Category Archives: Mark Sanford

Now, spokesman says Sanford DIDN’T eat those piglets

OK, so now, supposedly, what Sanford said on TV this morning was a joke:

CHARLESTON, SC — Remember those pigs former Gov. Mark Sanford brought into the State House nine years ago to protest “pork barrel spending” in the state budget?

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday morning, fresh off of his victory in Tuesday’s Republican primary in the 1st congressional district, Sanford said the pigs were “barbecued.”

“Unfortunately, they were barbecued,” Sanford said. “They were great little guys.”

A Sanford spokesman later clarified that Sanford was joking, adding that Sanford did not eat the pigs. (An earlier version of this story said that Sanford did eat them.)

And an earlier version of this blog post said the same, because, well, silly me, I figured the ex-governor was telling the truth to the world. This belief prompted me to say the following:

So… The piglets were supposed to symbolize government waste. Do they no longer qualify as “waste” if you make a meal out of them?

Presumably, he changed clothes — since the pigs had daubed him with literal waste — before firing up the grill.

Twice now, Mark Sanford has huffed and puffed and blown the house down, eating the thoughtless little pigs within.

It remains to be seen whether Elizabeth Colbert Busch can build a house out of bricks before he does it a third time.

I was on a roll there for a minute. But now… well, never mind. I especially like Joel’s attempt to be all self-righteous over this:

“The governor made a joke that apparently was lost on members of the media, who seem unable or unwilling to write about issues that voters actually care about,” Joel Sawyer said.

Yeah, right, Joel. It’s the media who have a penchant for silly, distracting stunts. He says this on behalf of a man who, in the name of fiscal responsibility, hauled two squealing, defecating piglets into the lobby to ruin a new carpet (OK, sort of new — see below) that was part of a multi-million-dollar restoration of the State House.

So we have Mark Sanford for at least another five weeks

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My favorite comment on the results of yesterday’s GOP primary runoff in the 1st Congressional District came from my old friend and colleague Mike Fitts:

Let’s review why Mark Sanford wasn’t impeached as governor: Because we all assumed he would GO AWAY.

Yeah, well… nobody told Mark. Or actually, someone probably did, but as usual, he didn’t listen. But don’t blame him, right (in fact, as he keeps reminding us, we’re obligated to forgive him)? It’s the fault of those primary voters in the 1st. They had 16 candidates to choose from, and they insisted on the one guy who they knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was damaged goods.

If we thought, when he left the governor’s office, that we wouldn’t have Mark Sanford to kick around anymore, we reckoned without the fact that he is no Richard Nixon. Nixon had an inferiority complex. He hated the elites who disdained him, but acted as though deep down, he suspected they were right. Sanford, by contrast, is a narcissist. Big difference. Nixon always had Pat at his side. Standing next to Sanford in victory last night was María Belén Chapur.

And even Nixon broke his promise and came back. With Sanford, it was inevitable.

I see that Slatest is downplaying this race, saying the nation is bored with Sanford. I doubt that. I checked, and right now the hottest topic among political writers seems to be Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016, a story that lacks a certain… urgency. They need this contest between, as they see it, Mr. Appalachian Trail and the comedian’s sister. They won’t be able to leave it alone.

Down here, we know who Mark Sanford is. The unanswered question is, who is Elizabeth Colbert-Busch? She’s already tired, probably, of being her brother’s sister. At least, I gather that from this Pinterest post:

If the only things you knew about Elizabeth Colbert Busch were from the national media, you would think her home would be filled with pictures of her more famous brother, Stephen. While there is little doubt that her home holds plenty of pictures of the host of The Colbert Report and the rest of her large family, her home in a firmly middle class section of Mount Pleasant is what one would expect of a successful professional, mother and wife…

Now that we’re paying attention, how will she define herself? CNN’s Peter Hamby speculated last night, “how many times will Elizabeth Colbert-Busch say the word “Democrat” between now and May 7?” My guess at the answer to that is, if possible, it would be a negative number. That district’s been Republican since 1980, and after the last reapportionment is redder than ever.

But wisecracks aside, I’m all ears. I want to see if she can make a race of it, and how Sanford responds to that. He hasn’t have really tough opposition since 2002. It will be interesting to see what he does if the usual stuff fails to work for him, and she manages to make this competitive.

