Category Archives: Mark Sanford

How the governor spent Mother’s Day weekend

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You’ll remember all the brouhaha that ensued after our governor went missing last Father’s Day weekend.

Well, our governor is nothing if not a creature of habit, so here’s how he celebrated Mother’s Day weekend:

Gov. Mark Sanford and a female guest spent the weekend in the Florida Keys at a luxury hotel that is a getaway destination with a long list of famous visitors, including celebrities and U.S. presidents.

Sanford and the woman had a three-day reservation at the Cheeca Lodge and Spa, Megan Sterritt with the Miami public relations firm KWE Group Inc. confirmed Monday. Sterritt would not say if the woman who accompanied the now-divorced Sanford was Maria Belen Chapur, the woman with whom Sanford had the affair that brought down his presidential aspirations last year.

The governor’s communications director, Ben Fox, provided few details about the trip.

And that is about all I’ve got to say about that.

Except this… I just said the governor is a creature of habit. But it’s not at ALL like him to shell out the dough to go to a resort. So that’s new. He’s branching out. He still vetoes the cigarette tax increase every year, though, and frankly, that’s what I care about.

You mean that’s NOT a Haley campaign ad?

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Under the headline, “Is this even legal?,” Wesley Donehue shares the above ad being paid for by ReformSC.

Which makes me wonder — surely no one’s pretending this is anything other than a Nikki Haley ad… are they?

Well, maybe there’s one difference… I’m thinking Nikki herself might be embarrassed to pour it on THIS thick. Wouldn’t she?

Shocker: Sanford’s favorite club backs Nikki

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Chad Walldorf at the SC Club for Growth is a nice, sincere guy, and I’ve always liked Nikki Haley. But both of them are so in step with Mark Sanford that there’s not a bit of surprise in this:

The S.C. Club for Growth has endorsed the Republican gubernatorial bid of Lexington Rep. Nikki Haley. Club chairman Chad Walldorf said Haley bets fits the group’s belief in limited government and free market principles.”We have seen Representative Haley’s incredible work in the South Carolina legislature and are thrilled to have a candidate with her track record running for our state’s top office,” Walldorf said in a statement. “As our governor, Nikki Haley will continue to make South Carolina more business friendly, protect our hard-earned tax dollars, and perhaps most importantly, shine a light on the darkest corners of state bureaucracy.”…

What does Innovista success look like?

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How will we know when Innovista is succeeding? Well, to begin with, we won’t be at the point where we can call it a complete success for many years, at best. But along the way, there will be signs.

Some of them will be big, such as the new baseball park and the Moore School moving to the geographic area that is central to the Innovista movement. Or the eventual construction of the waterfront park that makes the area more inviting. Most important will be the development of high-tech start-ups that you won’t even be aware of at first, but that will grow and feed off each other as the dynamic starts working.

But there will also be other less obvious signs. Here’s one small, but definite, sign that jumped out at me in recent days…

Have you heard the radio ads for Thirsty Fellow Pizzeria and Pub? The part that jumps out at me is when this eatery/watering hole announces that it can be found in USC’s Innovista. I’m never in a position to take notes when I hear it, but here’s what the Thirsty Fellow says on its website:

Owners Willie Durkin, Chuck Belcher, Dean Weinberger and Terry Davis want you to join the Thirsty Fellow family. Located in the USC Innovista area, we have a comfortable atmosphere, a great menu, a full bar and plenty of televisions. Open for lunch, dinner, late night and Sunday brunch, put Thirsty Fellow on your “to do” list.

“Located in the USC Innovista area.” Whether you take that as a boast — a desire to be associated with the idea of the Innovista — or merely as an acceptable way of giving directions (thereby suggesting that everyone knows where the Innovista is), this is a small-but-telling sign of the concept moving forward, taking hold in the marketplace.

Let me say that again: In the marketplace. You know, that place where Gov. Sanford and the Policy Council don’t want USC to go messin’, the place where they believe, with all the fervor of their secular anti-gummint religion, it is doomed to fail.

