Nothing like "traditional family values" to wreck a home. You have to wonder if Republicans realize they're in the midst of a punishing self-satire. It's almost painful to watch. Almost.
It was actually painful for me to watch him--I couldn't finish. Maybe it shouldn't be. But it was.
To be clear, not so much for him, but for his family. I don't come from a "perfect" family. But I'd hate to have to watch my folks go through something like that in front of a camera.
No, you're right TNC. This particular confession was painful. It was downright abject. My schadenfreude is a more general response to the seeming parade of top-tier Republican philanderers over the past year or so. It's not their infidelity which ignites a lack of compassion in me, but their hypocrisy and willingness to brand other people's lifestyles unworthy, immoral, etc.
Yeah, but at least it was abject. Spitzer was not abject. Larry Craig was not abject. Ensign was not at all abject. Sanford seemed sincere and forthcoming to me and I think he was. Think about it. He just got back in town yesterday and holds a press conference in the early afternoon today. That's not too much time to get prepared and smooth and slick. And there's no record of him lambasting Clinton about his affair like you have with Ensign, and I haven't heard much bigotry from him on gays (maybe I've missed it?) so it's hard to play the hypocrisy card with quite the same intensity.
But this is definitely going down in the annals of the what-the-fuck-where-you-thinking hall of shame. I'd say his 2012 aspirations are dead in the water. Whodathunk he'd have been off taking that stimulus cash after all? At least he'd have some goodwill with his state now if he had...
A fun quote on hypocracy from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age":
You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,” Finkle-McGraw said. “It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others-after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism? … Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others’ shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour-you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.
...
We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy,” Finkle-McGraw continued. “In the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception-he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it’s a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing.”
...
“That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code,” Major Napier said, working it through, “does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.”
I give the man some credit, too, for not dragging his wife to the press conference. After getting caught cheating on your wife, what better way to rub salt in the wound than to force her to stand there, humiliated, at your press conference.
I'm actually crediting his wife with that, since she was so unhelpful at spinning any cover up. If she's known for 5 months, and then made the obvious conclusion when Rick called to say he had to get away from the kids for an indefinite period, no one should blame her for deciding this was the last straw.
Though it does reflect a little well on him, that he may not have tried to import her to stand tearily in the background.
See this is what I don't get. It wasn't hard on me at all, any grief I feel for his kids was overwhelmed by sheer befuddlement. I don't think it was painful enough. I understand the whole, hate to have to watch my own folks go through this, but your folks are not the Gov. of a State. Not only the preaching of the family values hypocrisy, but the sheer incompetence of this whole episode is quite staggering. I think sympathy for his family is certainly an appropiate humane reaction, but for me I just couldn't get passed the fact--dude left his family(on Fathers Day), put his state in jeopardy, lied to his staff, his staff lied to everyone else and would have continued to lie if not for a reporter staking out the airport. He gets busted, goes up there with tears in his eyes and tries to make me feel bad for his kids...thats just trifling!!
Darn, I had my money on rehab. Its been too long since we had a politican checking into rehab story. Its always the same cheating on the wife story, can't these guys get more creative with their vices?
Once again we see how gay marriage is destroying traditional marriage in this country. If only gays hadn't been allowed to marry this good christian man would not have had to cheat on his wife.
He and Ensign are trying to catch up to Gingrich--there's an infidelity gap in the 2012 Presidential race. Next up--Sarah Palin has an affair with David Letterman.
Yeah, I mean I was KINDA joking. But Sanford is smart enough to know the consequences of going to South America to be with/break up with a lover of his. He clearly thought it was important enough to ruin his loftier ambitions. Or maybe I'm just giving him too much credit, and he really thought he was going to get away with it...
Yeah, I don't even begin to make assumptions about the relationships of other people--my own relationships are complex enough. I'll give Sanford this much--he went out there alone, like an adult. No hiding behind a spouse or making anyone else miserable over this.
Seriously. And what was all that crap about god's laws being there to protect us from ourselves? If he can't figure out that having an affair is going to be hurtful to all involved without a frikkin' rulebook, then I don't know what to say. Except that he's a sociopath.
I thought he was about to talk about God's law being that you get forgiven for everything no matter what a selfish bastard you are or how many people you hurt. I was at least glad he refrained from that. But we'll get some of that on the Forgiveness Tour, I'm sure. I hate to be so gleeful about this guy, but these types are just so sanctimonious about everyone else's personal lives, it's hard not to chuckle.
If he can't figure out that having an affair is going to be hurtful to all involved without a frikkin' rulebook, then I don't know what to say.
Actually, I think this is the root of a lot of conservative "values" talk. They feel that they need "God's law" or equivalent to keep them from trashing their lives so they are convinced that's what's best for most other people too. I believe Douhat made just that argument during the long mutil-blog debate on gay marriage a few months ago. It's always staggering to me. You can't be moral on your own (because I know I can't) so, we'll have to use social coercion, intrusive policy, and/or refuse equitable treatment. It's a canard if I ever heard one, but I'm more and more convinced it's at the heart of what Andrew calls "Christianist" thinking.
I have not yet heard a direct denial of a love child. I still think that is possible and why the "break up" had to be in person. Otherwise, the phone would do.
It's true that he should have resolved this issue one way or the other 5 months ago, and knocked out the press conference then. But I hope you're not too disappointed that his affair was with a woman. ;-)
So that's a tactic now? You know, it actually worked. I must have heard someone on cable calling him a Dem when this first broke, because I did think he was a Dem until I was corrected a couple of days ago by a friend. Verrrry sneaky.