If she doesn’t, well… we’ll have Mark Sanford for a lot longer than the next five weeks.

At the end of the day, Mark Sanford needs to read this list

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Enjoyed this piece about cliches from an editor at The Washington Post:

Pity the poor editor seeking to avoid cliches. It is a futile attempt that, for better or worse, only shines a spotlight on what has become the new normal.

Be that as it may, it is fun. Over the past couple of years, I have joined with colleagues throughout The Washington Post, especially the inimitable Anne Kornblut, to collect cliched words and phrases that journalists rely on too much — indeed, at their peril. It was a little-noticed collection that has suddenly become oft-cited, perhaps even going viral.

After Jim Romenesko posted the list on his blog, I expected pushback from the powers that be, who might want to double down on their use of such terms. Instead, we received support from a dizzying array of sources, in particular through a feeding frenzy ofretweets and e-mails. Clearly, this hot-button issue struck a nerve…

You catch his drift, I’m sure. But go read the whole thing.

This list should come in handy to Mark Sanford. I would say, all he’d have to do is run all the proscribed phrases together and presto! He’s got another speech…

What ‘penance’ has Mark Sanford done? What’s he sorry for?

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Over the weekend, I got a text from my youngest daughter, who studies and works in Charleston. She said Mark Sanford and María Belén Chapur were, at that moment, in the place where she works. (I later asked how she knew that’s who it was, because I wouldn’t know the ex-governor’s friend if I saw her. She says she looked on Google Images while they were in front of her.)

I wrote back, “First Lady Gaga; now this.” (Long story, involving a New York restaurant where my daughter worked one summer.)

Then I didn’t think about it any more until I read this at the WSJ site this morning:

The Redemption Candidate

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford looked like a dead politician walking after an affair, a nasty divorce and allegations of using taxpayer funds to pay for his indiscretions.

But that was three years ago. Since then, Mr. Sanford has cleared his name, done his penance and is looking for a second chance from voters. He’s running for his old House seat in Tuesday’s special election in South Carolina’s first congressional district, which became vacant when Tim Scott was appointed to the Senate…

And I find myself asking once again, in what way has he cleared his name? More to the point, what “penance” has he done?

Really, I’d just like an example. And until someone comes up with one, I’d appreciate people not using the term so loosely.

What has he given up, aside from his wife and family? And it seems to me Jenny made that decision, not him.

He has famously made multiple “apology” tours, but for that to be penance, contrition must be involved. And what has he indicated he is sorry for? Nothing, that I can tell. He has simply put the onus on us — and more recently, particularly on the voters of the 1st Congressional District — to forgive him. As though it were all up to us, not him.

For his part, he continues on his own unflappable way, seemingly unfazed by it all. When I was at The State, the spellchecker on the version of Word we used kept trying to change his name to “Sangfroid.” And it has always seemed to fit. There’s no rending of garments or heaping of ashes with this guy. Sure, we saw tears the day of the famous confession, but a week later he was conducting phenomenally narcissistic interviews about his “soulmate.”

Which frankly, was none of my business. Nor is his private life today, except for the fact that he keeps publicly asking the world to forgive him for it. Even though I still don’t know what part he is sorry for.

For me, the things I can’t forgive are the public policy sins. The fact that he accomplished nothing in his previous six years in Congress, and little more in eight years as governor, thanks to his penchant for alienating his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly. I have trouble getting over his being, by the end, the only governor refusing the stimulus money that South Carolinians would be just as much on the hook for as everyone else in the country.

He has indicated no remorse for any of those far more relevant (for someone running for public office) sins. In fact, he’s still bragging about the stimulus thing.

The bottom line is, I just don’t know what it is about Mark Sanford that has changed since June 2009. And I find it odd that other people think anything is different.

Five reasons to think the Democrat could beat Sanford in the 1st District (and three reasons to think the opposite)

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The Democrat, with her brother.

I was just talking this morning with Taegan Goddard of Political Wire, and looking at his site while we spoke, I saw this:

Democrat Could Win if Sanford is Nominee

John Fund says that many believe former Gov. Mark Sanford (R) could lose the congressional special election — assuming he wins an upcoming runoff — “to a Democrat — especially a business-oriented woman such as Colbert Busch. Her platform is pitched perfectly toward moderates: protecting retirement benefits, an expansion of engineering and science education and reducing the deficit by eliminating waste.”

