The personal impact of the Sanford affair is more gripping than the political. Sanford has done a horrible thing to his wife and family and friends. He seemed to know and feel this more profoundly than other politicians we’ve seen go through this familiar apology exercise before. That doesn’t excuse him. Not that he was asking that anyone excuse him. He seemed to be trying to take all the blame, as he should. Some might think his explanations were excuses. To me they seemed like a man confessing the details of a crime.
The minute Sanford started speaking, the reviews poured in via e-mail and Twitter. He was rambling, confused. He didn’t tear up enough when talking about his wife. He favored his mistress. He answered the questions too thoroughly. All these judgments seemed absurd. A man standing in front of a bank of cameras in the middle of a complete collapse is going to say a lot of things poorly.
The snap judgments failed to acknowledge a grain of the fundamental human carnage we were witnessing. You can laugh at Sanford, as you can laugh at a video of a wrecked Amy Winehouse falling all over her house. But at some point, even though they did it to themselves, you have to feel sorry for them as human beings. You can do that, I think, and not be a fan of adultery or drug use.
If they put it to a referendum, I’m going to vote against further public displays of remorse from errant pols. It has become commonplace and vulgar. It serves no purpose. In any situation like this the damage is primarily private and should be dealt with far from the public view. CNN must have run hours on this last night.
The pols choose to make it public – they are the ones, after all, who won election campaigns based on their support of high ethical standards and “family values”. I have no problem with holding their hypocrisy up to public scrutiny. The ones who truly deserve our compassion are the ones who get dragged out to stand in the spotlight by “their man” who treated them with such thoughtlessness and even contempt. I am thankful that Mrs. Sanford chose not to stand with the husband who betrayed her. Her statement was gracious and forgiving, but she made it very clear that the burden was on him. I feel sorry for him – but he showed considerably more narcissism than repentance in his remarkable news conference. And I feel sorry for anyone who embraces politicians as standard bearers for virtue.
I don’t see anything disturbing, honestly, by the glee. It’s predictable from the people who utterly loathe his politically conservative ideas.
People who proclaim a high moral standard will have the most glee poured upon them when they fail that standard.
Plus, Sanford was a threat to the libs and they knew it. Not to mention how dearly he was hated by all the Republicans who wanted to raise taxes and spend more money.
But he’s no longer a threat now — career-ender — and Dickerson can afford to be “disturbed” over the glee.
But that doesn’t end the schadenfreude of the left and the country club Republicans who loathed his policies so much. I think it understandable.
Sarah,
I have read your posts on this matter and believe you are dead wrong. People do not loathe conservative ideals, and the Republican Party certainly has no monopoly on morality and never has. Both these points are nothing but propaganda. People loathe hypocrisy.
The fact of the matter is that beginning in the 80s the Republican Party embarked on a goal of creating a permanent governing majority by bringing two groups together, fiscal conservatives and religious conservatives. This worked perfectly for Reagan. The problem is these two groups only overlap at the center. There are a large number of fiscal conservatives who are social liberals, and there are a large number of religious conservatives who are not traditional fiscal conservatives.
Over the years the fiscal conservatives could live with the social conservatives, but the social conservatives could not live with the fiscally conservative social liberals, so they began to demand more and more social conservatism in exchange for their vote.
As fiscal conservatives began to find they could not obtain the votes of the social conservatives they began to portray themselves as social conservatives in order to get elected. Unfortunately under the white hot light of the modern Press and Internet that veil is almost impossible to maintain. When that veil is removed and the hypocrisy revealed supporters feel angry and betrayed, and critics move in to their I told you so mode.
Despite your disdain, the simple fact is that when you kick your so called country club Republicans out of the party you cease to have any possibility of majority.
RE: “People do not loathe conservative ideals . . . ”
Well — the people who loathe conservative ideals too — and they are a-plenty in South Carolina.
RE: “. . . and the Republican Party certainly has no monopoly on morality and never has.”
Completely agree. Why you would assert that I don’t know. In fact, the Republican Party is an increasingly disgraceful irrelevancy as they imitate a cow on ice, flailing about attempting to discover their platform and mount a coherent vision in opposition to Obama’s.
RE: your explanations about social and fiscal conservatives.
Sanford was both, and won his election and re-election largely based on his excellent fiscal conservatism. Many of the Republicans here in the state positively loathe that fiscal conservatism.