I could care less if Sanford had an affair, that is between him and his wife. But when he abandoned his job for a week without arranging for the Lt Gov to be in charge he made it a public issue. If he had simply told the Lt Gov, I need to go on vacation for a few days, you're in charge, more than likely no one even finds out.
Now the fact that he makes other people's morality his business makes him a hypocrite and a douche-bag, but that would be up to the voters to decide in the next election, not a reason to resign.
The abandoning his job should be a reason to resign, and if he used State money to pay for his trips to Argentina, that should be a crime.
Someone might (indeed, I want everyone to forget that there's e-mails out there, that's just disgusting), but they'd be wrong. It wasn't "just sex", it grossly affected his job. Had any of us disappeared from our job for five days, we'd be rightly sacked. I dunno if Sanford should be, I'm willing to give him a second chance, but he doesn't have the same defenses that, say, John Edwards had.
His story is that he went to Argentina to break off the affair and he now plans to work with his wife on repairing their marriage.
If that is all true it is a compelling human story and he should be given privacy to work on it.
But that is the personal side. on the professional side he was incredible irresponsible. He should at the very least have told the Lt Gov he was going to be gone and arranged for him to take over. Going forward, governor is a more than full time job, and if he has this much distraction going on he should resign so someone who can devote himself to the job can take over.
"His story is that he went to Argentina to break off the affair and he now plans to work with his wife on repairing their marriage." i don't know Eric, that's kind of a tough one to swallow. It took him 4 days and a couple grand on a plane ticket to do something he could've done in an email? Fiscal conservative my a**.
I know, I'm just saying even giving him the total benefit of the doubt and his version of the story it means his personal life is so complicated right now that he probably should resign.
And let me be clear, I'm not saying that everyone who has an affair needs to resign. I'm a Democrat who believes personal stuff is no one's business, but when the personal is interfering with your ability to do your job then it ceases to be personal. And I'd say that being conflicted about things that you fly to Argentina for a week without even telling the Lt Gov that he is in charge while your gone (or even telling him that your going to be gone for that matter!) qualifies as interfering with your ability to do your job.
Let me just say that breaking up with someone who obviously means something to you by email is not that admirable. Facing her was the right thing to do, IMO.
If face to face meant going to Atlanta or even Phoenix I would totally agree, but not going all the way to Buenos Aires when he's the governor without anyone knowing where he is or being able to contact him. What if a disaster like the commuter crash in DC had happened while he was AWOL? Given the fallout, would he rather be an insenstive prick or an irresponsible idiot who abandoned his duties and the people of South Caronlina for 5 days? On top of all that, it's not really clear if he broke off the relationship or just broke her off while he was down there. Finally, I wish the Dems who are gleefully dancing on his political grave would focus more on the actual duty related issues rather than the affair itself. Most of the time these things happen you can make the case that the affair was private and didn't really affect their job performance, but this isn't one of them.
OK, so the dude "hurt people." He is also the state's leading executive officer, and he left the country to go hang out with his mistress without telling anyone, leaving no way for people to contact him if some kind of emergency took place, and taking no care to make sure that someone, anyone, was in charge of the state. I don't care about his personal failings--other than the schadenfreude of watching another hypocritical family values guy suck it--but that kind of negligence makes him unfit for office.
I don't understand how a person capable of this managed to make it all the way to a high office. Didn't a tendency to make massive, clueless, ridiculous mistakes (did he really think no one would notice/think it's weird to just disappear like that) would have shown up earlier in life.
My sense is this man needs serious psychological evaluation and treatment.
Maybe someone should start a facility specifically to rehab governors. Group therapy with Sanford, Spitzer, Blago... actually, they'd need one just for Illinois.
I feel bad for his family too and I think his family deserves privacy, but not him. He voted to prevent gay people and unmarried people from adopting, I guess he feels it is preferable that children are raised by a married couple where the man cheats on the woman rather then by a loving couple that is gay or unmarried.
So you're telling me you have to break up with your mistress face to face these days? Even (especially?) if she's in another hemisphere? That's the weirdest part to me. What's wrong with:
"It's over. Sorry, babycakes. We had some good times. But you knew from the beginning what you're were getting into. Arrivaderci. Keep your nose clean, Kiddo."
...and throwing her a few emails to let her vent at you / make sure she doesn't kill herself.
seems to me he obviously though he could take care of it and nobody would find out. Typical narcissist. My guess is he he texted her a breakup letter she'd freak and go to the press.
I hate to say this because Sanford is a hypocritical "moral values" s**tsack, but I think he went back for 5 days because he actually may be in love with this Argentinian woman and wanted one last time together. It's one thing to dump someone when you're sick of them and want them to eff off, but it's another to have to do it when you don't really want to.
I'm ecstatic another moralizing GOP hypocrite has bitten the dust but I can't help but feel for the guy.
Argentina, well if the other woman was a carnival samba dancer of ambiguous gender and race than this blog will have come around full circle this week. One more Republican "front-runner" bites the dust...
I don't think that's been ruled out. He can't know that many Argentinians; surely photos will make the round by tomorrow. Carmelita (Dirty Money reference) may still be an option.
Hard not to rubberneck, but really none of my business. It will be interesting to see how the first political woman who runs around on her husband is received. Still, we still have Newt Gingrich to kick around. John McCain just ran for President. I have it on good authority, however, that Huckabee did not inhale.
I don't know how this guy expects to make a move in 2012 unless he steps up his game. Gingrich asked his first wife, his former high school teacher, for a divorce right after she came out of surgery for cancer. Then he neglected to pay child support and had to go to her congregation for assistance.
