Sanford Should NOT Resign

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Mary Ann Chastain / AP Photo As Governor Sanford’s former constituent in South Carolina, I understand how angry residents feel. But like Spitzer in New York, hounding him out of office now would prompt resignation remorse later.

“Will you resign the governorship?” The question hung in the air as South Carolina’s Mark Sanford departed his press conference. It was the only inquiry left unanswered in the 18-minute televised confessional. It remains unanswered—possibly even to the governor himself—but Sanford should not resign.

As a former constituent of Sanford’s in Charleston, I can appreciate the shockwaves going through homes all over the Palmetto State today. He was widely considered one of the good guys in politics: thoughtful, honest and unassuming—even if you disagreed with him on policy. He slept in his congressional office to save money, brought a pig into the state legislature to highlight pork-barrel spending, fought for deficit reduction and enjoyed approval ratings above 70 percent. As it was in New York when Eliot Spitzer’s infidelities were exposed, the breaking news felt close to a moral impossibility, contrary to everything we thought we knew about the character of a once-popular chief executive. A smart and principled man behaved in ways that were neither smart nor principled.

Soliciting prostitution is illegal; adultery is immoral. Spitzer was felled by lust; Sanford evidently by love.

Hypocrisy is the unforgivable sin in politics. In Spitzer’s case, the hard-driving prosecutor with a zero-tolerance policy for human frailty set himself up as a political piñata. He’d advocated tough new laws against soliciting prostitutes and then done the same thing himself. He’d utilized money-laundering techniques that he had prosecuted. He’d made enough enemies during his short time in office that few tears were shed when he resigned.

But in South Carolina, there is genuine sadness mixed with the shock and disappointment. Sanford had been viewed with pride as a leading Republican presidential primary candidate in 2012—completing the half-century evolution from Strom Thurmond to Fritz Hollings to Sanford. Throughout his career, his wife Jenny had been a steadfast political partner and his love for his four boys remains palpable. But despite knee-jerk anti-Southern assumptions, Sanford had never subscribed to the Moral Majority or discrimination coded under the term “family values.” He was a man of faith, but did not use it as a political banner or polarizing weapon. A staunch fiscal conservative—which led to most of his fights with the free-spending state legislature—he did not climb on the soapbox of social conservatism. Instead, he advanced the idea of the big tent.

After Spitzer’s resignation, chaos in the New York state legislature has left many citizens feeling that the inmates are in charge of the asylum—a condition exacerbated by the fact that only one of the state’s four statewide elected officials in Albany were actually put into office by the voters less than three years ago. Unexpectedly, some folks in the Empire State now have resignation remorse. Hounding Sanford out of office in this moment of maximum pain and political damage could have a similar effect in South Carolina.

There’s an additional caution: Soliciting prostitution is illegal; adultery is immoral. Spitzer was felled by lust; Sanford evidently by love. All this is not by way of excusing, but explaining, Sanford’s combustible midlife crisis and epic lapse in judgment. For all the heated “Bill Clinton must resign” impulses after the then-mind-blowing Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, most Americans now see that would have been a mistake in terms of the Constitution and the country.

To his credit, Sanford did not indulge in an extended spin after getting caught—he was painfully honest in public. And as we have seen from Jenny Sanford’s subsequent eloquent letter to the press, no one ever really knows what goes on in a relationship except the two people in it.

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