Hypocrisy, thy name is politics

Lots of people, including me, have written on the futility and the frank immorality of attempting to legislate morality. But the recent set of scandals involving Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina demonstrates the futility and the frank immorality of attempting to substitute moral judgment and forgiveness for legislative oversight.

There are several age-old, psychologically relevant stories that converge in the Sanford saga.

The most common is the tale of the woman who bears the burden of the hard work to get her man to a place of prominence, only to be rewarded, when he reaches there, by having him ditch her in favor of someone more attuned to his newly elevated status. The nurse puts her boyfriend through medical school, then semi-retires to rear the children; a predictable 10 years later, the successful doctor runs off with ... Well, you know the rest of that story.

Jenny Sanford became the tough-minded manager of her husband’s campaigns for the House of Representatives from 1994 through 2002, and for the governorship of South Carolina in 2002 and 2006. While doing so, she also bore and raised four sons. Attractive, accomplished, well-spoken and devout, she has been the perfect wife for an ambitious Southern patrician, former Eagle Scout, Goldman Sachs guy and real-estate developer.

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The second old story is the man dumping the menopausal-age wife for a younger, sexier version of that woman. Marital therapists have shaken their heads in wonder over this for generations. If the man is going to stray, and with a younger woman, why would he choose one whose looks, manner and character are so much like his wife’s?

At the predictable age of 49, Mark Sanford left Jenny, 47, for the arms of a 41-year-old, presumably sexier (according to his published e-mails), and certainly more exotic (to Americans) woman from Argentina. A woman who, like Jenny Sanford, is dark-haired, slim, poised, articulate, and who has been a somewhat accomplished professional in her field. Psychologists see in this sort of choice a yearning for the man’s lost youth.

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The third old story contained in the Sanford saga is of a man running away from his biggest challenge by doing something that automatically disqualifies him from bigger things. My favorite precursor here is Secretary of State Alexander Haig, in the moments after Ronald Reagan was shot, claiming to be constitutionally in charge of the country because Vice President George H. W. Bush could not be located; Haig got his facts about our Constitution wrong, and this egregious error essentially ended his drive to become president.

Two weeks ago, Mark Sanford was a leading candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for president, and had positioned himself, as Bill Clinton had in 1990 (and Jimmy Carter in 1974), as a high-ranked governor — in Sanford’s case, as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Sanford’s extramarital fling, the publicity attendant on his abrupt disappearance for several days, the lies told to attempt to cover that absence, his rambling public confessions, and — most importantly — his dereliction of duty in not temporarily transferring the powers of the governorship to the lieutenant-governor during his absence, have effectively disqualified him from higher office. But perhaps he was subconsciously afraid of failing the challenge of running for the presidency, so he set himself up not to have to try it.

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I don’t care that Sanford had an affair. That is his and his wife’s private business. But I find reprehensible the press concentrating on Sanford’s affair rather than focusing on his dereliction of duty in leaving the state under false pretenses and then lying about it.

The reason for the media’s focus is not hard to understand: Sex sells, dereliction of duty doesn’t. That was the lesson the media gleaned from the Clinton impeachment. And the media have also learned that accusations of hypocrisy no longer faze politicians. Lawyer Joseph Welch famously asked Sen. Joe McCarthy, “Have you no shame?� The true answer was that while McCarthy seemed to have none, the public had that sense, and so eventually did their representatives in Congress, which censored McCarthy.

There has been no Congressional censure, or only light media censure, for such recent inductees to the club of political hypocrites as Sanford, Sen. John Ensign, Sen. David Vitter, former Sen. Larry Craig, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and former Sen. John Edwards — among many others — and whose founding member was the man who insisted on impeaching President Bill Clinton for a dalliance, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who reached his own moral low point as he pressed his first wife for a divorce, in the hospital, while she was recovering from her cancer surgery.

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In the blogosphere, there is an acronym, IOKIYAR — It’s OK If You’re a Republican — which means that behaviors that Republicans will not tolerate if done by Democrats are defensible if Republicans do them. That is not broad enough for me: When it comes to giving politicians a break on their sexual peccadilloes, hypocrisy goes well beyond party bounds. And the media is completely complicit in it.

Sanford’s continuing defenders, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, argue that if Jenny will forgive Mark, and he will be a good boy from here on in, meaning no more affairs, that he can resume his rightful place as governor and as a conservative aspirant to the presidency.

Graham has nothing to say about his pal’s transgressions of his elected-official responsibilities, these evidently being, to Graham as well as to Sanford, a non-issue now that the South Carolina attorney general has certified that there was no misuse of public funds involved in the escapade to Argentina. (Even so, Sanford has now reimbursed the state $3,800 for a 2008 trip to see his mistress.) After all, Vitter and Ensign have continued in the Senate, so why shouldn’t Sanford continue as South Carolina’s governor? The South Carolina Legislature and the state’s public advocates and news organizations need to step in and start recall procedures, the only proper way to remove the governor for his real, rather than for his moral, wrongful acts.

Salisbury resident Tom Shachtman has written more than two dozen books and many television documentaries.