Said pollster Pat Caddell: “If Sanford is the final GOP candidate he could lose a 58 percent Romney district based on his weakness with women voters over the affair he had while governor.”

The Week: Is Mark Sanford vs. Stephen Colbert’s sister political gold?

… which just happens to be the very thing I was thinking about this morning.

Here are five reasons to think it’s possible for Elizabeth Colbert Busch to beat Mark Sanford:

She, too, has name recognition in the district (and outside of it). And none of it is negative, at least insofar as it would reflect on her character.
She’s a woman and a mom, running against a guy who’s famous not only for cheating on his wife in a spectacularly public way, but for deserting his four sons on Father’s Day weekend in order to do so. Not to mention being governor and disappearing from the state without telling anyone where he was going.
Another woman and Democrat came within four points of beating the incumbent Republican in 2008, largely due to Barack Obama’s coattails.
She’s touting herself as a businesswoman, while Sanford hasn’t been known to work in the private sector since the early 90s.
People in that district know Sanford better than people in the rest of SC. In my experience, the better people know him, the less likely they are to vote for him.

But here are three reasons to think the opposite.

Obama’s coattails weren’t enough in 2008 for that other Democrat to win, even against the lackluster Henry Brown — and they’re a good bit shorter now. In fact, except for Jimmy Carter, this district hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1956.
The district has been redrawn since 2008, and it’s more Republican now. And remember, no Democrat has been elected to Congress from the 1st since Tommy Hartnett rode in on Reagan’s tails in 1980.
Poll after poll, and yesterday’s vote, show that voters are remarkably forgiving of Sanford. And after all these years, they don’t seem to know him well enough for my number 5 above to kick in.

Those three may cancel out the five. In fact, if you forced me to bet right now, I’d bet on Sanford. But there are variables that could lead to a different result.

The almost-certain Republican nominee.

Yeah, but when’s the OTHER Koch brother going to kick in?

There can be a drawback to suggesting that voters make their own signs about your campaign for Congress

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We all know about Mark Sanford’s bizarre campaign signs. You know, that he’s encouraging people to take scraps of cast-away plywood and crudely letter them with the message, “Sanford saves tax $.” Signs like this one.

Sanford thinks this is terribly clever, and sends out a terrific message about him in his bid for the GOP nomination for the 1st Congressional District. Me, I think it just reminds us what a startlingly cheap so-and-so he is, and not in a good way at all. More like this way:

In her 2010 memoir, former first lady Jenny Sanford tells her own stories — most of them unflattering — of his frugality. In one, Mark Sanford bought her a diamond necklace for her birthday. He ultimately made her give back the beloved gift after deciding he’d paid too much for it…

Anyway, an alert reader sent me the above image, which the reader reports was found “near Ravenel Bridge in Charleston.” This is what the sign refers to, in case you’ve forgotten.

So sometimes you might just want to go ahead and have official signs run up, and put them out yourself. It’s easier to stay on message that way…

Of COURSE Sanford wanted Jenny to run his campaign…

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The quirks of SC politics continue to fascinate national media.

The most recent edition of Slatest leads with Mark Sanford having wanted Jenny to run his congressional campaign.

Personally, when I heard that a week or two ago, I really didn’t think much of it. I was like, Of course he wanted her to run it; he has no clue how to run for office without her telling him what to do.

Jenny was always the brains in that outfit. Here’s my favorite anecdote illustrating that, which I’ve probably already told here before…

Early in the process of running for governor — probably in late 2001 or early 2002 — Sanford asked to come see the editorial board and tell us about his economic proposals (in a nutshell — reduce or eliminate the state income tax). Fine, we said. So when he came, Jenny came with him. I went down to greet them in the lobby, and Jenny handed me a basketful of cookies (message: I’m not Hillary). I was sufficiently nonplussed that I thanked her, then handed them back to her. Which wasn’t very gracious of me; I just wasn’t prepared to be presented with cookies (to which I’m allergic, anyway).