And yet, the place where, in this tiny way, it is taking hold…

Making Innovista work going forward

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Don Herriott speaks about Innovista to Columbia Rotary Club recently.

Had breakfast this morning with Don Herriott, USC’s new honcho for Innovista – a guy with a tough job cut out for him.

Innovista has always been a huge challenge. So many things have to go right for it to work – not specific things, not necessarily things you can plan in advance. So much of what will make Innovista work will involve players yet unknown, engaged in activities yet unenvisioned. And those who seek to make it happen, to encourage this process along, have to keep the vision of what Innovista can be in front of so many, fostering and growing the idea.

Under the best of circumstances, you have to overcome a lot. You have to sell the idea of Columbia as a place to live and work to established researchers, to students, to investors, to entrepreneurs, to developers, to so many, so that you can draw in the people who will be at the core of the process – while at the same time keeping all the local incumbent players (business, political, civic) energized and encouraged to keep doing their part to keep the whole thing moving in the right direction.

That’s much tougher to do when there are setbacks, such as the mess that has ensued from entanglements with problematic partners, and buildings that have become a focal point to the extent that many people erroneously think those buildings ARE Innovista.

It’s made far harder when the political leader with the state’s bulliest pulpit is absolutely opposed to what you are doing, and wants you to fail. And when he is supported by a well-funded chorus of naysayers. And make no mistake: Mark Sanford and the S.C. Policy Council, to name but one of his cheerleaders, don’t merely object to the decisions that have been made in the name of the Innovista. Their problem isn’t the overemphasis on hydrogen, or the investment in “spec” buildings. They are opposed to the VERY IDEA of the university and local and state government being engaged in trying to build the local and state economy. No matter what was done in the name of Innovista, they would be against it – especially if it looked as though it might succeed.

The thing I like about what Don Herriott’s trying to do is get everyone refocused on what Innovista has been from the start. It’s not a building or set of buildings, it’s not a specific grid of city blocks, it’s not just hydrogen (much less the much-derided, but much hyped, electric cars). It’s about sparking and sustaining a dynamic that leads to the creation of high-paying, new-economy jobs so that Columbia and South Carolina – instead of being behind every curve – will actually be well-positioned in the “New Normal” economy of the 21st century.

It’s a movement, a concept, a vision. Like the Vista before it, a lot of people will have to believe in it, and invest in it in many ways over a course of years and decades, for it to achieve its potential. And like the Vista, it’s a goal that neither government nor the private sector can make happen alone.

Don’s a little frustrated that when he has good news to tell – such as the fact that some high-tech companies associated with Innovista are moving into the Wilbur Smith building – it gets played like this: “A major tenant planned for USC’s struggling research campus, Innovista, is instead moving into a downtown Columbia office tower several blocks away.” That lede was based on the fact that these companies had planned to be in an Innovista building that didn’t get built as planned. So instead of just withering away or going to another city, another state, they’re locating as close as they can so that they can still be a part of the Innovista movement – which should be great news. But it didn’t play that way. It played as a “coup” for Matt Kennell’s City Center Partnership, and a loss for Innovista – as though they were in competition, instead of dependent on each others’ success.

Yes, as Innovista moves forward and succeeds, the vacuum of that territory between Assembly Street and the river will naturally fill with Innovista-related people, structures and activity. That gaping void of pure potential in the heart of an urban center is one of the great advantages Innovista will have over other research centers around the country. As Mr. Herriott says, “Silicon Valley doesn’t have a street where it begins and ends.” The idea that the Wilbur Smith building, two blocks from the heart of the USC campus one way and three from the Vista proper in the other, is not a part of this movement, this dynamic that he is trying to foster, is absurd.

But a lot of people don’t understand that. And that’s bad because local folks need to understand when Innovista is moving forward in order for it to be able to continue moving forward.

For that reason, one big challenge Don Herriott doesn’t really need – that of renewing and maintaining the local buy-in that Innovista enjoyed when the concept was first unveiled – is as big as any other.

I know a lot of you out there aren’t cheering for him to succeed. But I am. And I hope at some point you will too. Because the stakes for Columbia are enormous, and making Innovista work is an all-hands-on-deck job for this community.

