Posted on 06/23/2009 5:25:58 PM PDT by pissant
South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford’s disappearing act is reviving an often-whispered, if rarely written, question about presidential hopefuls: Just how strange is too strange?
It takes a unique person to run for the White House, but the dividing line between endearingly quirky and just downright odd can often separate winners from losers.
Sanford’s solo stroll on the Appalachian Trail falls short of the character questions raised by changing your name and fudging your age (Gary Hart) or accusing an incumbent president’s campaign of trying to disrupt your daughter’s wedding (Ross Perot).
But is the straight-laced Republican base ready for a candidate whose idea of relaxation is leaving his wife and kids on Father’s Day weekend to commune with nature?
As an introduction to the American public, Sanford’s walkabout is unquestionably damaging.
Yet past political figures have recovered from inauspicious national debuts — see, for example, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s droning speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
Where the Sanford story could be more fundamentally harmful to his political prospects is in what it suggests about his persona.
It’s one thing to be a millionaire who wears frayed slacks, as Sanford is known to do, but some veteran political strategists and observers believe this episode pushes him over the line between eccentricity and flat-out bizarre behavior.
“We’re talking about professional and personal issues of responsibility,” said longtime GOP ad man Alex Castellanos. “It’s not just that the governor of the state, charged with emergency management, disappears. But at the same time, on Father’s Day, he leaves his four kids and wife to go hiking and they don’t know where he is?”
Sanford is bumping up against a threshold in politics for what a state politician can get away with versus what voters will tolerate from presidential candidates.
As the political analyst Charlie Cook put it: “Governors can be quirky — presidents can’t be quirky.”
So it’s one thing, for example, for then-Gov. Jerry Brown to date the likes of rock star Linda Ronstadt and sleep on the floor of his apartment while governing California. But America wasn’t at the time — and probably still isn’t — ready for an ascetic bachelor in the White House.
In Sanford’s case, South Carolina politicos aren’t terribly surprised at this latest turn of events.
Beside the well-worn story of the governor cradling squealing piglets under his arms in the statehouse to make a point about pork-barrel spending, Sanford-did-what stories are legion in Columbia political circles.
They’re small incidents, but enough to raise eyebrows among the traditionalists who dominate the state’s political establishment.
As a member of Congress in the 1990s, he slept in his office to save money. Political insiders recount tales of his walking around barefoot in meetings in the state Capitol and even doing sit-ups at odd times. During his State of the State speech in 2006, he lost his train of thought and admitted he was daydreaming about a fishing trip with a pal.
Katon Dawson, the former state GOP chairman, recalled when Sanford disappeared from the Republican National Convention last year in St. Paul, Minn.
“He called me and said he was in back in South Carolina,” Dawson said. “He didn’t tell anybody.”
Dawson said he admired Sanford’s firm conservative principles but acknowledged that the soft-spoken governor was considerably different than the back-slapping good ole boy of southern political lore.
“He’s a long-distance marathon runner,” Dawson said. “A guy who enjoys the solitude and can take a lot of pain.”
While those traits can be helpful, it’s not exactly the typical profile for a national political hopeful — especially the solitude part.
“To run for president requires a steady diet of crackpot stew: start with borderline narcissism, add a bit of Messiah complex, stir in a dollop of paranoia and blend with delusions of grandeur,” explained longtime Democratic strategist Paul Begala.
So voters are already presented with individuals who are not, by most standards, normal.
Americans have demonstrated that they’ll tolerate marital indiscretions (again, see Clinton) or illicit substance use (see the past two presidents) in their commanders in chief. But weirdness they have a steady track record of rejecting.
Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter straddled the fine line, but they were more awkward and withdrawn than strange.
Hart, Perot, Brown, Bob Kerrey, Pat Robertson, Dennis Kucinich? None of them ever even won the nomination.
Their peculiarities took different forms — ranging from Kerrey as the more detached, post-modern type to Kucinich, who often appears as just plain flaky — but none passed the have-a-beer-with test.
