33 responses to
“The governor regrets.”

1. moe99 said on June 25th, 2009 at 10:24 am

   Nancy, if I was AWOL from my job for 7 days and had not noti­fied those who were statu­to­rily oblig­ated to fill in for me (read Lt. Gov­er­nor), I would have been fired. The man not only crapped out on his fam­ily, he crapped out on the entire state of S. Car­olina. He doesn’t get a pass on this one just because of a 12 year affair.

   And I thought the emails to the mis­tress were rem­i­nis­cent of the ones I found in the fam­ily com­puter ten years ago. The line that sticks in my mem­ory is where he wrote: “I want to be in between your legs all night long.” ’bout the same level of author­ship and rag­ing hormones.

   And TPM has some unan­swered ques­tions that those caught up in the emo­tion of the presser didn’t ask:
   http://​tinyurl​.com/​m6nndf

2. coozledad said on June 25th, 2009 at 10:44 am

   Moe 99: Well, that’s a sen­tence I can say with some degree of con­fi­dence I’ll never write. After five or six min­utes of push-ups I’m look­ing for the dry, cool area of the bed, and there might as well be a tag on my toe for the next eleven hours.

3. Connie said on June 25th, 2009 at 11:02 am

   Some years ago I fired some­one for fail­ing to return to work after 7 days off. And show­ing up another week later. Blamed it on her husband’s visa prob­lems while they were in Mex­ico. I said: if you had called.…

4. Jenine said on June 25th, 2009 at 11:15 am

   I’m hop­ing for any other news story to take over. I will take health care reform debate over this per­sonal melt­down any day.

5. nancy said on June 25th, 2009 at 11:32 am

   I’m not excus­ing him at all. I am say­ing I can’t feel quite as much sneer­ing con­tempt as oth­ers. Part of it is because this story is only the lat­est in a long line of GOP family-values types exposed as hyp­ocrites, and I’m just tired of read­ing the same script over and over.

   He needs to quit, almost cer­tainly. But I do think what­ever hap­pened in this case, it was prob­a­bly as much a sur­prise to San­ford as it was to any­one else.

6. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 25th, 2009 at 11:46 am

   Actu­ally, i’m curi­ous if any­one else saw the ABC health insur­ance forum last night. I only got to see about half, and a pretty MD-centric half at that. Obama was show­ing that he’s shift­ing focus pretty strongly to this sub­ject, and i think all sides are sin­cere about the Scylla and Char­by­dis of a) this can’t go on, trend-wise, with costs and employer-base cov­er­age, but b) when there’s a fed­eral option, what hap­pens when every­one runs over to one side of the pon­toon boat?

   What makes the pres­i­dency age a fel­low — you spend months and weeks get­ting ready to push on a par­tic­u­lar, major, chal­leng­ing front, and at the worst pos­si­ble moment, Iran starts shoot­ing nice young women on the street.

   As with most of our jobs, gotta do both. Pray for ‘em, too.

   I agree with the Ner­vous Break­down the­ory for San­ford if only i knew what a ner­vous break­down was. Like a midlife cri­sis, it some­times seems like a figleaf of a label for “i dunno, i just did it.” He did give com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cers a bit of video that will be used for years to tell bosses and clients “No, you want to pre­pare a state­ment, really.” I’d like to be impressed that he came out and just tried to speak from the heart, but there’s too much backed-into-a-corner-ness in how events unfolded for me to give him even that.

7. James said on June 25th, 2009 at 11:49 am

   I’m tempted to do the obvi­ous car­toon: “Where in the World is Gov­er­nor Sanford?”

8. del said on June 25th, 2009 at 11:54 am

   Gov­er­nor Sanford’s dron­ing on about the MEANING of for­give­ness made me wish that Howard Stern’s old side­kick Stut­ter­ing John were at the press con­fer­ence to bring him back to earth with some sor­did ques­tion about the details of their sex. Enough already gov­er­nor.
   That said, I really don’t think that the sex lives of our lead­ers are rel­e­vant to per­for­mance in office (unless there’s, as here, hypocrisy).

9. Dorothy said on June 25th, 2009 at 11:56 am

   Hey Kirk — I just got to shake hands with Mike Harden! He’s hav­ing lunch with Mark Ellis today and he is in my boss’s office right now, hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion. He’s a tiny fel­low, isn’t he?? Told him I’m a big fan.

10. nancy said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    This is what I’m talk­ing about.

11. Michael said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    I think the Thurs­day Morn­ing quar­ter­back­ing is miss­ing the story here. There is noth­ing new in “Mark San­ford”. The story here, what makes it dif­fer­ent is his wife. First she tries, then she thows his butt out, and then while he sup­posed to be decid­ing if he wants/intends to come back he runs to the other woman (duly noted love affair, not intern/staffer boffing).

    When it all comes out (and why did it on the day of the big health care thing? after the papers had the info for 6 months), she doesn’t come to his defense, or sup­port. She remains, on the island with the boys and her fam­ily. He is still wel­come to try to come home, but on her terms. She has cho­sen her dig­nity, and her son’s devel­op­ment, over the power/prestige/pure raw “money” of hang­ing around with “him”.