Welcome, NPR…

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Just got a call from Carol Klinger at NPR. She wanted to know what I’d written lately about the governor. I suggested checking out the blog.

To make it easier, here are a few key riffs:

And from back in the day, before all the current mess:

Carol, enjoy…

Governor faces 37 flavors, uh, charges

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The AP has reported that:

SC gov faces 37 charges he broke state ethics laws
SC State Wire

JIM DAVENPORT
Published: November 23, 2009

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford faces ethics charges he broke state laws more than three dozen times by violating rules on airplane travel and campaign money, according to details of the allegations released Monday.

It’s up to the state attorney general to decide whether to file criminal charges. Sanford’s lawyers have claimed the allegations involve minor and technical aspects of the law.

The second-term Republican governor has been under scrutiny since he vanished for five days over the summer, reappearing to tearfully admit to an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina he later called his “soul mate.”

A series of Associated Press investigations into his travel showed the governor had for years used state airplanes for political and personal trips, flown in pricey commercial airline seats despite a low-cost travel requirement and failed to disclose trips on planes owned by friends and donors.

The State of Columbia newspaper also  questioned whether Sanford properly reimbursed himself from his campaign cash.

Of course, you come here for instant analysis, which I provide when I feel like it. My instant analysis of this situation, of which I learned while surreptitiously checking Twitter during Rotary, is that this revelation means the following:

  1. The number of charges leveled against the governor is a prime number, which means it is divisible only by itself and 1.
  2. The particular prime number is the one that comes right after the prime number that is the number of original flavors at Baskin Robbins. This is 20 less than the number of flavors for which Heinz is famous, which is not a prime number even though it looks like one.

Not bad for analysis done while eating dinner, huh? And no, I was not eating mushrooms or anything else untoward. My stomach is still a bit uncertain today…

I’ll get back to you when I have further observations. In the meantime, y’all have at it.

By the way, have you ever heard of that “State of Columbia newspaper” that the AP referred to? Neither have I. Perhaps they meant “The State newspaper of Columbia…” Oh, and by the way, as I’ve been stating for decades, you wouldn’t have to say “newspaper” if you’d just use the italics as God intended.

More power to Jenny (just not POLITICAL power, OK?)

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Last week, a Republican friend drew my attention to jennysanford.com, which he derided as being … I forget the word he used, but it was something like “egomaniacal.”

But when I looked at it I saw little to criticize. It’s apparently been up for awhile — I saw posts from 2008 and even 2007 — and why shouldn’t the First Lady have a Web presence? It was tasteful, and had been quietly updated with such language as:

Mrs. Sanford is enjoying spending more time in her most important role as mother of her four sons … and is separated from her husband…

I mean, what else are you gonna say?

Anyway, Jenny made a bit of a splash over the weekend when it was learned that, right after the Argentinian bimbo eruption, she went out and trademarked her name.

Well, so what? Hey, when you find yourself in the center ring of a media circus, which always creates the possibility that somebody‘s going to make some money off your name, why wouldn’t a reasonable person make sure that she is that someone?

You know what I did, first thing, when I learned I couldn’t take my old blog with me when I left the paper? I went out and bought bradwarthen.com. One of the few smart things I did, even if it hasn’t lead to any money yet. And I advised Robert to run out and buy robertariail.com, which he did.

More power to Jenny, say I. Just not any political power, please. We’ve had enough of where that leads, in the past seven years.

Nikki gets a Sanford endorsement that actually might help her

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The brains of the Sanford outfit has sent out a letter endorsing Nikki Haley, which is of a whole lot more value than if the gov himself were to do so.

Of course, in terms of substance, it’s the same. Which is to say, an endorsement of Nikki is an endorsement of more of the same stuff we’ve suffered through for seven years. An excerpt from Jenny Sanford’s letter:

With many of our public schools shamefully underperforming, I dearly wish for better educational opportunities for our children. With a state government structure that rewards the status quo and stands in the way of change, I wish for vital government reforms. It’s amazing how much better off the people of our state would be if those things happened.
But they won’t happen by just wishing for them. They won’t happen without an enormous amount of hard work. And they won’t happen without making a lot of entrenched powers upset.
I’m proud of the work Mark and his Administration have done over almost seven years now, trying very hard to move the ball forward on all of those fronts. Little in life that is worth accomplishing ever comes without some setbacks along the way. While the Sanford Administration has had some defeats in its efforts to reduce out-ofcontrol state spending, reform archaic state government structure, and give children more educational choices, it has also had successes.

