For a politician to survive a sex scandal in this character-conscious country, he must not, with streaming eyes and blubbery facial contortions, throw himself wholly at the mercy of his people. Mark Sanford wisely did not attempt to exonerate himself by blaming his actions on factors other than his own will. In The Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker noted that there were “no references to some inner demon, an abusive father, an addictive personality, or the indescribable pressures of working so hard for the good of the American people.” Sanford also did not drag out his wife to stand beside him like some feeble political pawn. If anything, Jenny Sanford – who served as vice president of the investment bank Lazard Freres & Company before becoming her husband’s campaign manager – has set a laudable new precedent for political wives: kick him out. Moreover, Sanford did not throw his mistress under the bus: He sagaciously indicated that his affair had been a love affair; his infraction could not be described as a random bout of lust with an intern in the office hallway. President Clinton never claimed a concern for the well-being of Monica Lewinsky.
Yet this is how Sanford should have left it: “I’m an idiot; I had an affair; I fell in love with another woman; I’m working through this complicated situation with my family.” If Sanford had kept his response simple and demonstrated control over the debacle, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett could have swiftly obscured him from the headlines. Instead, Sanford has rambled, wondered, and whined before the media so persistently that he has whittled the workings of his government into a Lifetime reality show. The public will forgive Sanford’s behavior, but it won’t forgive his stupidity.
From the initial press conference in which his dulling points meandered from the merits of love to the lessons of life, to his confessing last Tuesday that he may have “crossed lines” with other women while he and his male friends took trips to “blow off steam,” to his comparing his plight with the story of David and Bathsheba, to – most audaciously and foolishly – his begging that Jenny Sanford permit him to visit his lover, Sanford’s actions have incriminated him as a spineless idiot and transformed his office into a gubernatorial incarnation of the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Indeed, Sanford has spent so much airtime discussing his sex life that Sue Johanson may successfully sue him for copyright infringement.
Senator Vitter had it right when he recognized his own adventures as misadventures, asked for forgiveness, and, “out of respect for his family,” decided that he would “keep discussion of the matter there.” Not only can a politician survive a sex scandal nowadays, but he can also limit the media’s intrusion into his personal life by dealing with the affair in a clean, decisive manner.
Nevertheless, an alternative course of action – Sanford’s course of action – erases the line acceptably drawn between what is privately condemnable and what is publically punishable. All Mark Sanford had to do was apologize for lying to the public and his office about to his whereabouts; instead, he has created a crisis of instability in the South Carolina government. As more facts surface in support of the accusation that Sanford used taxpayers’ money for his Argentine excursions and never reimbursed the state, the case for Sanford’s resignation may be present at last. In America, you can cheat on your wife’s trust, but you can’t do it on the taxpayer’s dollar.
Recall that President Clinton was impeached not because he had received fellatio from Monica Lewinsky but because he had lied about it in a sworn deposition during the Paul Joans lawsuit. The people of Detroit did not laicize their onetime mayor Kwame Kilpatrick because he had participated in an affair with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty; Kilpatrick was forced to resign when the public realized that he had committed perjury, had used his bodyguards to cover up his trysts with Beatty, and had cost the financially strapped city $6.5 million in award money for two officers he had fired when they investigated the misapplication of his bodyguards. Although Spitzer marks one of the rare cases in which a politician steps down because of the shame arising from the hypocrisy of his personal life (Spitzer has been cleared of the allegation that he’d paid his escort in public money), he has lately been positioning himself for a political comeback. As of June, Spitzer has scheduled a number of extended public-speaking engagements, has contributed to various news sources, and has even agreed to an-in depth interview with Fareed Zakaria.
A ubiquitous pursing of lips is, then, the only course of action that adulterous politicians need inspire among the American people. Yet no American should excuse the audacity and idiocy of those statesmen who, in the name of sex, abuse their powers and make a circus of their office. When the red phone rings at 3 a.m., the public doesn’t want a hooker to be on the other end.