    I am truly amazed at her char­ac­ter and think she is the MOTW (if not the big book deal, or future politi­cian) in this family.

12. KLG said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    Although his per­for­mance was gen­uine and even poignant at times, Mark San­ford deserves no sym­pa­thy what­so­ever. He is the vilest of hyp­ocrites who has no sym­pa­thy for the less for­tu­nate in his state or any­where else. A typ­i­cal Mod­ern Repub­li­can (empha­sis on “mod­ern”) and noth­ing more. He needs to resign and then go away for a long time and con­tem­plate the abject humil­i­a­tion he has brought down on his fam­ily, par­tic­u­larly his chil­dren. Yeah, I’m cranky this morning.

13. Scout said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    Nancy, you are obvi­ously a bet­ter per­son than me, because I have not been able to muster up one sin­gle ounce of sym­pa­thy for the Love Gov. His fam­ily, yes. Maybe it’s because as a gay Amer­i­can my last nerve is ping­ing with stuff like this:

    http://​joe​my​god​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​f​l​a​s​h​b​a​c​k​-​g​o​v​-​s​a​n​f​o​r​d​-​o​n​-​g​a​y​-​m​a​r​r​i​a​g​e.html

    But the good news is that mil­lions of South Car­olini­ans have learned that a para­mour is not some­thing used for lawn care.

14. mark said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    I guess I missed all of Sanford’s mor­al­iz­ing about adul­tery. Not say­ing he didn’t, I just don’t fol­low the every word of every repub­li­can like most here.

    The hyp­ocrite indicts him­self, not the mes­sage he pro­fessed. Some here may not like the mes­sage, but the fall of a mes­sen­ger (if that’s what San­ford was) is pretty mean­ing­less. San­ford ought to resign, or be shoved out, to rein­force the mes­sage that fidelity does mat­ter and there are con­se­quences for poor behavior.

15. brian stouder said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    And note, for the record, that Gov­er­nor San­ford prob­a­bly wouldn’t have been much more than a mem­ber of city coun­cil in what­ever city he came from, if he hadn’t latched onto his wealthy wife (appar­ently her family’s wealth orig­nated from the Skil tool line.…and she might well have use for one of their cir­cu­lar saws, for that Argen­tin­ian limb her hus­band shim­mied out on)

16. ROgirl said on June 25th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Yes, his actions have opened him to the rev­e­la­tion that he’s a human being, not just an ani­ma­tronic mes­sage bearer for Repub­li­can mor­al­iz­ing and gov­ern­ing com­mand­ments. But there’s also some karmic sat­is­fac­tion in know­ing that so many of those who went out of their way to con­demn Bill Clin­ton have been caught in sim­i­larly tawdry cir­cum­stances with their flies down.

    It would be refresh­ing if the Republican/Born Again/Moral Values/Jesus is the Answer/You’re Going to Burn for Eter­nity, You Non-Believers crowd would recon­sider their take on life, death and/or pol­i­tics, but I ain’t hold­ing my breath. This may clear the path for Mitt Rom­ney in the near future.

17. Dorothy said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    RIP Far­rah Fawcett.

18. moe99 said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    http://​www​.thes​tate​.com/​s​a​n​f​o​r​d​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​8​3​9​7​8​3.html

19. Susan Gillie said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    As they say in the South, “aww, bless his heart.”

    In Indy we have our own “l’amour fou” – the local car salesman’s wife ran off with her plas­tic sur­geon. As a friend says, “only in Indiana.”

    Here is the link
    http://​www​.indys​tar​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​9​0​6​2​5​/​B​U​S​I​N​E​S​S​/​9​0​6​2​5​0​1​4​/​B​o​b​+​R​o​h​r​m​a​n​+​s​a​y​s​+​d​o​c​+​s​t​o​l​e​+​h​i​s+wife

20. moe99 said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    Hey mark, rest assured that San­ford was way out front about how awful Bill Clin­ton was for the affair and for his lying:

    http://​goldni​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​m​a​r​k​-​s​a​n​f​o​r​d​-​o​n​-​b​i​l​l​-​c​l​i​n​t​o​n.html

21. Connie said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    I’ve seen numer­ous com­ments on var­i­ous blogs this a.m. talk­ing about how what Clin­ton did was far worse than what San­ford did. It’s been more than a decade, but they can’t let it go.

22. Christy S. said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Is it just a coin­ci­dence that “Appalachia” and “Argentina” begin and end with As and have four syl­la­bles? Would love to have been a fly on the wall dur­ing the staff meet­ing that came away with the “Let’s say he’s hik­ing the Appalachian Trail” story. Won­der what other ideas were floated?

23. mark said on June 25th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

    moe: You will have to enlighten me about how those two com­ments put San­ford “way out front about how awful Bill Clin­ton was”. They seem pretty reserved to me.

    Con­nie: Per­haps some of those com­ments are using Clin­ton to point out the “hypocrisy” of some cur­rently express­ing out­rage, glee or what­ever at San­ford. Really old comments/events may be used and exag­ger­ated freely when the pur­pose is to expose hypocrisy. See moe at 20.