Gingrich was cheating on his second wife with wife number three who was a congressional staffer.
Sanford actually strikes me as a decent guy. I really don't see the need for him to ask for forgiveness from anyone not in his family, but that's part of the evangelical mindset that dominates that type of GOP politics.
Where's the hooker?
Where's the wide stance airport sex?
The GOP is now drinking from the toilet bowl of family values conservatism.
I'm calling BS on the went to Argentina to break it off. First of all, it doesn't take a few days to do and there's no reason to do it in person. There's daily non-stop flights between Atlanta and Buenos Aires anyways. Second of all, there's no way in hell the wife lets him go break it off with his mistress alone and over Father's Day weekend.
As much as I hated GOP smugness during the Clinton years it is just as unattractive when liberals or Democrats do this now. Guess what folks, human weakness is a beast!
But to paraphrase Jim Rome, "He manned up, He owned it" and it is now an issue between him, his wife and kids and the voters in South Carolina. If he used state funds for the trip then that's another story, but if not, I think Sanford, Clinton and anyone else who has had to deal with this deserves our compassion.
It's not that he cheated on his wife. People do it. It's human nature. For liberals, it's that he cheated on his wife after years and years of defending "family values" and the "sanctity of marriage" through policy while working to deny gays their rights to adopt children and marry each other. Where's the Republican moral outrage now?
For me, there's a bit of schadenfreude in the hypocrisy. But, the bigger issue is that he left the country for a week without making any arrangements to let people know where he was or to make sure the state was being managed in his absence. He may even have used state resources.
Dude should be out on his ass for that kind of negligence.
A pundit on Hardball just said Politico is about to break a story confirming he used state funds on this (and others) trip. Here is the thing that bugs me, call me smug if you want, he got busted. He went missing, from his main responsibility as Gov., there were all kinds of lies regarding his absence and the only reason this is now a story and has been a story for the past few day was due to his stunning incompetence and I'm supposed to have compassion for the dude? Because he manned up(whatever that means).
Sources claim that the FBI is set to release recordings from inside the Buenos Aires hotel room.
Snippets include: "I'm fucking for South Carolina!" and "I'm not a born-again Christian tonight!"
Off the record, Republicans insist that these in no way take away from Gov. Sanford's "hero" status, which was attained when he said, "Thanks, but no thanks," to the President's Stimulus Package.
The woman in Argentina must have scared the snot out of him, that would be my guess. She must have wanted something, and wasn't going to let him off easy. His disregard for his position and his family just shows that emotion trumped reason, so something happened.
Sure, there's some open questions about what actually happened (though, to be fair, most of those questions can fall into the category of "none of your damned business," but I have to give the guy credit for (finally) being honest, at least moreso than most politicians who have been in the same situation. He seems well aware than any ambitions he may have held for higher office are at the very least, going to have to wait until this story becomes ancient history.
The real issue is not about his infidelity, but about his abandonment of his responsibilities as governor. The fact that he lied to his staff, hid from his Lieutenant Governor, and left the continent without a contingency plan shows a level of negligence that is a problem, to say the least.
All that said, the guy looks like he's going through hell. Hopefully he can learn something from his mistakes.
Damn! I live down here in Buenos Aires and only a few blocks from that apartment building. I could have blown this whole thing open if I just happened to walk past him and his mistress at some point over the last few days. There's no shortage of middle-aged gringos looking for a thrill down here, though, so I may not have noticed him at first but it would have been cool if I did and then I managed to snap a photo of them with my mobile phone and then, BAM!, single-handedly brought down the Governor of South Carolina.
Oh, well, next time. Anyway, for anyone who can read Spanish and would like a local take on the story, Clarin is the biggest newspaper down here and Sanford's doofy face is currently on the home page:
Yeah. I clicked, was sorry I clicked, and glanced down at the comments: this is horrible. All these people talking about how beautiful it is, and can't you appreciate the special magic for these two people, and completely ignoring how his wife and children would feel reading about why their dad ditched them on Father's Day. Yuck.
It's very old-fashioned of me, but I go with first divorce, then find the next one. And I agree with the truism, personified by Newt, that if you start out as the other woman but he leaves and marries you, he will cheat on you, too. (And vice versa, but all the he or she, wife or husband made that sentence hard to read.)
Liberal smugness is no better than conservative self-righteousness. We all capable of this kind of epic fail. I think what worries me is the sort of glee that people feel when politicians go through these things.
Perhaps we should be grown ups and admit these things happen and that we should find mature ways to deal with it.
But why is it that we only see the recognition that we are all human from some people when they are the ones in need of compassion? It's not just sex, it's Limbaugh and drugs, Bennett and gambling, etc. Why is only THEIR weaknesses and THEIR fail that needs empathy? What I hated about Spitzer was that he was such an unforgiving bully in the courtroom when it was other people's weaknesses and I have no doubt that if and when he gets back in the saddle, so to speak, he will forget what it was like to be weak and be tempted and be just as unforgiving. Just as Gingrich and McCain et al can go back to being such judgmental prigs even though they themselves know what it is like to be a sinner and weak and cheat on people who love them.
In the same vein I wonder why there are so many politicians who have done drugs (including presidents and presidential aspirants) who can be so heartless and throw people in jail for such piffling amounts.
I want them to be as forgiving to the powerless and weak as they want from others when they fall. I recall some aphorism in that regard, something about doing unto others...