Jenny was always the brains behind Mark. So while her endorsement might generate more sympathy, in terms of political substance, it means the same.

That guy’s a governor? You’re kidding, right?

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SenatorJonCorzine

One thing you’ve got to hand to Mark Sanford — he  looks like a governor, even though he has generally not acted like one. This is a key to his electoral success.

I remember back before he was elected — I guess it was about this time in 2001 — he sent out Christmas cards with pictures of himself with his family. As soon as he received his, Sen. John Courson said to me (and you’ve got to imagine that booming bullfrog voice of his saying it), “Faaahhhn lookin’ family! Kennedyesque…” and said that on the basis of that picture, he expected Sanford to be our next governor.

Anyway, I’m reminded of that today, having just seen a picture of Jon Corzine for the first time (this was on the front of the WSJ). As I previously noted, unlike the national media, I don’t pay attention to state elections in other states because they have nothing to do with me. People elect their governors for their own reasons (sometimes things as superficial as how they look, although of course that’s not the only reason South Carolinians went for Sanford in 2002), reasons that I cannot infer meaningfully from afar, so I don’t try to do so.

Anyway, my reaction on seeing this guy for the first time as he was on his way out (having lost yesterday, for those of you who pay even less attention than I do), was this: “What? This guy is the governor of an actual state? You’re kidding. He looks like a college professor, and maybe not even an American college professor at that. He looks more like Leon Trotsky than a guy who could get elected in this country.” And what’s that he’s got in the back in this picture? Is that a ducktail?

I realize that standards of political pulchritude vary from state to state, that we would elect people in South Carolina that New Jerseyites (or whatever you call them) would never take a second look at, and vice versa. But if I had tried to imagine somebody who could get elected up there and not down here, I would have pictured a guy who would have looked at home hanging around in front of Satriani’s Pork Store with Tony Soprano. Yeah, I realize such stereotypes are the bane of New Jerseyians, who deserve better, but that I could have believed in. Whereas this Corzine guy … if Tony had shown up for his first therapy session and his shrink had looked like this instead of like Lorraine Bracco (and that’s the only role I could imagine a guy who looks like this filling on that show about north Jersey), he would have turned around and walked out.

No wonder this Trotsky-looking character lost. That Christie looks like a regular guy, a guy you might actually imagine being in the, uh, sanitation business.

Delleney’s approach on impeachment was most promising one

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I remain unconvinced that impeachment proceedings against Mark Sanford would be worthwhile. As you know, I believe he should have resigned by now (if nothing else, thereby sparing us from Andre Bauer’s candidacy), but I hate to see the State House stroke the gov’s narcissism with another session all about him.

And I certainly thought it appropriate that lawmakers not try to wrestle the subject to the ground in a two-day special session.

All of that said, I was encouraged that Greg Delleney at least took the most promising approach in his impeachment resolution. He didn’t mess around with all of that dull stuff about airplane rides and such, but concentrated on the one most glaring instance of dereliction of duty — the week that the governor ran off to Argentina, the trip that started this whole mess rolling:

Whereas, Governor Mark Sanford was absent from the State of South Carolina and from the United States from Thursday, June 18, 2009, until Wednesday, June 24, 2009, while in or in route to and from Argentina for reasons unrelated to his gubernatorial responsibilities; and

Whereas, from Thursday, June 18, 2009, until at least on or about Monday, June 22, 2009, Governor Sanford was not in official communication with any person in the chain of command within the Office of Governor of the State of South Carolina; and

Whereas, the Lieutenant Governor was not aware of the Governor’s absence from the State and there was no established chain of command or protocol for the exercise of the executive authority of the State; and

