (what’s up this with all these “John’s”?) and Bill Clinton (whose bedroom/office we practically were in, thanks to Ken Starr’s report), the aim was to satisfy several lusts at once: conquest, power, excitement, and sex for fun and frolic.
…[But not] Governor Sanford, who seems to have been in a star-crossed-lovers situation. This makes him far more sympathetic, and far more rare. So why didn’t he just get divorced and marry his Argentine paramour? Perhaps she didn’t want to leave her country. Perhaps he felt too much guilt about his wife and especially his children (although not enough to stop him from having the affair in the first place). Perhaps he thought it would ruin his political career to divorce and remarry, although paradoxically, keeping the affair secret and acting so oddly and irresponsibly has probably sunk it far more in the end.
It remains to be seen whether that last statement is correct, because I’m not sure Sanford is sunk politically (although there’s no way to tell if he would have been better being more up-front about his infidelity in the first place, instead of inventing a cockamamie story that ended up fooling no one but worrying many.) But it does seem to have been a serious relationship rather than a fling, and although I wouldn’t put money on its lasting for the rest of their lives, perhaps it will.
Sanford is another example of a Republican candidate who won in a runoff or primary but seems weak, and leaves the seat vulnerable to a Democratic takeover in a district or state that Republicans should ordinarily be able to hold rather easily. We’ve had an awful lot of them lately, haven’t we? This article points out how he won: a combination of low voter interest and high name recognition, as well as his political skills and emphasis on forgiveness, and the fact that the district involved seems composed more of country-club Republicans than soc-cons (although soc-cons are often willing to vote for a sinner if he/she shows repentance).
I don’t know about ex-wife Jenny and his four sons; they’ll have to iron this out for themselves. Enough voters seem to have forgiven him to have made him the candidate. But have enough forgiven him to enable him to be elected?
“Sanford is another example of a Republican candidate who won in a runoff or primary but seems weak, and leaves the seat vulnerable to a Democratic takeover . . . .”
I often wonder if politicians are like this simply because they live in that “Beltway Bubble” which insulates them them from the reality of the situation. Likewise, I saw a headline earlier today in which Rick Santorum indicates he may run again (for president?). I, personally, am a traditionalist and actually share many of Santorum’s values, but my libertarian leanings would make voting for Santorum a difficult vote, indeed.
These people just don’t get it.
Mark Sanford provides evidence to the theory “A man in love is operating at the lowest level of his intellect.” — Norman Panzica (marriage counselor).
Maria Belen Chapur provides evidence that women do indeed have a genetic disposition to gullibility — public dossiers notwithstanding.
With Republicans like these, who needs enemies.
Character or rather the lack thereof is at the heart of this morality play. Human fallibility, repentance and the forgiveness it elicits certainly have their place in this tale but are inconsequential to the lack of character Sanford has revealed. It is his lack of character, wherein his unfitness for public office is revealed.
He was a Governor, a highly placed public figure and he placed personal desire above his familial and public duties. As he has demonstrated that he places self above family, that he was willing to break his most solemn oath, how could he not place self above mere public obligations?
That he had an affair, not merely a ‘dalliance’ speaks volumes as well. Once he had fallen to temptation, he could not honestly pretend that enough love remained in his marriage for him to remain true to his oath. Rather than ask for divorce, he hid his betrayal, revealing a deeper lack of character. Then there is his ‘paramour’, a woman who knowingly engaged and cooperated in the betrayal of his vows. Revealing her lack of character as well.
This all matters, not because of Sanford’s importance but because of what it reveals about our society; just how far we have strayed in our moral compass. Only the morally obtuse or the moral pragmatist that makes principle dependent upon expedience, can vote for a man whose character has thus been exposed, pretending that repentance and seeking forgiveness equate to the removal of flaws of character.
That so few public figures today measure up to prior generation’s minimal standards of character and ethics is an exact barometer of the state of our nation. As a nation, we have not lost the moral high-ground, we have abandoned it.
“Maria Belen Chapur provides evidence that women do indeed have a genetic disposition to gullibility”
I think it not gullibility from which Chapur suffered but envy and covetousness of what Jenny Sanford possessed. It is ever so, when one woman deceitfully works to wrest away from another woman, what she has no rightful claim to…
Geoffrey Britain,
Well done!
Engaged?
