Complaints about him leaving his post are contradicted by the claim that his only power is a “bully pulpit.” With the legislative session adjourned until next January, there was nothing going on that needed his attention. No hurricanes heading for the coast. The only reason anyone noticed that he was missing was because they had e-mails that strongly suggested WHY he was absent. Otherwise: yawn.

As for travel that combined personal matters with government business, that happens all the time. It happens in the private and public sector. The State Bar has its annual meeting at a resort, so that a little business can get conducted to justify what is actually a vacation (albeit with hordes of lawyers).

And I don’t really care about his personal life dramas. I’m a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” person. If you’re doing your job, then get on with it. What’s standing in Sanford’s way is not Sanford but people who are exploiting a personal indiscretion and trying to stymie progress. I’d rather tell THEM to stop gumming up the works, than tell Sanford to step down for this. In fact, I think it is bizarre that a week spent with a woman he is ga-ga over is in some way MORE offensive to many of his critics than other hard-nosed decisions he made that actually impact South Carolinians.

If he wants to resign for personal reasons, that’s his business. But I see nothing here to justify having him step down in the manner of NJ Governor Jim McGreevey (made his lover the head of NJ’s homeland security apparatus; failed to disclose the relationship as required by law) or NY Governor Eliot Spitzer (high-end hooker, broke law) and I see even less culpability than Spitzer’s successor David Patterson who had one of several affairs with a state employee. I think much of the outrage here is either feigned or rooted in other grievances that people have with Sanford.

And then, when you throw in Andre Bauer, the whole Calculus of this gets real simple, real fast.

BTW…Well written Will.

As for Andre Bauer, Will, perhaps an 18-month stint in the top job would expose him for the goober he is. Or would the voters just not notice? I am not an S.C. native but one of those dreaded Yankee transplants who loves, really, loves the place. Corroption and inefficiency are not endemic to S.C. alone but just as rampant in some states up north: Pa., N.Y., Ohio, Ill., for example. Here, as in those places, corruption and waste persist because the voters keep on allowing it. The voters put Sanford in power in ’02 on the power of his reform agenda (he ran one of the most honest, explicit campaigns I have ever seen that year); but the voters didn’t bother to back him up with enough legislators to make his agenda a lock — and, as I’ve said, he lacked the temperament and political skills to finagle the reforms that matter most to him and us.

Now he cracks under the strain of failure while proving that he has a heart vulnerable to the same forces that drive the rest of us, on occasion, to do foolish things — not only to cheat on his good wife but also to lie to the public while abusing public resources. Sad.

dc

Mark Sanford was not really sorry for doing someone “exotic” but was damn sure sorry he got caught. Goodbye, Mark Sanford. Go away. We are, forgive me Willie, sick of you. Conservatives can kick Andre’s ass soon enough if n4eed be, but you, Governor, need to just go.

You nailed us.

-FITS

Oh. I thought it reeked of the kind of hypocrisy Internet smear merchants delve into when they finally have some scrap thrown to them that allows them to drag down their former friends. I wonder how many “emotional columns” the Governor wrote about you after you roughed up your old lady?