Whereas, the Governor intentionally and clandestinely evaded South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents assigned to secure his safety in order to effect his absence from the State; and

Whereas, the Governor directed members of his staff in a manner that caused them to deceive and mislead the public officials of the State of South Carolina as well as the public of the State of South Carolina as to the Governor’s whereabouts; and

Whereas, the purpose of the Governor’s absence from the State of South Carolina served no furtherance of his duties as Governor; and

Whereas, the Governor’s conduct in being absent brought extreme dishonor and shame to the Office of Governor of South Carolina and to the reputation of the State of South Carolina, and furthermore, has caused the Office of the Governor of South Carolina and the State of South Carolina to suffer ridicule resulting in extreme shame and disgrace; and

Whereas, the Governor’s conduct and actions under these circumstances constitute serious misconduct in office pursuant to and for the purposes of Article XV, Section 1, of the Constitution of this State. Now, therefore,

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives:

That pursuant to Article XV, Section 1, of the Constitution of South Carolina, 1895, the Governor of South Carolina, the Honorable Marshall C. Sanford, Jr., is impeached for serious misconduct in office.

Is that enough to warrant impeachment? Maybe not. But it certainly makes the case that this guy shouldn’t be governor, which is not quite the same thing, is it?

Any thoughts about the Legislature’s return?

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It occurred to me that some of y’all might want a chance to comment on some actual news, instead of TV shows from the 70s or comic strips that never were.

Well, OK, but it’s pretty boring out there today.

The Legislature did come back today, and they’re going to make up for a stupid omission (and thanks for catching that, Mr. Spratt), and maybe talk about impeaching the governor (which I’m already tired of hearing about; I just want this guy gone, without another word said), and do some stuff for an ecodevo prospect that might be Boeing.

But I don’t have anything to say about those things yet. Do y’all?

They’re coming back…

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As the day has worn on, I haven’t thought of anything particularly clever to say about the news that the Legislature is coming back to town. I’ll just make these three quick points, and turn it over to y’all:

  1. I don’t know that lawmakers should try to rush into impeachment proceedings — although if they’re going to do it, I’d rather they get it out of the way so it doesn’t waste another legislative session, the way Sanford’s foolishness over the stimulus wasted the last one.
  2. Sanford’s right that the department of Employment Security should report to the governor. Of course, he’s done all he could over the past year to undermine the case. It didn’t help with the commissioners disclosed that this governor had never been interested enough in what they do to have a real meeting with them in his six years in office.
  3. In case you wondered, I don’t have a dog in this fight, in the sense that I don’t think I, as an unemployed person, derive any benefit from what lawmakers are coming back to do. Long story, which I’m not going to get into right now, but suffice to say that as of this moment, I am not claiming unemployment compensation.

That’s all for now. What do y’all think?

What I said to the Five Points Rotary

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I forgot to post my comments to the Five Points Rotary on Friday. As you know, I hate to write anything (for public consumption, that is) without posting it here. And since it elaborates on a discussion we’ve had on a couple of recent posts (about the sorry state of the newspaper industry), I might as well go ahead.

Some of you will note that I’ve used the little self-mocking anecdote at the beginning before. Hey, it got me a laugh the first time, so why not stick with it? Only one person in the crowd had heard it before — a fellow member of the Columbia Rotary who was attending the Five Points club as a pre-emptive “make-up” in order to skip listening to Gov. Mark Sanford at our club on Monday (name withheld to protect the guilty). Anyway, here’s my speech:

Current and Future Challenges in the Newspaper Industry

Rotary Club of Five Points

10/9/09

Here’s a story that went over well during Health & Happiness at my own Rotary Club:

One Saturday several months ago, I was walking through Columbiana mall when I was accosted by a pretty young woman with an exotic accent who grabbed my hand and started buffing my left thumbnail with some device in her hand while extolling the virtues of a line of cosmetics from the Dead Sea in Israel. I was helpless in her grasp – how do you pull away from a pretty young woman who’s holding your hand insistently and standing so close that you smell the sweet fragrance of her chewing gum as she breathes into your face?

