Did you notice that as he got to be more and more alone on the stimulus issue, Mark Sanford resorted more and more to the royal “we” in referring to himself? An example from earlier this week:
“We know a suit will be filed against us on this issue, and as such we’ve filed a suit tonight in response,” Sanford said in a prepared statement. “We believe the Legislature’s end-around move won’t pass constitutional muster.”
Note that this odd locution was in a prepared statement, so it’s not like he just misspoke. I’ve noticed the governor doing this before, but he seems to have stepped it up this week.
The ultimate was this jarring construction in a quote from yesterday:
“This is about the larger question of why have a governor if their hands are constantly tied?”
Note the innovation here — even though he’s speaking of himself in the third person, he shifts from A governor to THEIR hands without pausing for breath. This takes the art of self-pluralization to a whole new level.
Our governor are remarkable that way.
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They be reMARKable, indeed….
He’s asking the question – “What is the point of having the position of ‘governor’ if the hands of each person holding such position in the future will be constantly tied.”
Makes sense to me. He’s talking about future governors, not just himself. Doesn’t seem “jarring,” “innovative” or “remarkable” to me.
The Constitution established three branches of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial.
“To ensure that no person or group would amass too much power, the founders established a government in which the powers to create, implement, and adjudicate laws were separated. Each branch of government is balanced by powers in the other two coequal branches: The President can veto the laws of the Congress; the Congress confirms or rejects the President’s appointments and can remove the President from office in exceptional circumstances; and the justices of the Supreme Court, who can overturn unconstitutional laws, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.”
What is sad is the SC legislature is so ignorant or senile they don’t understand this… or in most cases, they’ve been in office for so long they think they’re above the Constitution.
I’m with Daniel on this one Brad. It makes perfectly good sence what he’s saying. And the WE business is simply a construction used by many speakers when they don’t want to draw too much attention to themselves. Nothing of particular importance here. Stick with facts. The Governor’s idiotic behavior on the stimulus bill without getting sidetracked with these ridiculous grammar lessons.
And by the way, Glenn McConnell is about as far removed from being a libertarian as one can get. His obsession with the Hunley and pursuit of state funding for that white elephant is proof positive that he’s no libertarian.
I think the governor is adopting what has become a fairly common practice of using the plural pronoun their in place of the more grammatically accurate but cumbersome his or her.
“This is about the larger question of why have a governor if his or her hands are constantly tied?”
Is a question mark the correct punctuation in this case? The sentence is grammatically a statement, not a question.
I hear Mark Sanford uses split infinitives.
The US Constitution was created with the system of checks and balances. The SC Constitution was written and has been amended to keep this a strong legislative state. It will be interesting to see whether the federal courts retain jurisdiction on the lawsuit filed by the governor’s office or pass it back to the state courts. If the federal courts do take up the case it will be fascinating to watch how they address the workings of Tillman’s Constitution of 1895, which is still the basis of government in our state, despite the number of times it has been amended.