Woe is Sanford

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sanford, in an op-ed at The State, says he's sorry and pledges "to use this experience both to trust God in his larger work of changing me and, from my end, to work to becoming a better and more effective leader." He's been "humbled and broken as never before in my life" and he believes that "this will make [him] a better father, husband, friend and advocate."

Is it enough? I'll leave that to the people of South Carolina, as well as to his own conscience.

For my part, I continue to be struck by the enormity both of his pathetic self-pity and of his egotism. He hides behind his God here, and that, to me, is not just bad taste but a convenient out. He has sinned, sure, but God, benevolent God, will forgive him -- and therefore so too must the rest of us.

I'm sorry, but that's too easy.

I do not wish pain and suffering upon Sanford, and I do hope that he can get his life back together, that he can find love and peace again with his wife and family, but it is detestable, I think, at this point, to try to use what he did -- or, more accurately, to try to use his having gotten caught (for would he so apologetic, so convinced that he can be a better man, had none of this ever come out?) -- as support for his ongoing political career? He did wrong, but he, and the people of South Carolina, will be so much the better for it? Please. This whole episode, this whole sordid mess, may have beaten him down, but his self-righteousness is apparently still fully intact.

And what's worse, to me, is that he's bringing his God not just into his personal quest for redemption, assuming that he's actually serious about that, but into his political life. I realize that personal experience informs politics -- for good and bad, and unavoidably so -- but I'm not sure we want our politicians to bring their personal quests for salvation to the forefront of political leadership. Actually, I am sure. We don't, or shouldn't, want that at all, and Mark Sanford should work to fix himself, and his personal life, in private. Pledging to be a better leader is, once more, just a convenient out, and he shouldn't be given a free pass just because, with his political career on the line, he's now claiming that he's a changed, and ever-changing, man.