Five-year anniversary of Sanford's THE CONFESSION!

Is Sanford the Gothic Southern Tragedy,
or is there a more interesting chapter?

There are a lot of people in South Carolina politics who still really believe in former Gov. Mark Sanford.

He's a very persuasive and attractive figure.

Sanford waltzed to election a year ago and is the US Rep. For SC - Dist. 1.

It's ironic that his name would be mentioned today. It's June 24, and Run-Off day, two weeks after the June 10 primaries.

It was a 2002 GOP Primary in which Sanford came from nowhere and took out former Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler, to win the Republican nomination for the governor's office.

Today is also the FIVE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of THE CONFESSION.

I remember listening to, not watching, Sanford on a live press conference broadcast on WIS-TV in Columbia. It was the aftermath. 

The Governor could not be found. He had his press secretary tell everybody, including media, he was hiking The Appalachian Trail. Today that term is idiomatic.

But his political opponents had ferreted out his location, and told an eager-to-bust-him reporter that he was flying into Atlanta. The married-with-children governor had been with his lover, in Argentina.

“I've been unfaithful to my wife,” Sanford blurted out in the middle of a rambling monologue that matched his usual pedestrian oratory style. The room, and the second-half of his governorship, had been dull until he shocked the world.

Sanford, the silver-spooned Richard Cory, who walked a few inches above everybody else, had met the political equivalent of the fictional character created by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

If you meet Sanford, you may get the impression he values your opinion more than anyone else's. You could come away feeling he's the nicest, most genuine guy in the world.

Or you may get the opinion that he's petulant and pious, with that aforementioned Cory-esque air.

How he treats you may depend on what you can do for him.

Regardless of how you see Sanford, he is as interesting a character as there is in modern politics.

The biggest question now is: will Sanford one day burst from the bounds of the more-permissive SC First and pursue that once limitless potential that he squandered on weakness; or was it his boredom?

Or will he become the perpetual, small-voice re-elect to an ego-serving office, on a treadmill he once swore against?

Is he Richard Cory, or will he write the last half of the drama with a creativity that will jolt us as THE CONFESSION did five years ago today? 

Richard Cory 

By Edwin Arlington Robinson - 1869–1935

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.