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The South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admitted to having an affair. Sanford’s emails to his girlfriend are in the news. Reporters are scrambling for pictures of Sanford’s mistress. He has made a mess and needs to resign.
• Not because he’s a hypocrite. Most politicians, in fact most people, are hypocrites in some way, often for something important.
• Not because I want to minimize the impact to Republicans. The R’s are getting what they deserve for their big spending, reelection buying, ignore the Constitution, theocratic ways. (And further, this is not the reason because Republican antics make easy posts for me, so thank you R’s!).
• Not because both former governors Eliott Spitzer (NY) and Jim McGreevey (NJ) earned their “Former,” status because of their affairs.
• Not because his actions were unacceptable (they were unacceptable), nor because he was out of the state without notice. We live in a modern digital age. He could have called.
• Not because of the fallout. That’s irrelevant.
Governor Sanford needs to resign because to do what he has done is to make it clear that the strains of his life, personal and professional, have seriously impaired his judgment. His actions were dishonorable, irresponsible, and just plain stupid.
He can not be trusted as governor nor can he be trusted as a reliable judge of his ability to function. And that should cause the South Carolina legislature to act quickly and non-politically to remove him should he fail to resign.
I challenge the Governor’s ability to judge his own judgment.
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I can’t jump on the “Sanford resign” bandwagon. And, I’m a Democrat…a Black one at that. Being an observer, I recognize that we, as Americans, tend to have an idealized expectation of the roles people play in everyday life. We elect people because they appear to be “like us”, the everyday common man. Teachers are not supposed to have sexual fantasies, movie stars are not supposed to be kleptomaniacs, politicians are not supposed to make ass-backwards mistakes of judgement. They do. We do. Is it that their transgressions inspire fear in us that we too are as prone to error; that we too feel incomplete and don’t really know what it is that will complete us. Why is it that we are a society more apt to punish than to heal; to discourse, reflect and learn from our mistakes. Whatever faults we find in any member of our society could it possibly be that those faults are an outgrowth of an inherent malaise of the society at large. For sure, our modus operandi has not exactly been a social success thus far. Look around you. I’ve worked with the “dysfunctional” forty years and the question has changed. I no longer ask “What is wrong with them”. There is more to learn in asking “What is wrong with me”. My intent is not to excuse the governor but to at least consider “What is justice, really?”