US Elections

You can't make this stuff up

By Nina Blackwell in San Francisco

25 June 2009

Right about now, you could forgive Australians for thinking that their elected representatives were pretty good at scandals. Or that Britain's MPs were doing their best to compete with their Australian counterparts. And until today, you could also be forgiven for not knowing who Mark Sanford was. But as of 2pm Eastern Standard Time, almost everyone in the U.S. knows who he is and Americans can now also share in a collective sense of despair at the antics of some of their nation’s elected officials.

To explain: Mark Sanford is the Republican Governor of South Carolina who mysteriously disappeared last week, his real whereabouts apparently unknown or undisclosed to anyone including his staff and his wife. His disappearance alone was news, but the truth was even better. His wife said he was writing something and his staff said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail but in actual fact he had flown to Buenos Aires, Argentina, the reported home of his long time lover. Today, sordid emails between the Governor and his paramour also surfaced. The Governor resigned as the head of the Republican Governors’ Association and effectively destroyed his previously reasonable chances at the Republican presidential nomination for 2012.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is… 

The revelations surrounding Governor Sanford come but a week after Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada announced that he had been having an affair with a campaign staffer, who was married to one of his Senate staffers. In 2007 Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig was caught in a gay sex-sting in a Minneapolis airport bathroom and Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter admitted that he had been a client of a Washington, D.C.-based escort service. In 2006 Florida Republican Representative Mark Foley resigned following revelations that he had inappropriate instant message conversations with under aged male House pages.

Don’t get me wrong – Democrats have a recent track record at this stuff too. In 2008 it was revealed that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had been a regular client of a prostitution ring under investigation by federal authorities. And earlier this year it surfaced that Democratic Presidential candidate Senator John Edwards had an affair with a documentary filmmaker on his campaign.

While such revelations are absolutely tragic for the individuals and families involved, Governor Sanford’s antics are also yet another problem to a Republican Party that is already struggling to finds its way.  And while almost all politicians nowadays espouse "family values" (including the aforementioned Democrats) these scandals pose a particular public relations challenge for the conservative Right, which looks even more hypocritical. Card-carrying members like Senators Ensign, Vitter and Sanford, were especially moralistic.

Perhaps the saddest consequence of all is that this is yet another blow to any lingering whisper of confidence that voters might have in their elected officials. In their (unpopular) defense, most people who go into elected office often do so with an undeniable devotion to serving their constituents and they work long and hard for the privilege.

However, if there is anything positive to be found in all these scandals, it is the fact that we know about them and the fact that voters can do something about them. A more stark contrast could not be drawn between this fact and the other images that dominated tonight’s news in the U.S. – those of Iranian citizens fighting for their lives and for the right to exercise the real democracy that so many of us can easily take for granted.

Print This Post