Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009

Ross Scoppe: Deciding between South Carolina’s rock and hard place

THERE ARE two circumstances under which a misbehaving governor should resign:

• His behavior was so objectionable as to render him unfit for office.

• His behavior has so weakened him that the state would be better off without him.

We can’t foreclose the possibility that there are yet more shoes dangling in the air, but at this point, neither is the case with Gov. Mark Sanford.

The affair itself does not render Mr. Sanford unfit for office. That could change if it turns out that he has misused his office in order to facilitate the affair, but there’s been no evidence of that so far. I’m sure Mr. Sanford wishes he had skipped the trade mission to Buenos Aires last summer, but nothing has come out to suggest there was anything legally inappropriate about it.

The closer call is his most recent trek to Argentina. It is jaw-droppingly irresponsible for a governor to just disappear for nearly a week, without turning temporary authority over to the lieutenant governor or even being honest with his staff about how unreachable he would be. We are extraordinarily fortunate that nothing happened that required his actions.

But fortunate we are. Nothing did happen. And the odds were high that if something had happened that required gubernatorial action, no one would have challenged the right of the lieutenant governor to step in. I say this in no way to excuse Mr. Sanford’s selfish, reckless behavior, but merely to note that it does not automatically disqualify him from office.

So the question becomes whether our state would be better off with Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer stepping in to serve out the final 18 months of Mr. Sanford’s term.

I don’t believe we would. And my concerns are not limited to the possibility of Mr. Bauer getting a huge leg up on his opponents, as I explained in today’s editorial, which I wrote on behalf of our editorial board. I’m also worried about what happens if he doesn’t win: Our government goes through unnecessary upheaval by having to deal with two gubernatorial transitions over the course of less than 18 months.

Even in South Carolina, that has the potential for tremendous disruption: The Corrections Department and the Commerce Department and the state Medicaid agency and more than a half-dozen other agencies likely would have two new directors in 18 months. The boards that oversee dozens of other agencies could be upended as well. And for what?

Most people already had concluded that Mr. Sanford would be completely ineffective with the Legislature next year, and about all he does when the Legislature is out of session (other than leave the city, state and country, for various reasons) is hold budget hearings and write a budget that legislators toss in the trash. So it’s hard to argue that the exposed Mark Sanford would accomplish anything less than unexposed Mark Sanford would have.

Our state is just 16 months away from choosing a new governor, and we desperately need to make sure we get one who is better than the three most recent ones. We simply cannot afford another four or, heaven forbid, eight years of ineffective leadership. There are some candidates in both parties who have the potential to become good governors; Democratic Sen. Vincent Sheheen and GOP Attorney General Henry McMaster leap to mind.

Better to have a slightly lamer-duck governor for 18 months than to lock in the wrong governor for nine and a half years.

There’s a reason South Carolinians don’t elevate their lieutenant governors (the last one was John West, 40 years ago), and I believe it’s tied closely to the way we select them.

By forcing them to run on their own, we severely weaken the field of candidates. Of the people who are willing to wage a campaign on their own, those who want to be governor and have sufficient gravitas to be governor run for governor. The people who are looking for a decent-paying part-time job and some exposure or who know they don’t have what it takes to be governor run for lieutenant governor. (When Mr. Bauer first ran, I asked him why he was the best qualified to become governor if the governor were incapacitated — the only reason to have a lieutenant governor. He said he had never thought about it.)

If governors picked their running mates the way the president does, they would pick someone who could be an asset both on the campaign trail and in office. And they would find useful things for their lieutenant governors to do, which would help them grow into the job they’re waiting to assume.

If Mr. Sanford had been able to select his running mate, it might be that our state would be better off with that person taking over than with him hanging on for 18 more months. It still might turn out that we’d be better off without Mr. Sanford, depending on how toxic or distracted he remains and what else we learn about his actions. At this point, though, there’s not enough of an upside to outweigh the tremendous potential downside.

This is not about whether we like Mr. Sanford’s policies — heaven knows I’ve been among his harshest critics — or how we feel about his actions, which have been beyond the pale. It’s about what’s best — or least bad — for our state. For now, that’s Mark Sanford.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

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