So I led them upstairs, Jenny still carrying the cookies. When we got to the boardroom and sat down and started the meeting, Mark said something like, “Jenny’s going to make the presentation; this is her plan, after all.” And she, having ditched the cookies somewhere along the line, proceeded to run us through a Powerpoint presentation.

Another anecdote, illustrating the way she ran his campaigns with an iron hand… I forget who told me this; it was probably either Tom Davis or Kevin Hall…

Anyway, they were running that same campaign out of the Sanfords’ Sullivan Island house. Whenever Jenny was mad at someone in the campaign and wanted to have a private chat to unburden her mind on the subject, she would have that campaign staffer meet her in a secluded part of the house. I think it was near the backdoor or something. Anyway, there was a rack for multiple hats on the wall in that location, loaded with the boys’ baseball caps and such.

Thus, when one campaign worker told another he’d been “taken to the hats,” it was understood that he was in the doghouse for the moment.

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a Sanford campaign without Jenny, so his request is understandable on one level. The other thing to understand is what Josh Voorhees of The Slatest intuited: “that Mark Sanford still hasn’t figured out how personal relationships work.”

Anyway, the subject was brought up by this profile of Sanford in New York magazine, if you’d like to go read it.

Grooms running hard to catch Sanford in 1st District

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From where I sit, up here in Columbia (admittedly not the best vantage point), the person who seems to be running the hardest to catch Mark Sanford in the 1st Congressional District GOP primary is state Sen. Larry Grooms.

A day doesn’t pass that Hogan Gidley — last seen in these parts acting as spokesman for Rick Santorum — doesn’t send me a release or two on his behalf. Several in recent days have boasted about Tea Party congressmen Mick Mulvaney and Jeff Duncan endorsing him.

And this is the second TV ad for Grooms I’ve seen. Here’s the first.

Of course, it doesn’t really say anything to distinguish Grooms from anyone else (typical line from the ad: “I’m a pro-life Christian conservative who knows DC spends too much”), but when’s the last time you saw originality in one of these things?

Hear me on Weekend Edition tomorrow morning

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If you’re not sleeping in tomorrow morning, you might want to listen to Weekend Edition on NPR. I taped an interview with Don Gonyea this morning about the 1st Congressional District special election. [Update: You can listen to the interview here.]

That is, it was sort of about the 1st Congressional District special election.

Earlier in the week, I got a call from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation wanting to interview me about that race, and I begged off. I told them I just hadn’t been following it that closely.

When Brigid McCarthy called from NPR, I told her the same. But she said what they really wanted to do is talk about Mark Sanford.

That, I said, I can do.

And that’s mostly what we talked about.

But just in case, I did some reading up on the contest so I’d have a broad familiarity with it, in the event that we went beyond Sanford (which we did, a bit). That’s what led to this earlier blog post.

To update y’all from that post…

It’s looking to me like the GOP candidate running the hardest other than Sanford is Larry Grooms. Hogan Gidley, the former SC Republican Party executive director who in recent years has been associated with Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, has been sending me releases this week for Grooms, including one yesterday noting that Jeff Duncan and Mick Mulvaney (two of Tim Scott’s fellow Tea Party classmates of 2010) have endorsed him. And like Sanford, Grooms released a TV ad this week.

But then, maybe some of the other candidates are running just as hard, but don’t have my email address. If you’re out there, it’s [email protected].

Also, I’ve sort of been operating on the assumption that the winner of the GOP contest will likely be Scott’s replacement, rather than Stephen Colbert’s sister. Republicans have held that seat since Tommy Hartnett won it on Reagan’s coattails in 1980. But… in 2008, the Democratic nominee came within a couple of points of winning. That was another coattails situation, though, in this case Barack Obama’s. There won’t be any Obama coattails operating this spring.

More than that, I checked this morning with someone who was fairly intimately involved in the most recent reapportionment. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the district is now safer for Republicans than it was in 2008.

Mark Sanford’s math doesn’t add up, either

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Mark Sanford’s new ad begins, “Washington’s math doesn’t add up.”

Well, neither does his. It goes like this: He spent six years representing the 1st District before. And his accomplishments added up to zero. And yet he blithely tells people that they should send him to Washington because he’s “fought to do something about it.” Yeah, I guess so, if ineffectual posturing counts. Which it doesn’t, in my book.