Ed Rollins, who ran Perot’s ill-fated 1992 campaign for a time, recalled a conversation he had with the late Hamilton Jordan, another top strategist working for the Texas billionaire, after the two came to the conclusion that their candidate had no business controlling nuclear warheads.
Jordan, Rollins said, was worried that Perot might win.
“There is no way he is going to end up being president,” Rollins said he told Jordan. “This guy is nuts, and the country will find that out.”
No one is yet comparing Sanford to Perot, but as Rollins notes, voters have a discerning eye for the personality traits of their national politicians.
The good news for Sanford: It’s 2009, part of an era of short attention spans.
“Unless he buried a few bodies along the Appalachian Trail, I don’t think this will matter in the least,” said GOP strategist Stuart Stevens.
Sanford’s allies believe the governor is a victim of an irresistible summertime story and some in-state Republican adversaries who delight in making him look bad. They also emphasize that Sanford, who lost his father in high school, is a doting parent who spends considerable time with his four boys.
But narratives matter in politics and, with this move, he is playing into one of the most difficult to overcome — that of the odd duck.
Has he made a re-appearance?
She was NOT worried, thus she knew what he was doing.
Whatever it was it will be revealed and NOT be a bad thing.
I hope.
Why does Politico think it is more privy to the inner workings of the Sanford family than Sanford’s wife is?
I was listening to a Chicago radio station this morning- they said this smells like Rahm and Axelrod.
They are trying to take out the competition early.
So Sanford goes away for Father’s day?
Maybe that was his kids gift!
probably went out to smoke a bowl...(drugs have that nasty side effect of bad-decision making)
you don’t just go “off” like this when you are a public servant. public servants are to be held accountable.
now, that fraud in the WH he goes “off” too, just in diff ways...(privately, I haven’t found out yet but I will) but
in a structured public way he does the same thing when he goes golfing.
When Wolfie gets the best of you, that’s bad news.
Or wife, for that matter. LOL
That he treasures his boys, having lost his own father when he was a teen, that his wife, children and staff all knew where he was, and just refused to tell a hostile newsmedia because they knew what would happen ... they'd have descended upon him in a swarm, and none of them wanted that.
Let this ride for another day and he'll be riding the media's crazy train along with Ross Perot. Do it.
Yep, they are trying to bury him.
Depends on your point of reference: barky or President Reagan.
Oh, crap. His wife knew where he was. This is typical Goebbel’s crap from the the assholes in the press who can’t even ask for obuma’s college transcripts.
If a man wants to take a hike and so-called conservatives object, you can take a flying leap out the window and crash and burn.
This incessant upset about where Gov. Sanford is is nothing more than the whining of left wing liberals. We don’t care if you liberal jerks don’t know where Sanford is. You can go take a flying leap off a bridge. You so-called conservatives worrying about where Sanford was can also take a flying leap off a tall building.
MissDairyGoodnessVT
My son and I played tree golf this evening.
We wander around our property or community property and pick a tree and tee off. Who ever hits the chosen tree in the least amounts of strokes wins and simply gets to choose the next tree.
Runway is 4000 feet long so we can have about a 3500 foot long tree.
Just thought I’d say all this cause you mentioned golf in your about page.
Really,
You think this dirtbag is smoking stuff while playing “golf’ on military bases while being protected by our vaunted secret service?
“I was listening to a Chicago radio station this morning”
Would that be Don Wade and Roma on WLS? That was my fav station when I lived in that area in the early ‘90s.
so sorry if my post implied that no, i don’t think POTUS is smokin’ on the back 9, he’s smokin’ somewhere else and when I find out I’ll let ya’ know.
If she knew, why did she tell the media she didn’t know, or are they misquoting her. If they are misquoting her, then correct the record.
Wouldn’t you like to be the cub reporter that took a photo of that happening?
“He needs to go public, right now....”
Sanford doesn’t need to do anything “to go public.” He’s a man and can do what he wants. His wife knew where her husband was. And it’s nobody’s business what a man and his wife agree to.
Grow up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.