Signature significance. It is the one act that shows that “anyone can make a mistake” is the confounding rationalization that it is. For there are single instances of bad conduct that tell you everything you need to know about someone’s character. If, for example, a state Governor disappears, leaving his aides to lie that he’s “hiking,” when he really is AWOL and cheating on his wife with his “soul mate” in South America, this is signature significance. This man can’t be trusted, and its a good bet that he’s not playing with a full deck, either.
I am speaking, of course, about Rep. Mark Sanford, once the Governor of South Carolina. His tenure in that high office was a casualty of his being stricken with overwhelming amorous feelings for Argentine beauty Maria Belen Chapur, who, he said, was the love of his life. The previous love of his life, Sanford’s wife, was understandably bitter, but not the forgiving, absurdly gullible voters of South Carolina, who after waiting a couple of years, allowed Sanford back into a position of power over their lives, electing him to the House of Representatives.
The fools!
Now Sanford, still engaged in various legal battles with the former First Lady of the state and the mother of his children, who he betrayed and humiliated because “the heart wants what the heart wants,” suddenly announced in a rambling post on Facebook that his engagement to his Argentine spit-fire was at an end, the casualty of the stress being placed on their relationship by his ex and her battle with over his access to his young son. “No relationship can stand forever this tension of being forced to pick between the one you love and your own son or daughter, and for this reason Belen and I have decided to call off the engagement,” Sanford wrote. “Belen is a remarkably wonderful woman who I have always loved and I will be forever grateful for not only the many years we have known and loved each other, but the last six very tough ones wherein she has encouraged me and silently borne its tribulations with her ever warm and kind spirit.”
Sanford, however, never thought to let Chapur know that she had definitively decided to call off their engagement. She told the press that while she had insisted that he finally marry her, and he demanded that she wait two more years, the announcement that he considered the impasse a final, official breach blindsided her. And on Facebook. That Mark Sanford…what a gentleman.
There are three fools here.
Fool the First is Sanford, who got an undeserved second chance to behave like a respectable, trustworthy public servant, but can’t help himself. I know Bill Clinton fans refuse to acknowledge this, but if you will betray the mother of your children, you won’t blink at double-crossing the citizens who put you in office.
Fool the Second is Maria. She watched her man treat his first wife like the crud on the underside of his shoe, and yet assumed he would treat her better. I know it’s an old tale, but that just makes it worse.
And Fool the Third is the forgiving, gullible Republican constituency in S.C.’s First Congressional District that elected this manipulative, self-centered jerk a second time. The New York Times reports that Sanford faces no risk of defeat in November, because he has no serious competition. Impossible! Gomer? Goober? Floyd the Barber? Aunt Bea? Even Opie! Who wouldn’t be better than this guy?
“I think that I was not useful to him anymore — he made the engagement thing four months before the elections,” Maria Belen Chapur told the Times. “So this is not about his son, this is about his career and his ambitions.”
Ya think?
Well, maybe there are only two fools now.
A bit too late, however.
_________________________
Facts: New York Times, MSNBC
Graphic: New York Times
Ethics Alarms 
Sanford got himself elected by a district that found him the best of a bad lot! His primary opponent was too weak and his Democrat opponent was a real wacko. It doesn’t say much for the local Republican leadership that it came to that, did it? One can only hope that this leadership and the electorate will (on this basis, at least) place a viable primary opponent against the man who disgraced their state and the entire Republican Party. Besides, anyone who could so something like this- something that would make even the most depraved Democrat flinch- has no business being a member of the GOP or any other political group with an ounce of self-respect. When Sanford’s term is over, he ought to be cast out without further ado.
Partisanship trumps all. Anyway, didn’t you get the memo? Public official’s personal lives are nobody’s business. It’s been on your desk for fifteen years…
Did the American electorate in general accept this memo?
Yes and no. Certain segments of it accepted it as regarded Bill Clinton, others as it regarded folks from the other side of the aisle.
This is why we need stronger third parties. The GOP didn’t put up a better candidate because they didn’t have to. Our two major parties have stopped acting like their job is to provide the best candidates to run the government. They are just in it for control and the power that yields. If we had stronger third parties, we would have someone to vote for when the Democrats and the Republicans give us only the choice between total incompetence and corruption.
If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you.