24. Rana said on June 25th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    I can feel sorry for him as a per­son, but I can’t muster up any sym­pa­thy for the pub­lic offi­cial. When you’re in a posi­tion to use your power to dic­tate that peo­ple live up to one religion’s arbi­trary and sex­ist moral stan­dards, and you can’t even man­age that in your own life, you’re not only hyp­o­crit­i­cal, but cruel. I’d hope that his expe­ri­ences would make him more sym­pa­thetic to the human foibles of other peo­ple, and thus to tem­per his abso­lutist rhetoric and poli­cies, but I doubt it will happen.

25. James said on June 25th, 2009 at 4:24 pm

    San­ford… He’s a Demo­c­rat, right?

26. paddyo' said on June 25th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Am I the only one who read the Slate item Nancy cited as not so much a defense of San­ford as a cri­tique of the vocif­er­ous and vitu­per­a­tive “qual­ity” of the con­dem­na­tions, joke-tellings, etc.? Every­thing San­ford did was wrong, and he deserves what­ever comes to him. But does that make the bottom-feeding level of dis­course in the con­dem­na­tions (present com­pany here accepted, of course!) right?
    Just wondering …

27. jeff borden said on June 25th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    Except in cases where the behav­ior inter­feres with the duties of the office, which is clearly true with San­ford, I’d really like to see our coun­try grow up about the sex lives of politicians.

    Was FDR any less a great pres­i­dent because he may have had a fling? Was Ike any less of a great mil­i­tary com­man­der and excel­lent pres­i­dent because he allegedly had female com­pany dur­ing the time he was in com­mand of the Euro­pean theater?

    George W. Bush con­fronted his alco­holism and quit. He appears to have a won­der­ful mar­riage to Laura and raised two decent young women. He leads an incred­i­bly healthy lifestyle. He’s clearly very reli­gious. And he was an absolute dis­as­ter as president.

    We might take a step in the right direc­tion if both polit­i­cal par­ties, par­tic­u­larly the GOP, stop act­ing like they are the exem­plars of Bib­li­cal moral­ity. I’d rather have a randy polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive who is smart, edu­cated and capa­ble than a pil­lar of moral­ity who is dumb, unworldly and incompetent.

28. baldheadeddork said on June 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    @jeff bor­den: I would say that it’s just as impor­tant for politi­cians to grow up about the sex lives of the coun­try. Until those politi­cians do mature, I have no prob­lem with point­ing and laugh­ing hys­ter­i­cally when they are caught in their hypocrisy. Never under­es­ti­mate the cura­tive pow­ers of ridicule.

29. Catherine said on June 25th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    But jeff b, what about uphold­ing your vows? If some­one can’t uphold his per­sonal vows, can we, the elec­torate, count on him to uphold his pub­lic vows?

    And, I think the choice you out­line is a false one. We can have the whole package.

30. mark said on June 25th, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Care­ful, Cather­ine. That sort of abso­lutist rhetoric will get you accused of try­ing to dic­tate accep­tance of your arbi­trary, reli­gious, sex­ist, racist, mor­al­iz­ing stan­dards and poli­cies. Nobody is an exem­plar of bib­li­cal moral­ity so nobody should speak of good or bad conduct.

    Pro­gres­sive, sophis­ti­cated, worldly women know that men are not expected to behave well. Men are expected to not claim they will or should behave well.

31. ROgirl said on June 25th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    As usual, Jon Stew­art summed things up aptly: just another con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cian with a lib­eral penis.

32. Rana said on June 25th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    mark, you’re mak­ing the clas­sic error of assum­ing that the only source of moral­ity, or under­stand­ing of good or bad con­duct, is Biblical.

    One doesn’t have to be a Chris­t­ian, or even reli­gious, to know that betray­ing one’s promises, whether per­sonal or civic, isn’t a good thing. Crit­i­ciz­ing a pub­lic offi­cial for impos­ing his per­sonal reli­gious stan­dards on peo­ple who don’t belong to his reli­gious group or sub­scribe to his reli­gious beliefs is a dif­fer­ent ani­mal entirely, espe­cially if that offi­cial can’t even man­age to uphold them himself.

    It’s bad enough when such per­sons try to inscribe their per­sonal beliefs into law while liv­ing accord­ing to those beliefs them­selves; when they insist on legal­iz­ing a higher moral­ity for non-believers than for them­selves, it’s not sim­ply hypocrisy, it’s down­right offensive.

33. joodyb said on June 25th, 2009 at 10:42 pm

    why does any­body care? other than that he is the ceo of a state and South Car­olina gets to be a lit­tle embar­rassed — again?
    I remain more inter­ested in why the State didn’t dog the email thing in Decem­ber when the whiff of for­eign travel on the tax­payer dime curled, but oth­er­wise, the dirt on this guy points to yet another boy with a weird upbring­ing who seems to have turned out kind of arrested emo­tion­ally in league with a lit­tle mega­lo­ma­nia fueled by his ear­lier days on Wall Street.
    i’m with jttmo in that my bad day is your ner­vous break­down. some of us are bet­ter at mud­dling through.
    that presser was painful, but man, he’s no novice. he shoulda han­dled it or had it handled.