If you’re not a part of SC, and haven’t kept track of the local players, you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.
I have no desire to kick the non-conservative country clubbers out of the Republican Party — heck I’m not even a Republican myself.
But the only way that Republicans will recover the votes of the increasing numbers of conservatives who are abandoning ship is if they can actually rediscover their own platform.
It’s looking, as I’ve said before, increasingly unlikely.
You see . . . to draw a TEC parallel . . . it’s a bit like the conservatives in a parish or a diocese in the South.
If the libs win a liberal rector . . . the conservatives leave, as is being so clearly demonstrated in a local parish of my acquaintance.
If the conservatives win a conservative rector . . . the libs stay.
The Republican Party now finds itself in a strikingly similar situation. They’re simply not going to win elections without a base — as the demographics surrounding the presidential election and those who bailed out from the McCain nomination amply reveal.
Back to Sanford — the war that has been going on, Mitchell, between the tax and spend Republicans here in SC and Sanford has gone on literally for years. They loathed his ideals — despised them — and their glee now at his adultery and outing of that adultery is perfectly understandable. And of course liberal glee needs no explanation.
Unfortunately, the Republicans here are now going to have to deal with the unfortunate political implications — for them — of the Governor’s adultery and his devastating fall.
After all . . . they needed to do an injury, but not, shall we say, the thorough dispatching that has now occurred. They’re going to have to stare in the face of the Looming Andre Bauer — who will make a dreadful governor, as they well know.
I am sickened for Sanford’s family. But I will greatly enjoy the show between the scrambling non-conservative Republicans and the libs.
The problem was not with Sanford–although he certainly has his problems and faults–is with the press. They are the ones asking the tawdry questions. They are the ones persisting and pressing for their lewd answers. If they didn’t ask or film or tape, there would be precious little to the story.
Just one more man in power who thinks he can’t be caught.
“If you’re not a part of SC, and haven’t kept track of the local players, you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.”
I am life long resident of SC, and very familure with the players. I suspect what you contend to be conservative ideas are in fact Libertarian ideas.
“Sanford was both, and won his election and re-election largely based on his excellent fiscal conservatism.”
I believe Sanford won his first election by running against an unpopular Democratic Governor tied to video poker. He won his second election, because he had no significant competition.
Perhaps Sarah could enlighten us as to what the true “conservative ideals” are and why they are so ideal.
I saw Dickerson’s article yesterday; I thought the last paragraph was possibly the best one:
[blockquote]What Mark Sanford seemed to be trying to say is that he screwed up, in the biggest possible way, because he lost his bearings. He lost his self-control. He was indulgent. He forgot that there were other humans in the world. Yet [b]in the constant flow of abuse, joke-making, and grand conclusions about his failings, it seemed everyone having a good time pointing at his self-indulgence was also engaging in a form of it.[/b] [i][emphasis added][/i][/blockquote]
I think Dickerson hit the nail right on the head. I was hardly Gov. Sanford’s biggest fan before this, but the pure glee with which so many people have reacted is deeply disheartening to me. Leaving aside the fact that we are none of us perfect, to my mind, what it comes down to is this: involved in this story are people who have been deeply hurt – primarily Sanford’s wife and children – and it frankly sickens me to see people reacting with such excitement to something that has caused so much pain to others.
Dan (#8)
This is a list Sean Hannity proposes, and it’s a pretty good one on conservative ideals:
1) To be the party of National security (including strengthening border defense);
2) oppose Appeasement of dictators and terrorists;
3) Support Tax CUTS, and fiscal responsibility, balancing the budget;
4) Realistic “Energy Independence†including nuclear and increased domestic production, while developing alternate forms of energy;
5) secure our borders completely;
6) Non-Socialized Healthcare plans;
7) Reform Education to include choice;
8) REAL options to save Social Security and Medicare;
9) Interpretive Judges not legislative judges;
10) Uphold and defend the American Dream.
RE: “I suspect what you contend to be conservative ideas are in fact Libertarian ideas.”
You mean being pro-life and anti-expansion of the definition of marriage to a currently popular sexual orientation [but not, of course, any of the unpopular sexual orientations]? I wasn’t aware that those were “Libertarian ideas.”
How about simply those ideas that conform to the written platform of the Republican party? That would certainly be a nice start — and let’s face it, plenty of Republicans who loathe Sanford’s conservative ideas can’t conform to that rather basic and it would seem somewhat essential document.
