Mark Sanford

I can see why Republicans want to get rid of Mark Sanford: he's an embarrassment. But I can't see why Democrats would have any objection to what he did. After all, it was just about sex. (And love, and marriage, and faithfulness, and some other things, but nothing about government.)

I can see, however, why Sanford would not resign. A better question would be, why would he? If he resigns, he admits that he screwed up in a big way, and his political career is over. If he doesn't, maybe his career is over, but maybe it isn't. Already his story has been pushed off the front page by Sarah Palin's resignation, and who knows what else will happen between now and 2010 or 2012. People have a way of forgetting things. I don't mean anyone will forget his affair entirely, but its importance will surely diminish over time. By 2012, Republicans might be begging Sanford to run for president. They might not, I admit; I'm just saying it is a possibility. If he finishes out his term honourably, he could go out reasonably popular; and if there are major problems, such as the recession continuing for several years, people may start to regard his governorship as a golden age and his affair a trivial matter compared with urgent matters of state. In either case, what does he gain by stepping down? He has already done all the damage to his marriage that he possibly could, and his political career is going nowhere if he resigns.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science and Philosophy, Part I: Hume and Popper

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions. One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human l...
Read more

Country Music

I noticed a long time ago that there isn't much difference between the sound of country music and rock music nowadays. If I'm surfing my radio and I come to a station playing jazz, classical, or rap, I recognize it right away; but if I come to a country or rock station, I often can't tell which it is until the song is half over. Country songs often have screaming guitars that would fit equally well in a hard rock song, and only a minority have a recognizably country instrument such as a fiddle or a banjo. All the same, no one could listen to a country music station for more than a few minutes without realizing that it is definitely not a rock station. What are the differences? There are some stylistic differences. Country songs are more likely to have a boogey beat or certain western-sounding bass lines. They also tend to be more formulaic: if you can't predict how a country song ends, you probably don't listen to much country music. But those things aren...
Read more

My privileged life

I have just read the article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Level , and the comments, and the follow-up and its comments.  The author claims that straight white males (SWM, for short) don't like being told they are "privileged," so he is going to try to explain their advantages in terms they understand.  He then very condescendingly compares their lives to playing a game on the easiest difficulty level, whereas people in other categories have it harder, and black lesbians are playing on the hardest level of all. I understand that this is a metaphor, or an analogy.  I understand that it is not supposed to be a perfect model of reality.  There are, however, several reasons why I think it is a very poor and misleading metaphor. First of all, using the gaming-difficulty metaphor implies that SWMs have an easy life.  No one plays at the easiest level unless he is a total noob, and only college students with lots of time on their hands play at the hard...
Read more