But, being unemployed and having no disposable income, I did manage to resist buying anything. Moments later, I posted something about the encounter on Twitter. By the time I left the mall, several acquaintances had Twittered back to say that they had encountered the same young woman, and had been less successful at resisting the sales pitch. My friend Mike Fitts wrote, “Yes, they’re ex-Mossad agents (you know, the Israeli secret service) who’ve gone into the Mary Kay business, I’m pretty sure. Three minutes in, I told them where the explosives were hidden.”

Bottom line, and the moral of the story:

If The State newspaper had these ladies selling advertising, I’d still have a job!

As you may know, I’m the former vice president and editorial page editor of The State, where I worked as an editor for 22 years. I was the best known of the 38 people who were laid off in March. The reason I don’t have a job now is that the newspaper couldn’t bring in enough revenue to pay my salary. I suppose I’d feel picked on and persecuted if not for the fact that, as a vice president of the company, I had sat in on senior staff meetings in which, for the last few years, each week’s revenue figures were worse than the week before – sometimes dramatically worse.

There was no way that the newspaper could continue paying all the people it once paid to write and edit the paper. People had been laid off before me, and people have been laid off since then, and while I’m no longer privy to those dismal weekly reports, I have no particular reason to believe the industry has hit bottom yet.

Note that I say, “The Industry.” This is not a problem peculiar to The State. In fact, sad to say, but The State is probably somewhat better off than the average. Other newspapers have closed, while still others – most notably The Chicago Tribune, have gone into bankruptcy.

Nor is it a problem confined to newspapers, or to papers in this country. I was interviewed by a journalist from France’s largest weekly newsmagazine earlier this week, and he spoke of how his publication is suffering. Nor is the problem limited to print: Conventional television stations, once gold mines for their owners, are suffering as well. But the problem is most acute in print.

What is the problem? Well, it’s not a lack of interest in news. The demand for news – indeed, for news conveyed by the written word – is a great as always. And it’s not competition from the Internet – not in the simple sense. But the Internet does play a huge role, just probably not in the way you think.

The fact is, no one is better positioned to bring you news on the Web than newspapers. They still have far more reporting resources and expertise than any other medium in local and state markets. And it’s the easiest thing in the world for newspapers to publish their content online – far easier, and far, FAR cheaper, than publishing and delivering the news to you on paper. Eliminate the need to print and distribute the paper version, and you eliminate half of a newspaper’s cost (most of the rest being personnel).

There are a couple of problems with that, though: While newspaper circulation is down everywhere, there is still enough of a demand for the paper version that newspaper companies can’t simply abandon the traditional medium. If they did, someone else – most likely a bare-bones startup without the traditional paper’s fixed costs – would step in to take that money off the table.

The second problem is that without the revenue from print ads, as reduced as such revenue is, newspapers would have even more difficulty paying their reduced staffs.

And that points to the main way in which the Internet is killing newspapers: While it’s easier and even cheaper to publish content online, and newspapers can provide more such content than anyone, newspapers can’t maintain the staff levels it takes to do that with Web advertising.

The problem is that on the Web, the market won’t bear prices comparable to the prices newspapers have been able to charge for print ads. Sell just as many Web ads as you did print ones in the past, and you lose huge amounts of revenue.

Basically, that’s the problem facing The State and every other newspaper in the country. There’s no problem in the relationship between journalist and reader; that’s as strong as ever (and the people who mutter about newspaper’s dying because they’re “too liberal” or “too conservative” – and believe me, I’ve heard both of those many, many times – simply don’t know what they’re talking about). The demand for news, particularly U.S. political news, has never been greater.

The problem is between the newspaper and a third party – the advertiser. That’s what has always supported newspapers in this country. If you think you’re paying for it through your subscription you’re wrong – that pays for maybe an eighth of the cost of producing the newspaper. The problem is that the advertising is going away.

The business model that has made newspapers so prosperous in the past – not long ago, owning a newspaper was like having a license to print money – is simply melting away.

And no one that I know of has figured out what the new business model will look like.