Change Washington? Really? You? You never made the slightest dent on Washington.

Then, he gets to talking about mistakes.

Really? You sure that’s the work you want to use? Mistakes? So… you accidentally slipped away from your SLED detail and went to Argentina, only admitting what you had done after you were caught dead to rights?

I truly don’t want to be the guy who casts the first stone. But I will note the line that everyone seems to forget in recounting that great story of forgiveness: Go, and sin no more.

In this ad, with regard to mistakes, Sanford piously intones, “In their wake, we can learn a lot about grace, a God of second chances, and be the better for it.”

Here’s the thing: When did our former governor repent of anything, so that he might clear the way for second chances? After the sins that we are all prone to, we only become “better for it” when we sincerely believe what we did was wrong, and repent.

After his rambling confession that day in June 2009, what was his penance? How did he live his life differently going forward? I’m not at all clear on that. Of course, that’s between him and God — unless, of course, he spends money buying ads that pull us into the equation.

I’ve heard a lot from this guy about how we are supposed to forgive him. He places that burden on us. Well, what’s his part of the deal?

I’ve got a great idea for a penance that would demonstrate that he’s truly sorry: If he would stop inflicting himself on the electorate. That would be better, in his case, than a thousand Hail Marys.

But no. There he is again, saying the same stuff. And we’re supposed to take him back. That’s the way he sees it, anyway.

Yep, that’s Mark Sanford running all right…

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Back on the day we’ll not soon forget.

Mark Sanford has now told the National Review — apparently his ability to charm SC media has worn thin — that he is running for his old seat in the 1st Congressional District, and he’s doing it in order to save the country from budget deficits.

There’s a bunch of other stuff in the interview should you like to peruse it. Me, I just wanted to check it for his verbal DNA, and make sure it really was Mark Sanford they spoke to.

At first, I worried, because he didn’t say “at the end of the day” or “soil conditions” a single time. But there is one “I would say” (which he used to say so often that I wanted to shout, “Well then why don’t you just say it?”).

And he says “look under the hood” no fewer than four times, which was reassuring. I am not making this up:

You have to, in essence, look under the hood. There’s a larger philosophical question. In life we’re all going to make mistakes, we’re all going to come up short. The key is, how do you get back up and how do you learn from those mistakes? . . . But I think that the bigger issue is, don’t judge any one person by their best day, don’t judge them by their worst day. Look at the totality, the whole of their life, and make judgments accordingly…

You’ve got to look under the hood. There’s that sensational headline, to look and say, “Wow, big ethics charge.” Beyond the headline, what does that mean? You say, “Hm. There were 37 counts the ethics committee brought, and did you know half of those are for taking a business-class ticket?” You look under the hood and you say, “Wow.”…

It’s important in this instance to look under the hood and say, “Wait a minute, they keep talking about default, and that’s just not true.” You can prioritize spending. When I was in Congress, I remember a GAO report that said that Treasury has the capacity. There’s no statutory requirement for them to default. They could prioritize their spending, and they’re doing things in the short run, to shuffle things around, all based on prioritization…

Yep, that’s Mark Sanford.

Oh, by the way, someone else is getting set to announce he’s running, too:

MEDIA ADVISORY
FOR RELEASE ON JANUARY 15, 2013

SOUTH CAROLINA SENATOR LARRY GROOMS WILL ANNOUNCE RUN FOR SOUTH CAROLINA’S FIRST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

WHO
South Carolina State Senator Larry Grooms

WHAT
Grooms will announce his bid for South Carolina’s First Congressional District.

WHEN
Thursday, January 17, 2013
3:00p.m.

WHERE
Scout Boats
2531 Hwy 78 West
Summerville, SC 29483
Next to Summerville Auto Auction

Maybe one of y’all would like to cover that for us. I’m not going to be down that way.

Sanford vs. Sanford: Start your day with Ariail

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aria130109_cmyk.byat61xdtndf4skg80ckks4c8.6uwurhykn3a1q8w88k040cs08.th

I’m not going to have a lot of time for blogging today, but I thought I’d share this with you, from my good friend Robert Ariail.

It ran a couple of days ago, but I just now saw it. As you see, it’s on the same subject that Gail Collins was having fun with last week.

You mean, he got PAID for that?

