Stranger than fiction

[trinityvixen]

I watched the press conference with Governor Sanford yesterday. It was one of the worst attempts to defuse a situation as ever I saw. I understand that he's supposed to be "unconventional," and many of his constituents probably prize shooting from the hip over practiced, careful speechifying, but it was just embarrassing to watch.

It takes this article four paragraphs to get to the Gov's official declaration, which, believe me, is three times faster than Sanford managed. When one is caught in obvious shenanigans, the best thing to do is come forward and say, upfront, what's been going on. Instead, he meandered through all the plausible reasons why he might have disappeared for a week, apologized to friends, family, and voters, mentioned a reporter he'd had a run-in with at the Atlanta airport, and then copped to being out of the country on a booty call. He then went into embarrassing detail about how he'd met this person innocently at first, and how that had changed, and so on and so forth. Dude, you're here to tell people why you up and vanished without leaving your contact information, not trace your every thought process since your affair started. Great, you cheated on your wife; we do not need the play-by-play. (Unless it's going to lead to awkward questions like it did in Senator Ensign's case where he might have paid his mistress more, with GOP funds, while he was schtupping her and fired her when the affair was over.)

Of course, the real "news" here is that Sanford was a 2012 presidential hopeful and that looks like it won't be happening any more. I hope that such dashing of his chances happen for the right reason--for the fact that the executive leader of an entire state went AWOL and didn't think to make any provisions (like talking to the Lt. Gov!!!) to deal with state business while he was away. I don't give a shit who you boned unless your boning breaks the law (which, possibly, Ensign's firing of his mistress could have done--his paying her more while she had sex with him doesn't look great either). But you cannot just abandon your post as president. You want ass? Call up Hugh Hefner, go to Camp David, shag your weekend away, but for the love of the great noodly one, STAY IN TOUCH.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

...I just don't understand the thought process behind going AWOL. Forget being governor of a state--even if you were an average joe having an affair, wouldn't you think disappearing for a week without telling anyone might make your wife suspicious?

As Jon Stewart said, yet another politician with a conservative head and a liberal dick.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

She knew about the affair--they've been separated for weeks and in counseling for months.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

This screams "wants to be caught," doesn't it? I mean, seriously, if he had left any excuse with people, including some of the many bogus ones forwarded by the people who still didn't know as of the story hitting the press where he was, he could have jaunted off anywhere and not had it matter. All he had to do was lie and say he was planning to go hiking or something, and none of this would have mattered.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

I hope that such dashing of his chances happen for the right reason

I woud also hope that his political career would be ruined because he's apparently a gigantic dumbass, but we both know that this is news because he had an affair. If he'd run off with his golfing buddies for a week and not told anyone, it might have made a local paper or two, and everyone would have ignored it.

No one [in politics] gets fired for being incompetant any more. You only get fired for offending cetain very specific (read: sex-related) moral sensibilities.

Though I'd really love to be there the first time a politician gets caught with a mistress, and his wife says, "Yeah...and I was sleeping with my boyfriend at the time. We have an open relationship. Why is this a big deal, or any of your business?"

[ahab99.livejournal.com]

I think it is our business if the guy getting caught is one of the people vocally pushing "morality" as part of his political career. Have an open relationship, do whatever you want, but don't at the same time tell gay people they don't deserve to have access to the same institutions that you're abusing yourself.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

There is this un-funny double standard when it comes to politicians and their pecadillos. Basically, anyone who cheats is a scumbag (if that's the relationship he/she agreed to upon getting married). If that someone is a Democrat, the Republicans harangue him/her and bleat about how that person should recuse themselves, resign, or even, I dunno, commit seppuku. This is because the GOP is the party of Family! Values!

However, if a Republican cheats, it's a "private matter" and so on. It would seem to me that the party that doesn't pretend they have a monopoly on "family values" failing to live up to ideals would get cut more slack. Isn't hypocrisy worse than imperfection?

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Um...which Republicans have gotten a free pass for their cheating recently? It took forever for anyone to care about Edwards, Spitzer's scandal was different in kind, and Barney Frank still has his job...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Vitter and Craig are still employed. So far, so are Ensign and Sanford.

Edwards would be a fair example except that he isn't currently serving in government.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

So...the only politicians who suffer more than huge credibility hits are the ones who commit sex felonies (like Spitzer). As it should be.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Craig was being prosecuted for a crime. I'm not sure that Vitter gets to skate on prostitution if Spitzer does not.

Bottom line, only those who commit crimes can be legally removed from office, sex or no sex. But the ones that stand their shrieking about family values while bending those values over a chair? Deserve very little patience or sympathy. I don't care if you cheat, but as bigscary points out above, if you make my private business your business, I'll return that favor in kind. And you'll totally deserve it.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Oh, agreed. Note that there's also another distinction; Spitzer and Sanford are both executives, while Craig and Vitter are legislators. For some incomprehensible reason, we have much higher standards for executives. Also note the significant number of Democratic financial criminals in Congress (Rangel, Jefferson), and felons on both sides in the New York Assembly.

I'm all for getting rid of Sanford for the crime of unbelievable stupidity, if nothing else. I'm just saying that it's not like Republicans are getting some special privilege to fool around.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

We agree on most points here. I don't get why being in one line versus another makes infidelities less/more problematic--if it's a problem, period, should it matter if you're an assemblyperson or president? Sanford is a particular brand of idiot whose inability to navigate the call-and-response script of an apology for being, gosh!, human is more troubling than any affair.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

This is why I take a similar stance on outing gay-bashing pols. Who you bone is your business, if you make who I bone your business, then who you bone becomes my business. Fair is fair.