I firmly believe the answer is out there somewhere – the demand for news will eventually lead to a profitable way to pay for gathering and presenting it – but no one has found it yet.

QUESTIONS?

By the way, the topic was suggested by the Rotarian who invited me to speak. I try to deliver what is requested when I can.

I left a generous amount of time for questions, and was not disappointed. That’s always my favorite part of a speaking engagement. I’m never completely at ease during the actual speech part, because I can’t tell whether I’m reaching my audience or not. That’s one reason I speak from notes, or even write it out as I did here, if I have time. Otherwise, I can get flustered and lost as I stand there wondering, Is anybody even interested in this?

So to keep that suffering to a minimum, I keep the formal speech part short, and as soon as I start interacting with the audience, I’m completely comfortable, whatever questions come up.

In this case, the questions were mostly directly related to my topic (which is slightly unusual; generally the topics are across the board), although I did get one or two about Mark Sanford and Joe Wilson.

A good time was had by me, and I hope by all.

Bad video from Sanford’s Rotary speech (my poor camera!)

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I’ve got two pieces of bad news. First, Mark Sanford appeared before my Rotary Club today and did not resign. But no shock there, right?

The second is that my reliable Canon PowerShot A95 digital camera, which has served me so well — all my still photos and short video clips of Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham, Thomas Ravenel, Grady Patterson, Stephen Colbert, Fred Thompson (and Jeri Thompson!), Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Joe Wilson, Ted Sorensen, South Carolina Nazis and unnumbered others — appears to be on its last legs.

I think I’ve about worn it out. Not only is the picture dim, but I get these unwanted stray bands of color across the top of the frame. It comes and goes, but today I just couldn’t get it to go away.

I’ve posted here an unedited three-minute clip to give you a slice from Sanford’s presentation today (the sound still works pretty well), and to show you how bad the camera problem is.

It was pretty much all the stuff he’s been saying. The apology, the pitch to ask the audience to help him make his last 14 months more productive than the past 6.5 years by getting some of his agenda enacted, etc.

I’m really down about my camera… Even if I had the money, they don’t sell ’em like this any more… The great thing about it was that I could use it so unobtrusively. The photo below, which you see as a header on individual posts here on the blog, is perhaps the only photo I have of my camera in use. Note that I could hold it down on the table with my left hand while taking notes with my right. I could hold it in this position — rather than up between the subject and me, thereby disconcerting the subject and making normal conversation difficult — because it has one of those little screens that flips out and rotates in several directions, like the ones you usually find on video cameras. Yes, they still make some still cameras that do this, but they tend to be much larger and more cumbersome than this model. Sigh. All Things Must Pass, the man said…

ObamaWarthen

Does Sanford still think he has anything to lose politically?

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This really got my attention in an otherwise boring turn-of-the-screw story over the Sanford ethics case:

Sanford asked the court to intervene Wednesday, arguing that if the State Ethics Commission releases the report, it could be used against him politically or undermine the governor’s ability to defend himself. Sanford’s attorneys will have until noon Tuesday to respond to the Ethics Commission arguments.

The boldface emphasis is mine. I would love to see the original press release or court filing or whatever that led to that paraphrase, “used against him politically.”

Surely the governor doesn’t actually believe that he has anything to lose politically. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t he say, in writing, not long ago, that his political career was over? I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time because it seemed like a painful case of stating the obvious.

This guy was toast before he dug the hole deeper with his unsuccessful attempt to block the stimulus funds. Already, the leadership of his own party had stopped listening to him, and the stimulus battle just made it less likely that they’d ever start again. All the Argentina madness happened on top of that. Those of us who were all too familiar with this guy and his irrelevance knew far before that explosion that there was no way he would ever have had a chance at national office, once the national media paid any attention to his record whatsoever. And of course there wasn’t anything left for him in South Carolina.

So how on Earth could he be hurt politically by disclosure of the preliminary ethics report, or, for that matter, by anything else? How could you possibly hurt a political career that is SO over, and then some?