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Mark Sanford made his first paid appearance on Fox today.

Wow. It’s exactly like every other Mark Sanford appearance I’ve ever seen. That same lollygaggin’ manner, the same predictable nostrums, the same feeling of being slightly out of sync with the conversation. You might think that last point was because he was doing it remotely, but real conversations with our ex-gov feel like that.

Not to mention the professional on the other end coaching him and helping him through it.

I can see why they didn’t put this on prime time.

I’ve gotta get me a gig like that.

No, really, I think Fox will tire of Sanford

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Meg Kinnard Tweeted earlier that Fox News and Mark Sanford have made it official:

Former SC Gov. Mark Sanford hired by Fox News

SC State Wire
Published: TodayCOLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is joining Fox News as a political commentator through the 2012 presidential elections, a Fox Channel spokeswoman confirmed Saturday.

The network spokeswoman told The Associated Press the two-term Republican governor has been hired as a contributor, though she declined to give any details on his pay or when he would start.

Sanford was a rising political star before he vanished from the state for five days in 2009, and reporters were told he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. When he reappeared, the father of four admitted to being in Argentina with a woman he later called his soul mate.

The international affair destroyed his marriage, which ended in divorce, and derailed his once-promising political career, which had included talk of presidential aspirations…The term-limited Sanford has appeared on Fox since leaving office in January. In September, he told the Associated Press his interview with Sean Hannity was his way of slowly getting back to talking about the nation’s troubles.

“I think this represents me sticking my toe back in the water and talking about things I care about,” he said then. “I care passionately about the direction of this country and deficit and debt and all the things that seem to be in vogue right now.”

He reiterated that he had no intentions of getting back into politics, though he noted he’s learned “you never say never in life.”

Sanford did not immediately return phone or e-mail messages Saturday.

Sanford’s new job was first reported by The New York Times.

When I reTweeted the news, I added the comment, “Fox will tire of this sooner than they realize…”

Apparently, my comment was taken in a spirit other than the way I intended it, because former Sanford press secretary Joel Sawyer (recently seen with me on Pub Politics) responded:

But I wasn’t being hateful at all. I was just saying something that I believe to be true. I really do think that, six months or perhaps a year after he starts, they are likely to question the decision.

I think he has plenty of experience that will stand him in good stead at the outset. After all, they did have him on 46 times during those few months when he was fighting to prevent South Carolina from getting all of its stimulus money. Really. Not making it up.

So there had to be something they liked.

But here’s the thing about Mark: After awhile, he naturally kicks back into his normal mode of speaking. And the nation hasn’t heard him in large-enough doses to know what I’m talking about.

Except once.

After his infamous post-Argentina press conference (later on the same day Gina Smith caught him at the Atlanta airport), several national media types remarked to me the weird, aimless way he had wandered about, seemingly endlessly, in making his confession.

I was surprised that they remarked upon it. That’s the way he talks all the time! He backs into topics, and backs out of them. I don’t have much room to talk on this score, I realize — maybe it’s why I liked Sanford so much early on — but that’s the way he speaks. Like neither his nor anyone else’s time is valuable. About as hurried as he is out operating the backhoe out on the “farm.”

There’s good TV and bad TV, and it has nothing to do with what sort of human being you are. The world is loaded with fine people who would not be good on TV.

I could be wrong, but I really think a time is likely to come when someone at Fox cries to the ceiling, “Why did we do this?”

We’ll see. Or you’ll see. I don’t get those 24-hour TV “news” channels any more.

Video: Sanford takes his “apology” tour national

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Here’s video of Mark Sanford with Piers Morgan, tossing him touchy-feely softballs.

It was the usual act that we’ve seen and heard at Rotaries and in other venues across the state, only now it’s going national.

It’s all a bit hard to take, hearing stuff like this: “There’s something sacred about the family unit; I have four boys.” This from the guy who ditched his family, his security detail, his job and the people of South Carolina to spend Father’s Day weekend with his mistress in Argentina. Yes, that’s within the context of expressing regret. But manohman, am I sick of him taking his rather bland and superficial regret public.