My gut tells me that we all engage in this type of self-deception. That if we do the moral or just thing then it will keep us from those corrupting and primal urges that we have. My hope would be that we could talk about them, perhaps the Jimmy Carter "I have lusted in my heart" approach, and then have a discussion about how we can support people and help them deal with their urges.
Again, I agree. I just wished more politicians, and other people in power, felt (and acted) the same way when they are controlling the lives of others and not wait until they are caught in compromising position to recognize human frailty.
Agree on all points. Ironically, the only time there's an impact on their ability to perform their jobs is when the cover up gets out of control which they wouldn't need to do if their personal lives were out of the political discusion.
There's very likely some kind of blackmail involved in that end, even if it's merely emotional. If he were in a position (personally/ emotionally/ power-wise) to kick her to the curb, he'd have done so as much as Clinton did to Lewinsky, letting her cry herself out and callously trying to move on. The fact that he didn't implies some hold over him, whether true love, a child, threats to go public, whatever. Which means it's going to get worse for Sanford before it gets better, and that abject look of personal misery on his face is a genuine reflection of what he expects to come out as this keeps unravelling.
Kudos to him for having the integrity to be openly and publically ashamed of it, though. Craig and Clinton and Ensign and Edwards just denied or faux-apologized and kept on keeping on.
Okay, I finally watched and I agree. Much better, as DT says, than Edwards et al. I couldn't help notice that he first brings up how he hurt his lover, and I think it's evident things are not at all over there. (Like it takes a week to break up with someone, anyhow.)
But I will give him props for asking for a zone of privacy around his wife and sons. I'm not sure he gets any credit for his wife not standing in the background in the official pearls and blue scarf combo of wronged politician's wives--that may be all Jenny--but if it didn't occur to him to ask I give him some props for that, too.
But no props for carrying on the affair by e-mail and frequently vanishing, but hoping it would stay secret.
Okay, I think I've nailed down what bothers me on the hypocrisy angle. There's a little of that "before you cast stones at Bill Clinton, maybe you should have made sure you weren't standing in a glass house."
But mostly it's on family legislation--banning adoption by gay couples and by singles is my big beef with Sanford here. And the related bashing of certain types of families (e.g. gay, single parent) as not being right, and so he and his brethren want to prevent them from even trying to make a family, or at least berate them for existing. When you take that line, your own family life had damn well better be a model. Sanford would rather a child languish in foster care forever than be adopted by a gay couple, or by a single parent. Yet the model he sets is to drag his children and his wife through this--not only does he ditch them on Father's Day to spend a week with his mistress, he goes about it so ineptly (trying to avoid Kwame Kilpatrick's fate, so he ditches security?) that he plays out his infidelity on a national stage.
One can only hope that through his own personal foibles, Sanford will extend his reach of compassion to include those he once considered less than himself. Maybe after his sexual sins are exposed and served up on a platter for America to gawk at he might be able empathize with those who are similarly mocked and degraded.
The Kwame Kilpatrick case though was much more serious than marital infidelity. He almost certainly took out a hit on the stripper Tamara Greene (AKA Strawberry) as well as another stripper that tried to escape to Atlanta.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Nothing like "traditional family values" to wreck a home. You have to wonder if Republicans realize they're in the midst of a punishing self-satire. It's almost painful to watch. Almost.
It was actually painful for me to watch him--I couldn't finish. Maybe it shouldn't be. But it was.
To be clear, not so much for him, but for his family. I don't come from a "perfect" family. But I'd hate to have to watch my folks go through something like that in front of a camera.
No, you're right TNC. This particular confession was painful. It was downright abject. My schadenfreude is a more general response to the seeming parade of top-tier Republican philanderers over the past year or so. It's not their infidelity which ignites a lack of compassion in me, but their hypocrisy and willingness to brand other people's lifestyles unworthy, immoral, etc.
Yeah, but at least it was abject. Spitzer was not abject. Larry Craig was not abject. Ensign was not at all abject. Sanford seemed sincere and forthcoming to me and I think he was. Think about it. He just got back in town yesterday and holds a press conference in the early afternoon today. That's not too much time to get prepared and smooth and slick. And there's no record of him lambasting Clinton about his affair like you have with Ensign, and I haven't heard much bigotry from him on gays (maybe I've missed it?) so it's hard to play the hypocrisy card with quite the same intensity.
But this is definitely going down in the annals of the what-the-fuck-where-you-thinking hall of shame. I'd say his 2012 aspirations are dead in the water. Whodathunk he'd have been off taking that stimulus cash after all? At least he'd have some goodwill with his state now if he had...
Feel free to play the hypocrisy card!
Via Ontheissues.org
Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in DC. (Jul 1999)
http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Mark_Sanford_Civil_Rights.htm#1
I'd hold that lambasting Clinton thought. He was a congressman during the impeachment. Via Thinkprogress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/24/sanford-affair/
A nice little collection of quotes from him regarding infidelity and honesty, enjoy.
A fun quote on hypocracy from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age":
I think it's fairly apt here.
I give the man some credit, too, for not dragging his wife to the press conference. After getting caught cheating on your wife, what better way to rub salt in the wound than to force her to stand there, humiliated, at your press conference.
Agreed. It always really bothers me when the cheated-on wife is standing right there in the camera frame. Terrible.
I'm actually crediting his wife with that, since she was so unhelpful at spinning any cover up. If she's known for 5 months, and then made the obvious conclusion when Rick called to say he had to get away from the kids for an indefinite period, no one should blame her for deciding this was the last straw.
Though it does reflect a little well on him, that he may not have tried to import her to stand tearily in the background.