Engaged in what, may I ask?
alanstorm: otherwise engaged.
I would forgive him… for her.
The fact that they’re engaged wouldn’t work for me as a voter; I actually find it much worse that he’s serious about the Brazilian beauty.
A sexual fling one can forgive. But this engagement and love stuff just heaps on the betrayal aspect of what he did to his family.
oops — should have said “Argentinean beauty” (or should that be “Argentine”?).
Must have gotten caught in the alliteration trap, or something.
“Of all the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it-risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself. and what do you think he has done? He has left it out of his heaven! Prayer takes its place.
Mark Twain
– Notebook, 1906
Even though the last part of that quote is not relevant, I was always struck by this quote because I had assumed that people were less fixated on the subject in that era. In fact it seems that people were busy screwing up (pun intended) long before I was around.
In any case, the voters aren’t the ones who need to forgive him, that’s reserved for his family. The voters need to trust him, whether they relate that to his lack of judgment about his own life remains to be seen. If you consider that many otherwise decent people have has similar lapses of judgment but did uphold the public trust — generals, founding fathers (another pun i guess), etc, it doesn’t necessarily follow that such a person will betray his office or his duty, because many before Sanford have done similar things, but functioned ethically and admirably in their jobs.
That’s not an endorsement of Sanford, or forgiveness, or excusing the behavior infidelity, just a comment that infidelity does not necessarily mean widespread dishonesty, corruption, or incompetence, just as a smart politician who is loyal to his wife and family, do not necessarily mean he gives a damn for anybody but himself, for example, Obama
“infidelity does not necessarily mean widespread dishonesty, corruption, or incompetence, just as a smart politician who is loyal to his wife and family, do not necessarily mean he gives a damn for anybody but himself, for example, Obama”
I for one do not disagree. To err is human after all. Nor, in my comment did I mean to imply that I perceive Sanford as corrupt, or incompetent.
Though his dishonesty is established, at least in his personal life. And certainly many politicians are loyal to wife and family, while being entirely motivated by self-interest.
Sanford’s infidelity and affair are a personal betrayal of trust and that is an indicator of lack of character. If returned to office he may indeed do his job and never betray, to the extent that he did, the public trust again.
But trust and character are inseparable and so we are left with, “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice… shame on me”.
I give Jenny Sanford credit for not (unlike Hillary Clinton and Silda Spitzer) “standing by her man” and divorcing the low-life.
Jenny Sanford ought to consider running, during that sordid affair she came off as one smart, capable woman.
MollyNH: re Jenny Sanford.
Southpaw’s quotation from Mark Twain,
“Of all the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it-risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself”, reminded me of a story that goes back to World War I, when it fell to the Chaplain to warn the new recruits of the dangers of venereal disease (prior to penicillin).
After presenting a series of pictures of the ravages of syphilis (a typical visual aid in such lectures in those days), the chaplain concluded his talk with “Are fifteen minutes of ecstasy worth a lifetime of hell?” After a period of silence, during which the chaplain thought he had achieved his teaching goal, a recruit asked “Father, how do you make it last that long?’
On the plus side Sanford knows how to do the job having served previously. His conservative record is also a plus. To paraphrase Truman, he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.
Well , neo i guess she aint perfect, but she struck a chord with me and i liked her!
The more I think about it, the more I dislike the guy. Why did he decide to run for political office again? Does he think he’s indispensable or something? The honorable thing for him to have done is to have faded into the background for the rest of his life. Or at least for another 20 years or so. He owes it to his children.
Some people actually do this. Like Bob Livingston, the Republican who resigned as Speaker-elect during the Clinton impeachment hearings because it was revealed he’d had an extra-marital affair.
Oh, he’ll be re-elected to something. Just like Marion Barry.
It’s all part of our postmodernism.
It is always someone else’s fault.
Like ‘lem’ and ‘molly’ said, it’s OK, she’s beautiful, or, “I like her”. They are probably opposed to the death penalty too. Morality has become sooo relative.
Don Carlos, numerous studies have pointed out that attractive people are more often given a pass in life, it is human nature to prefer the attractive. As far as liking Jen Sanford, she is hardly guilty of moral turpitude just because she shrugged off her cheatin husband. I happen to admire women who don t stay *attached* to loser husbands like Bill Clinton, or Ellot Spitzer.