RE: “I believe Sanford won his first election by running against an unpopular Democratic Governor tied to video poker. He won his second election, because he had no significant competition.”
Certainly an interesting theory. With both campaigns, one wonders why the competition that Sanford had was not deemed “significant” by the actual voters. In the first campaign there were a gracious plenty of other Republican options — for instance, he had to beat Bob Peeler, the then Lt. Governor of SC, in a Republican primary, and Charlie Condon was also a legitimate contendor — but oddly, Sanford, who at one point in the first campaign was deemed a big dark horse — pulled it off against a crowded Republican field.
I personally — as a conservative, and thus encompassing both fiscal and social ideals — supported him for his principled fiscal conservatism.
RE: “Perhaps Sarah could enlighten us as to what the true “conservative ideals†are and why they are so ideal.”
Well, as you’re a liberal, Dan, you don’t need to be “enlightened” as to conservative ideals — you have but to ponder the opposite vision as yours, as frequently articulated by you on this blog.
And I have no interest in articulating for you why conservative ideals are so wonderful — we don’t share the same foundational value system with regards to government for us to be able to find some agreement on the basics, much less the details.
RE: ” . . . the pure glee with which so many people have reacted is deeply disheartening to me.”
Fishsticks, I continue to be confused by the disheartenment. I’m sorry for your pain over other people’s glee.
But it’s just expected that those erstwhile leaders who despised the conservative ideals that Sanford represented and who also believed that Sanford represented a threat to certain of their goals and visions will have immense glee and excitement. They hated what he stood for. Therefore they’re thrilled that he’s proven to have feet of clay and that a potential rival to their own ambitions has been eliminated.
There is, of course, also the constant hope by those who are opposed to social-conservatism that if a proponent of those ideals can be shown to have moral failings in contradiction to his stated ideals [i]then perhaps we can cease to have those standards at all.[/i]
It’s the same old saw. If someone has said “same-gender sexual relationships are disordered and immoral” and then it’s learned that he himself has engaged in same-gender sexual relationships, the cry is not merely that he’s a hypocrite — but that his original stance is therefore flawed and wrong.
That’s the hoped-for takeaway, anyway. Of course, hypocrisy is a sure sign of an existing moral standard. Sanford’s secrecy merely demonstrates his knowledge — and society’s knowledge — that what he did was wrong and affects our trust of him in other matters as well.
The trade-off for hypocrisy is deconstruction of society’s unpopular moral standards — something that social liberals dearly hope for.
Hence, again . . . the glee and delight, because of the opportunity it appears to represent.
Fortunately, again, we have the shock and horror of society with regards to Sanford’s actions, demonstrating again that no matter how hard progressives try . . . society’s standards often remain far more obdurate than “logic” or “open-mindedness” might dictate.
Which is quite a relief for those of us who also articulate and promote conservative social values.
Sarah can be quite pithy. Is this the Sarah at Stand Firm who suggested that a wire service report of some random man of no particular religious affiliation who was convicted of having sex with dogs was an indicator of attitudes held by the Episcopal Church?
RE No. 10: I find those points useless in assessing positions on a spectrum of political conservatism and liberalism. I’m not sure what “upholding and defending the American Dream” [initial caps Mr Hannity’s ?] signifies, but the other points seem like ones that, whatever their merits, could be supported by virtually any element of the American political band width.
RE: “Is this the Sarah at Stand Firm who suggested that a wire service report of some random man of no particular religious affiliation who was convicted of having sex with dogs was an indicator of attitudes held by the Episcopal Church?”
NoVA Scout must be referring to this article:
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/23050/
. . . Which as anyone with eyes can see is authored by no person named “Sarah” at all, nor in fact did it even say that “having sex with dogs was an indicator of attitudes held by the Episcopal Church.” It asked a question about a potential “new frontier” for TEC progressives in the future — great thread, too and so terribly revealing about so many fascinating details as, for instance, William Countryman’s [you know, the non-celibate gay Episcopal priest and professor at the Episcopal Seminary in Berkeley—CDSP] views on said subject and other sexual orientations as well:
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/23050/#369643
NoVA Scout, it appears, isn’t particularly detail-oriented. But when one is desperate to change the subject, I suppose one will try anything.