The "hard" life of Mark Sanford

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I must admit, I really do feel sorry for Mark Sanford. He's only human, after all.

Sanford is alone now in the governor's mansion in Columbia, South Carolina, and it's "hard." But, he says, "there are consequences for any mess-up that we have in life, and that's one of them."

He is contrite -- genuinely so, it seems -- and he has, it seems, accepted responsibility for what he has done, not least when it comes to his family: "They've been subjected to a lot this summer. That was a result of my actions, but nonetheless it put them in a spot they really didn't want to be."

This genuineness, I think, differentiates Sanford from other politicians, and other public figures, who have sinned, at least according to their own definition of "sin," or otherwise done something that they have come to regret -- if only because they were caught. Sanford knows that he is "dead politically." (Perhaps. There are usually second, and sometimes also third and fourth, chances for conservatives who sin, repent, are forgiven, and are welcomed back into the fold.) He is not denying what happened, nor trying to spin it to save his career. I admire that. And I sense that he may very well emerge from this whole episode a better man. (He is no Ensign or Vitter or Craig, all of whom remain appallingly self-righteous.)

I have been extremely critical of Sanford throughout -- see, for example, here and here -- and there remains a great deal about him that I don't like at all, mostly his politics and theocratic leanings. He is human, all-too-human, but he has also been a hypocrite, and his actions, his deceptions, not so much the infidelity but how he conducted himself as an elected leader, lying to his own staff and sneaking around without security and travelling to a foreign country, suggest that he violated the people's trust.

Simply put, he should no longer be in office. And yet, there he is, and, given his humility, that may not be so bad: "I am not running for another office. I just want to make the most of the 16 months that are remaining in trying to honor where I started in this thing, which is, how do you do some things that hopefully make people's lives just a little bit better in South Carolina." I still don't, and won't, agree with his policies, which are unlikely to change, but perhaps he really will dedicate his remaining days in office to something other than right-wing Republican politics. Or, if he does, perhaps he'll be less ideological in his approach to governance.

And perhaps, just perhaps, Mark Sanford will find peace, both with himself and with his loved ones, and move on with his life a happier man than he is now.