Seriously, when does a private behavior rise to the level that it shows judgment poor enough to disqualify someone? I don’t want you to work with me on setting a standard. I’m just curious where people draw their lines.
Sex without a condom shows recklessness. Not regularly washing hands shows a lack of concern for disease prevention. Some consider eating fast food or smoking one step from a death wish. But we’ve all voted for people who do these things.
Sanford’s trip out of the country and not keeping the staff in the loop is a little troubling, I think. But if there was an imminent threat they would’ve either reached him or deferred to the Lt. Gov or staff. Do we know for a fact he was even totally unreachable?
My lines are more in terms of how open and consistent a person is about their views and relationships. That, to me, shows more about their values and motivation for what they do.
Criminal behavior is a line for me, and is the reason I think Spitzer was probably right to resign. If he ran for something else I probably wouldn’t support him because he was a hypocrite on an issue for which he had made himself a real crusader. But I don’t think the law he broke would cost him my support otherwise.
On Sanford, I’m honestly waffling about whether he should resign. I’m not sure about the level of negligence he showed in going MIA.
“if there was an imminent threat they would’ve either reached him or deferred to the Lt. Gov or staff. Do we know for a fact he was even totally unreachable? “
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p>I don’t know if that’s true. The staff lied about his whereabouts, and about how reachable he was. This is a group of people loyal to Sanford, many of whom likely dreamed of being Important White House Staff should all his ambitions work out. They said that they had no plan should leadership of the state emerge as a necessity.
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p>In my opinion, the staff would have done a “Weekend at Bernie’s”, issuing orders over his signature and claiming to be in touch with Sanford, while making it up all along.
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p>I don’t care that Sanford screwed some Argentinian (if anything, I respect his dedication to cheating), I do care that he screwed his state. He should go.
I don’t think it’s in the interests of this party to be casting stones at anyone. Our guys have had plenty of their own scandals and I’ve seen far too many of the self-righteous hoisted by their own petard…no sense adding to the number. The voters will take care of this in due time. I think the only appropriate thing is to murmur something discreetly compassionate for the family of this knucklehead and then move on to something substantive.
I don’t care about the adultery as I said. Who in the Democratic Party so thoroughly was delinquent in their elected duties as Sanford? Blago is the only one in this guy’s league…
as in “tip of the.” I don’t think we can have amnesia when it comes to our own; the Democratic Party has had their share of knuckleheads, and it really does matter how you define “deliquent.” In the last few years we’ve seen four Democratic governors flush their respective careers down the hopper and it doing so, hurt the party: McGreevy, Spitzer, Blago and even Patterson, to a certain degree. I would bet that there are far more of these situations that we don’t know about. Maybe I’m cynical, but maybe I’ve just seen karma bite the knuckleheads that beat loudest upon their chests over the peccadilloes of others.
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p>This is not to say that people shouldn’t be held accountable. I just think there is something to be said for holding someone accountable in a sober and business-like manner…instead of the histrionics to which these cases are usually treated. I think there’s a political calculus that has to be undertaken – go for the instant gratification of chest thumping…or responding appropriately at the right time.