We'll turns out that she threw him out of the house 2 weeks ago so I don't think having her by his side was an option:-)
See this is what I don't get. It wasn't hard on me at all, any grief I feel for his kids was overwhelmed by sheer befuddlement. I don't think it was painful enough. I understand the whole, hate to have to watch my own folks go through this, but your folks are not the Gov. of a State. Not only the preaching of the family values hypocrisy, but the sheer incompetence of this whole episode is quite staggering. I think sympathy for his family is certainly an appropiate humane reaction, but for me I just couldn't get passed the fact--dude left his family(on Fathers Day), put his state in jeopardy, lied to his staff, his staff lied to everyone else and would have continued to lie if not for a reporter staking out the airport. He gets busted, goes up there with tears in his eyes and tries to make me feel bad for his kids...thats just trifling!!
Incredibly painful. Admittedly, I kept hearing Fabolous' "Girl, I'll Trade It All" in my mind while it was going on, but it was still painful.
Darn, I had my money on rehab. Its been too long since we had a politican checking into rehab story. Its always the same cheating on the wife story, can't these guys get more creative with their vices?
Once again we see how gay marriage is destroying traditional marriage in this country. If only gays hadn't been allowed to marry this good christian man would not have had to cheat on his wife.
He and Ensign are trying to catch up to Gingrich--there's an infidelity gap in the 2012 Presidential race. Next up--Sarah Palin has an affair with David Letterman.
Love conquers all. Personally, I find it heartwarming.
Ha! I actually was thinking the same thing, and not completely sarcastically, either. I am a schmuck.
Yeah, I mean I was KINDA joking. But Sanford is smart enough to know the consequences of going to South America to be with/break up with a lover of his. He clearly thought it was important enough to ruin his loftier ambitions. Or maybe I'm just giving him too much credit, and he really thought he was going to get away with it...
I think you're on to something there.
He's the governor of a U.S. state; you can't go AWOL from that job for more than 24 hours without raising suspicions of some malfeasance.
As soon as his wife was quoted as saying she didn't know where he was, I immediately declared "that man is off having an affair."
You don't go AWOL from your wife and four kids on Father's Day weekend. If you're gone, they know where you are and why.
The combo of him leaving for that long, and her saying "I dunno," = giving up on the career.
I'm really starting to think the GOP loves Obama.
You tell your wife 5 MONTHS AGO, and you're still messing around?
HELL NO.
If MY husband steps to me with ' I'm having an affair'
the next sentence better be
a) it's over with HER and I want to work things out with YOU
or
b) I believe OUR marriage is over, because I want to be with HER.
The ' I dunno, and I'll hump her for a few more months while I make up my mind' is NOT an option.
Maybe she's not feeling the Governor anymore either. There are other reasons for staying together. Just ask...well, you know.
Yeah, I don't even begin to make assumptions about the relationships of other people--my own relationships are complex enough. I'll give Sanford this much--he went out there alone, like an adult. No hiding behind a spouse or making anyone else miserable over this.
Seriously. And what was all that crap about god's laws being there to protect us from ourselves? If he can't figure out that having an affair is going to be hurtful to all involved without a frikkin' rulebook, then I don't know what to say. Except that he's a sociopath.
I thought he was about to talk about God's law being that you get forgiven for everything no matter what a selfish bastard you are or how many people you hurt. I was at least glad he refrained from that. But we'll get some of that on the Forgiveness Tour, I'm sure. I hate to be so gleeful about this guy, but these types are just so sanctimonious about everyone else's personal lives, it's hard not to chuckle.
If he can't figure out that having an affair is going to be hurtful to all involved without a frikkin' rulebook, then I don't know what to say.
Actually, I think this is the root of a lot of conservative "values" talk. They feel that they need "God's law" or equivalent to keep them from trashing their lives so they are convinced that's what's best for most other people too. I believe Douhat made just that argument during the long mutil-blog debate on gay marriage a few months ago. It's always staggering to me. You can't be moral on your own (because I know I can't) so, we'll have to use social coercion, intrusive policy, and/or refuse equitable treatment. It's a canard if I ever heard one, but I'm more and more convinced it's at the heart of what Andrew calls "Christianist" thinking.
I have not yet heard a direct denial of a love child. I still think that is possible and why the "break up" had to be in person. Otherwise, the phone would do.
It's true that he should have resolved this issue one way or the other 5 months ago, and knocked out the press conference then. But I hope you're not too disappointed that his affair was with a woman. ;-)
And true to form, Fox News identified him as a Democrat during their coverage of his press conference.
Please tell me you're kidding...
Nope, not kidding.
wow. every time these guys.
Sometimes I wonder if its Vince McMahon, not Roger Ailes, running Fox News.
Now wouldn't that be pure awesomeness if it was the case . . .
So that's a tactic now? You know, it actually worked. I must have heard someone on cable calling him a Dem when this first broke, because I did think he was a Dem until I was corrected a couple of days ago by a friend. Verrrry sneaky.
Someone grabbed a screenshot.
http://images2.dailykos.com/images/user/3/fnc_20090624_sanford.jpg
Anyone from the RNC want to bash Obama for taking his wife on dates? Anyone?
Anyone from the DNC want to claim it's "just sex" and none of anyone's business?
I'll be perfectly clear:
I could care less if Sanford had an affair, that is between him and his wife. But when he abandoned his job for a week without arranging for the Lt Gov to be in charge he made it a public issue. If he had simply told the Lt Gov, I need to go on vacation for a few days, you're in charge, more than likely no one even finds out.
Now the fact that he makes other people's morality his business makes him a hypocrite and a douche-bag, but that would be up to the voters to decide in the next election, not a reason to resign.