Why can’t he shut up about it already? The simple explanation is unavoidable: Mark Sanford is not done inflicting himself on us. He sees this as a stage on his way back. Could I — and all the others who are saying it — be wrong about that? Could it just be his usual narcissism, with no actual political end in sight? I’d love to think so…

(By the way, I would apologize for the fact that both this video and the YouTube version seem to cut off in the middle. But I think you should regard that as a merciful blessing.)

Sanford takes next step on comeback trail tonight

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In case you missed it, Mark Sanford is making his second appearance on the comeback trail — not to be confused with that other trail — tonight at 9 p.m. by appearing on CNN live with Piers Morgan:

LIVE: Former Governor Mark Sanford

In an in-depth interview, the former Governor of South Carolina opens up about the scandal that caused him to leave office & more.

This is 11 days after his appearance with Sean Hannity on the network where he is most at home. (In case you forget, he appeared on Fox News 46 times during the stimulus fight, before Argentina.)

And what’s all this about? Well, we’d all heard in the past about the possibility that he’d run against Lindsey Graham. But today I heard on the street — or reasonably close to the street — another scary possibility: He wants to be governor again.

Imagine the psychodrama. After the apology tour that seemed like it would never end, but finally did, he’s going to make us prove to him that we really DO forgive him by re-electing him. And the really, really scary part is that we’re highly likely to do that if he demands it of us. Because, let’s face it: We’re pretty messed up, too. We, the South Carolina electorate, have issues.

Anyway, now that he’s on this trail, I for the first time feel truly glad that I gave up cable. I don’t get those channels anymore! I can’t even record it! No one can expect me to watch it! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaahhhhh!…

Coming soon: The Alvin Green graphic novel

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OK, now I’m feeling bad about an idea I let slide awhile back.

Corey Hutchins of the Free Times brings this to my attention:

Current and former Columbia Free Timeswriters are teaming up to produce a black-and-white graphic novel on the bizarre rise and fall of South Carolina’s Alvin Greene.

Last year the unemployed Greene unexpectedly won the South Carolina Democratic Primary for the U.S. Senate, giving him the chance to face off against — and eventually lose to — incumbent Tea Partier Jim DeMint. Greene’s primary victory came despite the fact that he didn’t campaign, didn’t have a website, and was virtually unknown to the voting public.

“What happened in the summer of 2010 was the strangest American political story in modern times,” says Free Times staff writer Corey Hutchins, who gained national attention by exposing Greene. “It’s no wonder that it came out of South Carolina, the state that James Petigru famously called ‘too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum’ more than 100 years ago.”

Hutchins is teaming up with former Free Times staff writer David Axe and artist Ryan Alexander-Tanner to serialize the comic online beginning in early 2012, following with a print edition in the spring.

In order to secure funding for the project, they’re using the crowd-funding site Kickstarter to attract backers. As of this writing, the team is halfway towards reaching their goal of $1,000.

That’s pretty cool. Cool enough that it make me feel bad I never followed through on my own idea.

You know, I wanted to do a graphic novel about Mark Sanford back in 2009. I even had a couple of exchanges with someone with publishing contacts in New York. But when I didn’t find an artist who was interested right away (I felt like it had to be done immediately for readers to be interested), I dropped it. I was really busy job-hunting and stuff at the time. The images were key, and while I could have written the whole thing without them, I think it would have been an inspiration to see some sketches as I went along.

I had this one really vivid image in my mind as I tried to picture the visual style of the book. It was NOT of Mark Sanford, actually. It was black-and-white. It would have been an extreme closeup, taking about half a page, of Jake Knotts as he began the process of spreading the report that Sanford was missing, in his big bid to bring down his nemesis…

The image was inspired by images of The Kingpin in Spiderman (see this or this or this or this) … Only darker…

Anyway… I actually wrote a sort of treatment for my New York contact. I was really riffing on it at the time. I wanted it all to be told by a seedy, self-hating ex-journalist narrator, sort of based on Jack Burden from All the King’s Men. The narrator would be all conflicted and guilt-ridden, because he felt responsible for having created the central character. This would give his narration a certain bitterly ironic tone. (This character would of course in no way be based on any living former editors who maybe sorta kinda endorsed Mark Sanford in 2002.)

It had levels. It had edge. It had irony. Sort of Gatsby meets Robert Penn Warren meets “Citizen Kane” meets, I don’t know, “Fight Club.”

