Mark Sanford's Wreckage
Jim Geraghty writes The Campaign Spot for NRO.
Few political scandals have been so ready-made for the late-night comics as the Wednesday confessions of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. The punchlines write themselves with every detail - the governor's opposition to "stimulus," the initial explanation of hiking the Appalachian Trail, the travel to a distant country to visit a mistress on Father's Day. The subject of the scandal even said, presumably unintentionally, that he was "crying in Argentina."
But underneath the wreckage of the most spectacular implosion of a gubernatorial rising star since - well, Eliot Spitzer - is a man, and a family, and a group of staffers and former staffers shocked and a little wounded by the crash's metaphorical shrapnel. Inside South Carolina and out, the press conference thoroughly stunned those who once thought Mark Sanford was a great governor, a great boss, and in fact, a great husband and father too.
Jason Miller served as Governor Sanford's campaign manager and deputy chief of staff until 2007. "This is a sad day for everyone who knows and is friends with the Sanford family," Miller said shortly after Sanford's announcement. "Mark, Jenny, and their four boys are some of the best people you could ever know, and it was gut-wrenching to watch today's press conference because nobody - nobody - saw this coming. This would be tough enough to deal with for a normal family, let alone a very public family that's going to have this story on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper and leading every newscast."
At first glance, Sanford - who has made as many enemies among the state's Republicans as he has among Democrats - would seem to be prime fodder for impeachment. He departed the state, a state where power has to be officially transferred to the lieutenant governor, for several days, and remained incommunicado. He almost certainly used state resources to get to the airport for his tryst. He lied to his staff and allowed them to mislead the public on his behalf.
The first reaction of a Republican strategist with deep ties to the state was, "He's going to have to resign. It's South Carolina." The strategist noted that Sanford's foes in the state legislature were among those fanning the flames of "Where is he?" questions yesterday.
Miller thinks that his old boss can survive the controversy. "This will definitely cause considerable short-term public-relations damage, but this will eventually fade into the background. While a handful of questions remain outstanding, this only festers and continues to worsen if there's some remaining issue of malfeasance, and I believe Sanford put that to rest in his press conference. The media storm will be painful to weather in the short term, but it will pass. What the governor has to do now is show that he is a steady hand at the wheel when it comes to his official duties and start working on repairing his home life."
Fred Wszolek, a veteran political consultant who lives in Sullivan's Island, S.C., notes that as much as the state's political players may want Sanford gone, they may dread his replacement even more: "If Sanford resigns, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer would take over, and most of the rest of the state's political establishment doesn't want him becoming governor. First they don't want him running the state in general, and then there are a congressman, an attorney general, and at least two state legislators who want to run for governor in 2010, and none of them want Andre Bauer to be running as a quasi-incumbent." Those who seek to run the government may even find the post-scandal Sanford more to their liking: "It's a weak governorship to begin with institutionally, and he's now so weakened that he's now completely beside the point. Now all he's got is the bully pulpit."
Those who thought of Sanford as presidential material find those dreams over, of course. And those who were inclined to like what the man stood for in his political life are left to reconcile stunning revelations about his life outside politics.
"I am a little thrown by it," Wszolek said. "I expected it was something far wackier. I didn't think it would reflect on his character, I thought it would reflect on his sensibility. If he had said he was surfing off the coast of Argentina, I would have nodded and said, 'Yeah, that's Mark Sanford.'"
Wszolek notes that one of the things that made Sanford unique was his history of keeping hard promises. Running for the House in 1994, he pledged to serve only three terms, to take no PAC money, and to oppose all tax increases. He remained in the Air Force Reserve while serving as governor. It would have been much easier to accept the stimulus funds and leave the unfunded-mandate issue to his successor, but he didn't.
"This guy has always been about whatever he says as a public official, you can trust . . ." He takes a long pause. "And then there's this."
By Jim Geraghty
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online