The abandoning his job should be a reason to resign, and if he used State money to pay for his trips to Argentina, that should be a crime.
I've had co-workers fired for abandonment for employment for not showing up for work for two days.
Dude left for almost a week.
Someone might (indeed, I want everyone to forget that there's e-mails out there, that's just disgusting), but they'd be wrong. It wasn't "just sex", it grossly affected his job. Had any of us disappeared from our job for five days, we'd be rightly sacked. I dunno if Sanford should be, I'm willing to give him a second chance, but he doesn't have the same defenses that, say, John Edwards had.
[golf clap]
this is all colberts fault. to quote:
no wonder he felt the urge to prove he was still rico suave after that
Clearly, administration needs to pass some sort of Education Stimulus package and rescue the Republican Party. The GOP is just too dumb to fail.
that one woman in the background is totally laughing at him, trying to suppress it.. youngish black woman
I saw that too, cracked me up!
I posted this in the other thread:
His story is that he went to Argentina to break off the affair and he now plans to work with his wife on repairing their marriage.
If that is all true it is a compelling human story and he should be given privacy to work on it.
But that is the personal side. on the professional side he was incredible irresponsible. He should at the very least have told the Lt Gov he was going to be gone and arranged for him to take over. Going forward, governor is a more than full time job, and if he has this much distraction going on he should resign so someone who can devote himself to the job can take over.
"His story is that he went to Argentina to break off the affair and he now plans to work with his wife on repairing their marriage." i don't know Eric, that's kind of a tough one to swallow. It took him 4 days and a couple grand on a plane ticket to do something he could've done in an email? Fiscal conservative my a**.
I know, I'm just saying even giving him the total benefit of the doubt and his version of the story it means his personal life is so complicated right now that he probably should resign.
And let me be clear, I'm not saying that everyone who has an affair needs to resign. I'm a Democrat who believes personal stuff is no one's business, but when the personal is interfering with your ability to do your job then it ceases to be personal. And I'd say that being conflicted about things that you fly to Argentina for a week without even telling the Lt Gov that he is in charge while your gone (or even telling him that your going to be gone for that matter!) qualifies as interfering with your ability to do your job.
Let me just say that breaking up with someone who obviously means something to you by email is not that admirable. Facing her was the right thing to do, IMO.
Yeah I agree with you on that,
But does it take 5 days?
You're right, but guy left admirable behind a while ago in this imbroglio. He could've done the one extra thing. :)
If face to face meant going to Atlanta or even Phoenix I would totally agree, but not going all the way to Buenos Aires when he's the governor without anyone knowing where he is or being able to contact him. What if a disaster like the commuter crash in DC had happened while he was AWOL? Given the fallout, would he rather be an insenstive prick or an irresponsible idiot who abandoned his duties and the people of South Caronlina for 5 days? On top of all that, it's not really clear if he broke off the relationship or just broke her off while he was down there. Finally, I wish the Dems who are gleefully dancing on his political grave would focus more on the actual duty related issues rather than the affair itself. Most of the time these things happen you can make the case that the affair was private and didn't really affect their job performance, but this isn't one of them.
OK, so the dude "hurt people." He is also the state's leading executive officer, and he left the country to go hang out with his mistress without telling anyone, leaving no way for people to contact him if some kind of emergency took place, and taking no care to make sure that someone, anyone, was in charge of the state. I don't care about his personal failings--other than the schadenfreude of watching another hypocritical family values guy suck it--but that kind of negligence makes him unfit for office.
Yeah--that's what's going to keep him from making any real waves in 2012. It was a completely irresponsible act to bail like that.
I don't understand how a person capable of this managed to make it all the way to a high office. Didn't a tendency to make massive, clueless, ridiculous mistakes (did he really think no one would notice/think it's weird to just disappear like that) would have shown up earlier in life.
My sense is this man needs serious psychological evaluation and treatment.
Maybe someone should start a facility specifically to rehab governors. Group therapy with Sanford, Spitzer, Blago... actually, they'd need one just for Illinois.
I feel bad for his family. He really should get the privacy he needs to work on his family issues. He won't, but he should.
That being said, leaving S.C. and not alerting anyone to his whereabouts is completely inexcusable and he should have to answer for that.
I hate to say it, but I got a cheap (very cheap) chuckle when he talked about crying in Argentina. All I could think was Evita!
I feel bad for his family too and I think his family deserves privacy, but not him. He voted to prevent gay people and unmarried people from adopting, I guess he feels it is preferable that children are raised by a married couple where the man cheats on the woman rather then by a loving couple that is gay or unmarried.
So you're telling me you have to break up with your mistress face to face these days? Even (especially?) if she's in another hemisphere? That's the weirdest part to me. What's wrong with:
"It's over. Sorry, babycakes. We had some good times. But you knew from the beginning what you're were getting into. Arrivaderci. Keep your nose clean, Kiddo."
...and throwing her a few emails to let her vent at you / make sure she doesn't kill herself.
The twit should have tweeted it: ":( got pwnd by wife, its over, have good life."
seems to me he obviously though he could take care of it and nobody would find out. Typical narcissist. My guess is he he texted her a breakup letter she'd freak and go to the press.
Fair point re: putting it in writing.
"...and throwing her a few emails to let her vent at you / make sure she doesn't kill herself."
That's hilarious. I may be pointing out the obvious here, trevorb, but it seems like you have some experience in this department.