But now I can’t even find the blasted treatment. I think I lost it in that major Outlook meltdown of my e-mail.

But it would have been good.

Could it (finally) be over for Grover Norquist?

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Who’da thunk the day would ever come?

Mark Sanford buddy and guru Grover Norquist — whose anti-tax pledge has verged on paralyzing South Carolina government in recent years because he had so many GOP lawmakers signing it and afraid to cross him (thereby preventing comprehensive tax reform, among other things) has apparently miscalculated, leading to a very public rebuke, by Republicans, in the age of the Tea Party:

WASHINGTON — Grover Norquist’s grip on the Republican Party’s tax policy slipped dramatically on Tuesday, a development that is likely to have significant repercussions on the debate over spending, revenue and the federal deficit.

Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform and a leading party power broker for a generation, drew a hard line in the sand against repealing ethanol subsidies, arguing that ending the tax breaks is equivalent to a tax increase and therefore a violation of The Pledge — a document nearly every Republican has signed promising never to vote to raise taxes.

Thirty-four Senate Republicans walked nonchalantly across that line on Tuesday, voting to move forward on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that would repeal the subsidies.

Norquist has been vicious in his recent talks on Coburn, charging that his amendment means he “lied his way into office” and is breaking the pledge.

Coburn was unmoved. “I think you all think he has a whole lot more hold than I think he has,” Coburn told reporters before the vote. “I don’t disagree with him on a lot of principles. The fact is it’s not a good position to put yourself in when you say, ‘Here’s a tax expenditure that nobody needs, and yet we have to give somebody else a tax cut to take away this.'”…

Could this be the end?

I mean, it should be. Even if you agree with Norquist, for the guy who famously wanted to shrink government to where he could drown it in a bathtub to make his stand on KEEPING one of the more wasteful government boondoggles is not calculated to win credibility.

‘Hypocrite’ isn’t the right word for Sanford

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There’s a discussion about character going on right now on “Talk of the Nation:”

We’re often taken aback when a respected governor or political candidate, or our own husband or wife, cheats. But psychologist David DeSteno argues that a growing body of evidence shows that everyone — even the most respected among us — has the capacity to act out of character.

… and I was struck by the fact that the segment started off with Mark Sanford as exhibit A.

Inevitably, talk turned to his “hypocrisy.”

I don’t see him as a “hypocrite.” But then, I didn’t see him as a guy who would so brazenly and spectacularly cheat on his wife (or do so on Father’s Day weekend), so what do I know?

But I still don’t see him as a “hypocrite.”

That’s a word that gets bandied about a good deal in our politics, particularly by social liberals talking about social conservatives who turn out to be human (and, as I said, sometimes spectacularly). It tends to reflect a couple of mutually-reinforcing elements of a world view: People who espouse traditional moral values are not only wrong, but they don’t even mean it! I mean, how could they, really? So it’s relevant to discuss.

Andy Griffith’s character on “A Face In the Crowd” was a hypocrite — a super-folksy alleged populist with a deep contempt for the masses. But Sanford — I think he always believed what he espoused, including “family values.” And still does, in his own weird way.

However, there were OTHER things they were saying on the show that were dead on, with regard to Sanford and the rest of us. Yep, he is a towering monument to rationalization. And yep, human character does tend to be “dynamic.” In spite of the root of the word, character is not stamped on us as indelibly as the image on a coin. It’s something you have to work at every day. And just because you act inconsistently with what you say on Wednesday doesn’t mean you didn’t believe it on Tuesday. Or on Thursday.

What Sanford revealed in my own far-from-omniscient opinion was a startling lack of depth, mixed with narcissism.

The narcissism shouldn’t have been a surprise, given his profoundly Randian (as in Ayn Rand, author of “The Virtue of Selfishness”) political views. Actually, it WAS a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been.

As for the lack of depth — the guy’s analysis of himself and what he openly acknowledged as his sin didn’t even go skin deep. He went around apologizing to everybody, but with an unrepentant blandness that seemed to take it as a matter of course that we were obligated to forgive him, while he blithely went about continuing to consort with this mistress. Because, you know, that’s what he wanted to do.

But “hypocrisy”? That both oversimplifies, and misses the mark…

bradwarthen.com

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