Mark Sanford, term-limited South Carolina governor, 2012 GOP presidential nominee short-lister, now sees his career and marriage in ashes. He may even see his continued freedom curtailed, as impeachment proceedings for his going AWOL are likely. In fact, his last trip to Argentina — which he’d planned to take ten days, but was cut short at five — may have been the preliminary move he was going to make to ditching his wife, kids, and the governorship all at one go; as bmaz and Marcy say, you don’t take a ten-day or even five-day trip to Argentina just to say goodbye.
So why haven’t they gotten divorced yet? Two reasons — the kids and The Family. No, not their own — this one.
More after the jump. Crossposted at Daily Kos.
Let’s look at the kids’ part of the equation first:
Okay, you’re Mark Sanford. You are, to judge from your e-mails, tired of being governor, troubled in your marriage, and feeling the first real soul-changing love of your life — and it’s with a woman who’s not your wife.
Then you take that ill-fated "hiking trip" and the story of your affair comes out, and your political career — a career your wife helped build, if not out-and-out directed — is now in ruins. You face shame, loss of power, an ice-cold situation at home with your spouse, and even the possibility of prison time for misuse of your office.
What is there to keep you from running away from all that? Really, even if the mistress can’t or won’t take you in, why haven’t you handed in your resignation and started divorce proceedings already, just to escape from all of that?
Easy: You want to see your kids again, if for no other reason than that you don’t want their only view of you to be the acid-etched one your wife will provide, and you know that won’t happen if you leave. So you stay. (Even though there’s ample evidence that staying together "for the sake of the kids" dumps a hell of a lot of pain on the kids: "Mom and Dad aren’t happy and it’s because of us.")
But what about Jenny Sanford? Why does she want to stay with a man who doesn’t seem to want to stay with her?
Power. If she can’t get to the White House through Mark, well, then, she’ll do so on her own. (It’s not as if she doesn’t have the brains to do it — hell, she ran his campaigns and was one of his chief gubernatorial advisers.) And she certainly has money, as the Skil heiress. Plus, there’s a Bill/Hillary Clinton dynamic here: His career may be done, but she can use the sympathy generated by her position as Grossly Wronged Wife to get first a spot on Capitol Hill (perhaps as early as next year, if Lindsey Graham’s hints about his own "sins" lead to him foregoing a re-election campaign)
But she’ll need to stay in the good graces of the Fundies — especially of The Family (or "C Street" as her hubby Mark referenced them in his tearful press conference). And Fundies don’t like divorce at all. In addition, she can’t let Democratic women like Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Edwards or Silda Spitzer outdo her in the Stand By Your Man department.
So expect to see them stay together, with tight, fake smiles and their kids serving as human shields in the public photo-ops, and eventually a spate of "Vote for Jenny" signs appearing in their locality.
Can they make her the governor now?
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I’ve been saying for a while that the Sanfords appear to me to be the Republican version of the Clintons. The difference is that while the Clintons are both smarter than whips, in the Sanford’s case I think Jenny is the brains and Mark the pretty public face.
Things have changed, and women can make their own way in the political world. Republicans (as usual) are behind the times, so Jenny probably thought she needed someone like Mark. But times have changed, and she doesn’t need him to have her own career.
But she’s got to make a decision first. Keep him, or dump his sorry ass? She’ll lose support among the social conservatives if she dumps him. Will she gain enough moderates? It’s tough to say: the Repiglican brand is pretty badly tarnished everywhere but in the social conservative crowd. It’s a tough decision, and I expect you’re right, PW. She’ll take him back, if he foolishly decides to come back.
The whole family dynamic is tragic. I feel sorry for all of those involved, especially the kids. But I can’t avoid the schadenfreude: one of the potentially more-formidable opponents in 2012 is gone.
Let’s not exaggerate. Having more brains than him does not make Jenny a genius. That she married him in the first place, much less bred young with him, suggests some deficit upstairs. And let’s face it, brains are not a first-tier requirement for achieving high office in this country. Heck, you don’t even have to be sane or sober.
Recommended.
Great post, PW, as per usual.
Interesting. Comments too.
You’ve nailed it, PW.
As you say, he’s found a soul-stirring love. Why would any woman want to stay in a relationship where she’s not loved? As you said– for Jenny, it’s Power. Money.
PW.
yummy. rec. although I’m thinking it may be a case of right church, wrong pew – She will definitely hang on for the Fundies – but as for C St, I’m not so sure – they don’t seem to care about women and it appears that as long as you ’stay on message’ they don’t care what you do – as evident in their continued support of dictators busy jailing and murdering hundreds of thousands of their own people
As per Diane Rehm’s Jeff Sharlet book interview, women are second tier in the male headship organization that is The Family. However, power trumps all. Sharlet stated that if a woman is sufficiently powerful, she will be treated like a man in that group.
No specific mention of Hillary in the interview, however, connect the dots where you will.
Hitler, Lenin, Mao and Ghengis Khan are fascinating and awesome figures to The Family - not for their murderous ways, but for the methods they used to achieve great power. (Seems their methods included a lot of murder – how to separate murder – genocide – from their charisma?)
The Family dreams of waht it could achieve (in the name of its Milton Friedmanesque Unbridled Capitalist Representative for American Empire Jesus) if only it could harness the organizational skills of Ghengis Khan.
In support of Phoenix Woman’s theory, I’d guess this special little blurb was posted some while back (& it was still on the official site yesterday):
“During her husband’s second term as governor, Mrs. Sanford is enjoying spending more time in her most important role as mother of their four sons – Marshall, Landon, Bolton and Blake.” — Official Website of the Office of the Governor of South Carolina
You do the translation.
The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com
Given the exposure of the Christ-tard’s hypocrisy, Sanford should, as an honorable Republican Christ-tard (lol), put a bullet into his tiny brain, but….