I hate to say this because Sanford is a hypocritical "moral values" s**tsack, but I think he went back for 5 days because he actually may be in love with this Argentinian woman and wanted one last time together. It's one thing to dump someone when you're sick of them and want them to eff off, but it's another to have to do it when you don't really want to.
I'm ecstatic another moralizing GOP hypocrite has bitten the dust but I can't help but feel for the guy.
Argentina, well if the other woman was a carnival samba dancer of ambiguous gender and race than this blog will have come around full circle this week. One more Republican "front-runner" bites the dust...
I don't think that's been ruled out. He can't know that many Argentinians; surely photos will make the round by tomorrow. Carmelita (Dirty Money reference) may still be an option.
Hard not to rubberneck, but really none of my business. It will be interesting to see how the first political woman who runs around on her husband is received. Still, we still have Newt Gingrich to kick around. John McCain just ran for President. I have it on good authority, however, that Huckabee did not inhale.
I don't know how this guy expects to make a move in 2012 unless he steps up his game. Gingrich asked his first wife, his former high school teacher, for a divorce right after she came out of surgery for cancer. Then he neglected to pay child support and had to go to her congregation for assistance.
Gingrich was cheating on his second wife with wife number three who was a congressional staffer.
Sanford actually strikes me as a decent guy. I really don't see the need for him to ask for forgiveness from anyone not in his family, but that's part of the evangelical mindset that dominates that type of GOP politics.
Where's the hooker?
Where's the wide stance airport sex?
The GOP is now drinking from the toilet bowl of family values conservatism.
Palin/Huckabee 2012!
I'm calling BS on the went to Argentina to break it off. First of all, it doesn't take a few days to do and there's no reason to do it in person. There's daily non-stop flights between Atlanta and Buenos Aires anyways. Second of all, there's no way in hell the wife lets him go break it off with his mistress alone and over Father's Day weekend.
As much as I hated GOP smugness during the Clinton years it is just as unattractive when liberals or Democrats do this now. Guess what folks, human weakness is a beast!
But to paraphrase Jim Rome, "He manned up, He owned it" and it is now an issue between him, his wife and kids and the voters in South Carolina. If he used state funds for the trip then that's another story, but if not, I think Sanford, Clinton and anyone else who has had to deal with this deserves our compassion.
It's not that he cheated on his wife. People do it. It's human nature. For liberals, it's that he cheated on his wife after years and years of defending "family values" and the "sanctity of marriage" through policy while working to deny gays their rights to adopt children and marry each other. Where's the Republican moral outrage now?
For me, there's a bit of schadenfreude in the hypocrisy. But, the bigger issue is that he left the country for a week without making any arrangements to let people know where he was or to make sure the state was being managed in his absence. He may even have used state resources.
Dude should be out on his ass for that kind of negligence.
A pundit on Hardball just said Politico is about to break a story confirming he used state funds on this (and others) trip. Here is the thing that bugs me, call me smug if you want, he got busted. He went missing, from his main responsibility as Gov., there were all kinds of lies regarding his absence and the only reason this is now a story and has been a story for the past few day was due to his stunning incompetence and I'm supposed to have compassion for the dude? Because he manned up(whatever that means).
Not to mention that he has been front in center in turning down stimulus money for schools, poor, etc.
Government money to help the people of his state, bad; government money to pay for his flings with a woman in Argentina, A-OK!
Didn't you know that Democrats eat their own? Spitzer? Edwards?
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it does have a sense of humor.
Sources claim that the FBI is set to release recordings from inside the Buenos Aires hotel room.
Snippets include: "I'm fucking for South Carolina!" and "I'm not a born-again Christian tonight!"
Off the record, Republicans insist that these in no way take away from Gov. Sanford's "hero" status, which was attained when he said, "Thanks, but no thanks," to the President's Stimulus Package.
The woman in Argentina must have scared the snot out of him, that would be my guess. She must have wanted something, and wasn't going to let him off easy. His disregard for his position and his family just shows that emotion trumped reason, so something happened.
Kinda suspicious he spent Fathers Day Weekend with her and not his kids.
Or maybe he spent it with his OTHER kids.
Sure, there's some open questions about what actually happened (though, to be fair, most of those questions can fall into the category of "none of your damned business," but I have to give the guy credit for (finally) being honest, at least moreso than most politicians who have been in the same situation. He seems well aware than any ambitions he may have held for higher office are at the very least, going to have to wait until this story becomes ancient history.
The real issue is not about his infidelity, but about his abandonment of his responsibilities as governor. The fact that he lied to his staff, hid from his Lieutenant Governor, and left the continent without a contingency plan shows a level of negligence that is a problem, to say the least.
All that said, the guy looks like he's going through hell. Hopefully he can learn something from his mistakes.
Here are some emails between him and his woman.
From The State Newspaper:
http://www.thestate.com/sanford/story/839350.html
Oh my God. His poor wife.
Yeah, seriously. World wind? THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS WORLD WIND! HOW DID SHE PUT UP WITH THIS METAPHOR-MIXING MOTHERFUCKER FOR SO LONG?
Damn! I live down here in Buenos Aires and only a few blocks from that apartment building. I could have blown this whole thing open if I just happened to walk past him and his mistress at some point over the last few days. There's no shortage of middle-aged gringos looking for a thrill down here, though, so I may not have noticed him at first but it would have been cool if I did and then I managed to snap a photo of them with my mobile phone and then, BAM!, single-handedly brought down the Governor of South Carolina.
Oh, well, next time. Anyway, for anyone who can read Spanish and would like a local take on the story, Clarin is the biggest newspaper down here and Sanford's doofy face is currently on the home page:
http://www.clarin.com/
Gotta say tho, if politics dont work out, he could get a good thing going writing sappy romance novels.