Also because it's just plain funny.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's also true that the people most intolerant of what they perceive as sins are among the most prone to sinning.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't know, this story got very big before the reveal that he'd been away with a mistress. The shocking thing from all the news I'd seen was that no one knew where the governor was. Rachel Maddow had the Lt. Gov. on her show, and he was like, "Uh, no I don't know where he is, but if anything should happen, I guess I'm in charge?"

But even if the sex isn't why the story got big, you're right to say that that would be the only reason he would get fired. Notably, he has not stepped down as governor. (He gave up being head of the Republican Governors Association.) I would think that this kind of egregious and rather hedonistic jaunting about, leaving his state in limbo would provoke the voters to want to kick him out even if he doesn't have the decency to resign.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I don't really care about this guy having an affair, because he was one of the major "Clinton should be impeached because he is such a bad, bad man for cheating on his wife" players oh so long ago. Glass houses.

Did you read the emails from these two published in The State? The guy is head over heels for a new girl. It'd be cute if he wasn't such a hypocrite.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't really care about this guy having an affair, because he was one of the major "Clinton should be impeached because he is such a bad, bad man for cheating on his wife" players oh so long ago. Glass houses.

I think there's a negative missing from that sentence--do you care because he was calling for impeachment of another adulterer, or do you care less because he wasn't one of those?

I heard the e-mails, as read to me by Keith Olbermann. Rachel Maddow put it best--if I tried to read those outloud, I'd blush so hard I'd fall over. That, I didn't need to know.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

I think Gail Collins at the NYT said it best: "perhaps it is time to rethink the idea of constantly electing middle-aged heterosexual men to positions of high importance."

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Clearly, we should only elect eunuchs.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You just don't like that she has a point.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Since women are also quite capable and inclined to cheat, not that much of a point. To the extent women politicians don't cheat as often, it has more to do with gender expectations in society (it's considered more expected, and therefore more forgivable, for men to cheat), and therefore seems somewhat antifeminist as a reason for electing more women.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

There are really two things to be done about faithless politicians, since we can't fire them just for having affairs. One, we could stop caring about who they fuck until it breaks the law. Or Two, we could better educate people to stop thinking that men have permission to cheat and women do not. Neither solution is going to be easy as they would require us to stop finding sex itself salacious and stop discriminating on issues of gender, respectively. I'm not sure which I think is less possible to accomplish.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Indeed. But note that neither of those things is, "elect non-male or non-middle-aged politicians." The only way to ensure that a politician doesn't cheat is castration.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I dunno, maybe we should try different electoral processes--term limits on legislators? Chastity belts for the 45-60 set?

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Even then it's not that sure-fire; there are at least some recorded stories of Chinese eunuchs being caught performing sexual acts with the concubines.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I dunno, middle-aged homosexual men have had plenty of scandals, too! Middle-aged women in politics, OTOH, seem more-or-less immune to the cheating instinct.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

We kid, but edgehopper does have it right--it's not that women don't have a cheater's instinct but more that they pay the heavier penalty if they are found to be cheating. The purity of woman is paramount; none of her other accomplishments mean anything if you can find reason to question her (especially sexual) purity (of body and of mind). The truism that women work twice as hard for half as much respect is still at play. A woman who fails to be perfect is much more on the hook than a man who does.

Witness the pathetic but popular assault on Nancy Pelosi for having maybe, kinda, even-if-it's-not-true heard about torture versus apathy and even celebration of the actual authors of torture policy. Nancy Pelosi is a powerful woman who might be (but, thanks to Lindsey Graham's meticulous diaries, probably isn't) lying about what she heard when (i.e. she is a politician), and that's worse than people openly acknowledging and profiting off of writing patently illegal memos about breaking international laws to suit the whims of neocons. It's ridiculous, but that's how it works.

So it's not a question of instinct but of cost/benefit. Obviously, as the sudden plethora of cheating male politicians proves, adulterous men can get away with apologies to one and all. That they probably knew that going into the affair made the cost of having one much less. (It might even benefit them because a) we love a good redemption story in this country, and b) even bad press is good if you're not really in the spot light.) Women, on the other hand, can expect no such easy road out of being caught cheating, so the cost is way, way more. The temptations and urges may be every bit as strong, but they, wisely, realize that they would never recover from such nonsense. (Whereas Newt Gingrich can come back, fifteen years later, a conquering, all-is-forgiven, for-lack-of-a-better-word "hero.")

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I agree with you that women cheat as often as men, and that sexism accounts for some of the differences here. I don't believe men necessarily get away with it.
Sanford's presidential career is finished; same with John Edwards; and when was the last time you heard about Gary Condit or Gary Hart? Nancy Pelosi gets beaten on because she's a powerful progressive; some of the attacks were sexist, to be sure, but it's the position she holds more than anything else. (And note she's as secure in office now as ever; the "scandal" has long since blown over.)

I think sexism comes in more in attitudes towards older men vs. older women, and towards political power. I suspect Kissinger's aphorism "power is an aphrodisiac" only applies when men are wielding it. Plus, despite all recent talk of "cougars," more women are willing to sleep with older men than the reverse.