But maybe he didn’t say that. Maybe The State got it wrong. I’d love to see what he DID say, so if any of y’all know, please direct me to it. A brief search on my part yielded nothing…

Before you ask: No, I have not been hiking the Appalachian Trail

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Further evidence that no one can resist reminding the world at every opportunity of South Carolina’s recent embarrassments. This is from a piece on the front of The Wall Street Journal today about unemployed people (not me; other unemployed people) hiking the Appalachian Trail:

In any case, there has been a surplus of hikers this year on the Appalachian Trail, which was unexpectedly in the news in June when South Carolina’s Gov. Mark Sanford used the excuse of hiking the trail while pursuing an extramarital affair in Argentina. Typically, about 1,000 hikers leave Georgia each spring in hopes of completing the trail in one all-out trek. This year, trail monitors say, close to 1,400 hikers were in the first wave, with hundreds more following behind through early summer.

That was the sixth paragraph. They could hardly wait to get to it.

I stopped reading at the point, so I can’t tell you whether they also worked in about Joe Wilson shouting “You lie!”

Most of House GOP agrees with Harrell: Sanford should quit

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Where the leaders go, the others follow. And now a large majority of House Republicans have joined Bobby Harrell in calling on the governor to quit, according to The State‘s John O’Connor:

At least 60 of 73 S.C. House Republicans have signed a letter asking Gov. Mark Sanford to resign.

The letter follows Tuesday’s call by House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, for the Republican governor to resign. In June, a majority of Senate Republicans signed a similar letter. Sanford has said he will not resign.

At a meeting last month in Myrtle Beach, no House GOP member spoke in Sanford’s defense. Republicans control the House.

“The direction of the caucus leaving that meeting was unmistakable,” Deputy Majority Leader Bruce Bannister, R-Greenville, said in a written statement. “Governor you have lost the support of legislators who have supported you through thick and thin.”

The letter says Sanford’s woes are a distraction that prevent other work from getting done.

This is not terribly surprising, given that not one Republican spoke up for the governor at the recent caucus meeting. Of course, the governor won’t listen to these folks, either. He doesn’t listen to anybody, but does what he wants.

Interesting that the Republicans who call on the gov to quit keep talking about his melodrama being “a distraction.” To a narcissist, being the cynosure of all eyes is a good thing. So it is that the governor’s interests fail to connect with those of other Republicans in the state.

Video commentary: ‘Fin de Semana’

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Did you know there was a BobbyHarrell.com? Well, there is. And if you go there, you can read the Speaker’s letter calling on the governor to resign. There’s audio, too.

The Speaker of the House calling on the governor to resign is a significant step — or would be, if we thought there was the slightest chance the governor would listen to the Speaker or anyone else in South Carolina.

But I tend to focus on funny things. Such as this one little thing that the governor said on Keven Cohen’s show yesterday:

Bottom line, I was gone over that weekend.

Let’s see — he left on Thursday, came back on Wednesday, and that’s a weekend? Maybe in Argentina, but not here…

Today’s video commentary: “Love Story II,” starring Mark Sanford

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Still experimenting with my new Webcam. Today, I got to thinking about our governor’s “Apology Tour,” which prompted the above commentary. And if you can’t stand looking at me on video, here’s the script I worked from:

To Mark Sanford, being governor means always having to say you’re sorry. Hey, I didn’t like the original version of “Love Story,” much less this one…

The governor is going here, there and everywhere in South Carolina to “apologize” for his sins.

But he doesn’t mean it.

I remember how, during the 2002 campaign, Dick Harpootlian kept saying Mark Sanford was a poor little rich boy who could not possibly identify with ordinary South Carolinians. At the time, I recoiled at such class-based prejudice.

And yet, maybe Dick had a point, in a way. Because what we’re seeing now is a guy who thinks the rules of the world are that if Mark Sanford does something wrong, there are to be no consequences.

He just apologizes, and we’re supposed to forgive him. If we don’t do so right away, then in his world there’s something wrong with us. We have some sort of wicked ulterior motive or something if we don’t give him the forgiveness that is his due.

It doesn’t occur to him that he should have to pay a price. But he should. And the minimum, the down payment, should be that he doesn’t get to be governor any more.

Why doesn’t he get that?