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South Carolina's Original Sinners
And when he died, Essie came forward to claim not any inheritance, but her and her children’s heritage. Essie quickly became an accepted family member. Today her name is chiseled on the Strom Thurmond monument on the statehouse grounds, added to those of his and his second wife Nancy’s four children.
The great big difference between Strom and Mark Sanford (he hasn’t yet achieved the ultimate recognition of a Southern politician of being universally known to all by his first name) is that Thurmond became a household legend as well as the subject of ribald jokes among his loyal supporters. Thurmond understood the role of government, possessed a mind much sharper (including a memory at least close to photographic) than he projected, and as U.S. senator regularly voted against federal government spending, but always made certain his state received at least its full share.
One can imagine Thurmond literally turning over in his grave during Sanford’s earlier national media blitz about standing on “principle” in his futile attempt to prevent the state from accepting almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in federal stimulus money for education and law enforcement.
Strom was never dull. He rarely expressed himself other than with forthrightness. The latest from Sanford is his comparing himself with King David (who fortunately never embarrassed his people about the matter of Bathsheba with a bizarre nationally televised press conference). Sanford followed by projecting a grandiose analogy of how he wants to demonstrate to his four sons how one can be knocked down and still pick up the pieces.
Among knowledgeable people in South Carolina, Jenny Sanford is considered the real political strategist in the family. She served as campaign director during all of his elections. As first lady, she has been actively engaged with his staff on policy issues and an in-depth research analyst. (Before meeting her husband, she reached an upper rung on Wall Street, after graduating summa cum laude from Georgetown.) She grew up in a family at the highest level of Chicago society. Friends call her socially open and fun, but tough, determined, and cool—with a total and controlled dedication as a mother of four sons who have attended socially elite private schools.
Political insiders considered her the brains and force of the effort for her husband to become the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. In aftermath of his return from Argentina this month and scores of personal apologies, but so far no real signs of making amends, his quest for high office exists only as ancient political history.
Whether her husband resigns or remains as governor is a decision in which Jenny Sanford may well be the key decider. My only advice to readers is that if you’re contemplating retirement and can’t stand boredom, come see us—and make sure you bring your Yankee dollars.
Jack Bass, co-author of Strom: The Complicated Personal and Political Life of Strom Thurmond, is writing Justice Abandoned (the story of the Supreme Court and the road to Jim Crow) for Pantheon Books. He is professor of humanities and social sciences at the College of Charleston.
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Genni2002
Never understood the phrase: It's not personal, it is just business and Strom T. just took that already dumb enough utterance to a place beyond stupid with his similar: that's not us, its politics... If this is a story to give us an idea about his amount of devotion toward his secret family, well, my thimble has greater capacity!
rahrah
God save the South.
At the least, we know how do an affair proper.
citivas
This is the exact same spin they original put on Blago in Chicago, that he was way less corrupt than some of his historic predecessors. That's interesting and all, but I don't think there's any point. It doesn't make the current losers and more justified or sympathetic and it doesn't mean that the places they represent are inherently bad.
citivas
The bottom line is politicians of both parties used to be able to get away with virtually any private sin without it affecting their public standing. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Eisenhower were all known by the media at the time to have had affairs but nothing was reported. Kennedy was a slime ball in private, but is remembered for Camelot...
What changed was not only the media, which is easy to blame, but the politicians themselves. Republicans knew about Kennedy's womanizing but didn't turn it into a political scandal. I think it was the politicians who moved the media on this, not the other way around. The Republicans in Kennedy's day recognized that they shouldn't throw stones from glass houses, but somewhere along the way (probably Clinton) all sense was lost and they started getting this mentality that you could wield sex scandals as a political weapon under the banner of family values and still manage to hide your own hypocrisy in the process. That's why Sanford is such a big deal: The hypocrisy, not the crime or the betrayal. And it is party neutral. The same reason is why Spitzer was instantly ruined by one prostitute while his successor quickly admitted to being a serial adulterer and didn't even see his popularity sag (his incompetence later took care of that). In Spitzer's case it wasn't the hypocrisy of family values buy law and order. He committed what is usually treated as a very minor crime and often not prosecuted at all, but this was still hypocrisy for a guy who's entire reputation was based on going after people for crimes previously not pursued.
The net result is I have no sympathy for the politicians now. They brought this merging of public/private life completely on themselves and are reaping what they sowed. I'm all for restoring the separation, but I'm not sure you can put that genie back in the bottle and even if you could it needs to go back to being party neutral - the GOP can't continue to claim a monopoly on family values.
pericles21
Dismal, stomach turning reading. Like a grey, foggy morning sometimes soothes and sometimes it's just plain dismal. This tale of South Carolina (and the South's brain-mushing, dance of death between the racist and the slave legacy), Thurmond's autocratic nose-thumbing at democracy and Sanford's weak-hearted copy-catting, makes America seem just a collection of Somali gang-lords spouting the faith but really in it for the wealth, sex and whatever else is the favored vice.. Only difference is the Bible has replaced the Quran. Without the biblical passages, SC and the Dixie South are just dark, seamy, Faulkneresqe sewage. So much cruelty, truth twisted and lives made miserable in the name of Jesus.
FransBevy
In the era when Strom Thurmond "seduced" the house maid and impregnated her the maid had no choice in the matter. She was poor, black, uneducated and powerless, she really needed that job. Strom was white, wealthy and in power, he had the power to fire her. I think their relationship could more accurately be described as "rape".
This writer makes it sound like a wonderful, humanitarian gesture that Thurmond didn't send Carrie Butler and Essie away.
Thurmond was a rapist. Don't sugarcoat it.
jonjon66
It's called RAPE
leobatfish
you only have to work in the deep south about 2 weeks to understand why they lost the civil war.
leobatfish
you only have to work in the deep south about 2 weeks to understand why they lost the civil war.
Hawnzz
There are moments... when I wonder why we fought the Civil War.
Thank you.
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