Arghhh! How did you even get through the first one!!??!! Too much information!!!!
Yeah. I clicked, was sorry I clicked, and glanced down at the comments: this is horrible. All these people talking about how beautiful it is, and can't you appreciate the special magic for these two people, and completely ignoring how his wife and children would feel reading about why their dad ditched them on Father's Day. Yuck.
It's very old-fashioned of me, but I go with first divorce, then find the next one. And I agree with the truism, personified by Newt, that if you start out as the other woman but he leaves and marries you, he will cheat on you, too. (And vice versa, but all the he or she, wife or husband made that sentence hard to read.)
Liberal smugness is no better than conservative self-righteousness. We all capable of this kind of epic fail. I think what worries me is the sort of glee that people feel when politicians go through these things.
Perhaps we should be grown ups and admit these things happen and that we should find mature ways to deal with it.
I Agree.
But why is it that we only see the recognition that we are all human from some people when they are the ones in need of compassion? It's not just sex, it's Limbaugh and drugs, Bennett and gambling, etc. Why is only THEIR weaknesses and THEIR fail that needs empathy? What I hated about Spitzer was that he was such an unforgiving bully in the courtroom when it was other people's weaknesses and I have no doubt that if and when he gets back in the saddle, so to speak, he will forget what it was like to be weak and be tempted and be just as unforgiving. Just as Gingrich and McCain et al can go back to being such judgmental prigs even though they themselves know what it is like to be a sinner and weak and cheat on people who love them.
In the same vein I wonder why there are so many politicians who have done drugs (including presidents and presidential aspirants) who can be so heartless and throw people in jail for such piffling amounts.
I want them to be as forgiving to the powerless and weak as they want from others when they fall. I recall some aphorism in that regard, something about doing unto others...
I am not optimistic.
My gut tells me that we all engage in this type of self-deception. That if we do the moral or just thing then it will keep us from those corrupting and primal urges that we have. My hope would be that we could talk about them, perhaps the Jimmy Carter "I have lusted in my heart" approach, and then have a discussion about how we can support people and help them deal with their urges.
Again, I agree. I just wished more politicians, and other people in power, felt (and acted) the same way when they are controlling the lives of others and not wait until they are caught in compromising position to recognize human frailty.
Agree on all points. Ironically, the only time there's an impact on their ability to perform their jobs is when the cover up gets out of control which they wouldn't need to do if their personal lives were out of the political discusion.
Except in this case, where his inability to perform his duties directly led to the need to cover up his actions.
There's very likely some kind of blackmail involved in that end, even if it's merely emotional. If he were in a position (personally/ emotionally/ power-wise) to kick her to the curb, he'd have done so as much as Clinton did to Lewinsky, letting her cry herself out and callously trying to move on. The fact that he didn't implies some hold over him, whether true love, a child, threats to go public, whatever. Which means it's going to get worse for Sanford before it gets better, and that abject look of personal misery on his face is a genuine reflection of what he expects to come out as this keeps unravelling.
Kudos to him for having the integrity to be openly and publically ashamed of it, though. Craig and Clinton and Ensign and Edwards just denied or faux-apologized and kept on keeping on.
(Sigh) ... that *was* written on the Reply button to Trevortb up above ... but down at the end it goes, apparently.
WOW
This was the most candid, heartfelt apology I've heard from a politician in - well - ever.
We all make mistakes at least this guy had the balls to just get up there, admit he was wrong, and ask for forgiveness.
Okay, I finally watched and I agree. Much better, as DT says, than Edwards et al. I couldn't help notice that he first brings up how he hurt his lover, and I think it's evident things are not at all over there. (Like it takes a week to break up with someone, anyhow.)
But I will give him props for asking for a zone of privacy around his wife and sons. I'm not sure he gets any credit for his wife not standing in the background in the official pearls and blue scarf combo of wronged politician's wives--that may be all Jenny--but if it didn't occur to him to ask I give him some props for that, too.
But no props for carrying on the affair by e-mail and frequently vanishing, but hoping it would stay secret.
Anyone else read these email snippets and taken aback by the fact that he actually writes pretty well?
Okay, I think I've nailed down what bothers me on the hypocrisy angle. There's a little of that "before you cast stones at Bill Clinton, maybe you should have made sure you weren't standing in a glass house."
But mostly it's on family legislation--banning adoption by gay couples and by singles is my big beef with Sanford here. And the related bashing of certain types of families (e.g. gay, single parent) as not being right, and so he and his brethren want to prevent them from even trying to make a family, or at least berate them for existing. When you take that line, your own family life had damn well better be a model. Sanford would rather a child languish in foster care forever than be adopted by a gay couple, or by a single parent. Yet the model he sets is to drag his children and his wife through this--not only does he ditch them on Father's Day to spend a week with his mistress, he goes about it so ineptly (trying to avoid Kwame Kilpatrick's fate, so he ditches security?) that he plays out his infidelity on a national stage.
Deb -
One can only hope that through his own personal foibles, Sanford will extend his reach of compassion to include those he once considered less than himself. Maybe after his sexual sins are exposed and served up on a platter for America to gawk at he might be able empathize with those who are similarly mocked and degraded.
The Kwame Kilpatrick case though was much more serious than marital infidelity. He almost certainly took out a hit on the stripper Tamara Greene (AKA Strawberry) as well as another stripper that tried to escape to Atlanta.
http://tinyurl.com/nnm2ww
http://tinyurl.com/moeu2a