Boy, the avalanche of blogs and columns about Mark Sanford’s confession of marital infidelity yesterday have been almost as weird as the governor’s own bizarre, oversharing press conference itself. Sanford not only strayed off the script for politicians admitting they’ve sinned, he turned the script on its head. He said the pro-forma things—how many people he hurt, how sorry he was—but once he started spilling, you got the sense that what he was most cut up about wasn’t that he’d betrayed his wife or been caught with his pants down politically, but that he was going to have to give it up.
He said, sounding awfully like a chastised boy, that the affair was the “worst thing he’d ever done,” but the more he talked about it, picking his way through a minefield of words that could offend either his wife or the woman he referred to as a “dear friend” before she became his mistress, the more it sounded like the most romantic thing he’d ever done.
Which is why he's inspired something rather rare in these political scandal scenarios: sympathy. From people who don’t normally like Republicans.
On Salon, Gary Kamiya praises Sanford for
not sounding like an empty suit, for displaying something that looked like real emotion, even if he made an excruciating spectacle of himself. “He got lost. He went too deep. He exposed his soul. He got all weird and human on us.” Sheesh. And then Kamiya pulls out all the stops, describing the governor's marital mess as “some Eternal Bedroom of Misery that most of us have been in at one time or another, that room where marriages and love affairs—all alike, all different—come to a painful end.” So now we are all Mark Sanfords.
On Slate, William Saletan, too, seems to be seduced by the idea that a professional politician was actually stricken by something other than the damage to his political future. “I think he loved this other woman. I think he still does. And he won't belittle or renounce that love because it was, and is, something real.” And if I’m not mistaken he actually finds Sanford’s behavior
honorable, under the circumstances: “It beats the hell out of seducing somebody, kicking her to the curb, and pretending she was nothing to you—or really meaning it.”
There were no shortage of people dismissing Sanford as madman, a nut job,
a complete looney, and making fun of him for losing his grip, but they seemed more amused than bilious. And those who weren't,
John Dickerson chides for ridiculing Sanford with what he called "antiseptic glee.” Why? Because “he seemed to feel this more profoundly than other politicians we've seen go through this familiar apology exercise before.”
He gets points for sincerity. This is something new: philandering Republican politician as sensitive guy and, even, romantic hero. In the movie, of course, after repenting under pressure and facing the family,
as Sanford is apparently doing this weekend, he consults his heart, gives up the statehouse and hops back on the plane.
