Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Scoppe: Getting rid of Sanford isn’t the cure-all some suggest

“Everybody I’ve talked to says they want us to get back focused on the issues that matter — particularly economic development and education — and while the governor is in office, those conversations are constantly taken back in the direction of the governor and his issues.”

— House Speaker Bobby Harrell

EVERY TIME Gov. Mark Sanford denounces another critic and dismisses another charge of ethical impropriety — which seems to happen daily — I get a little less certain that our state is less bad off with him limping through the last 16 months of his term than with Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer camping out in the Governor’s Mansion. (There’s no “better off” for our state in the near term.)

The reason I’m starting to wonder if his departure wouldn’t be the lesser evil isn’t that Mr. Sanford needs to be punished: Our primary concern must be what’s best for South Carolina, whether justice is done to an individual or not. Rather, I grow increasingly worried that the Legislature will waste yet another session obsessing over Mark Sanford, and use him as an excuse to, yet again, accomplish nothing.

So I share many of the concerns of Speaker Harrell, who wrote the governor on Tuesday urging him to resign, and the 60 other Republican representatives who expressed a similar desire to get about the business of the state in their own letter the next day asking Mr. Sanford to step down.

But they don’t have a slam-dunk case, for several reasons:

• It’s premature to complain that the Sanford mess is distracting the Legislature.

The Legislature meets from January through early June. A few committees meet during the fall, but nothing official happens. To complain that this is keeping the Legislature from doing its work is like your boss complaining that you didn’t get any work done while you were on vacation.

• It’s silly to suggest that the state is spinning its wheels on job development, education or anything else important because of Mark Sanford’s continued presence.

Our problems stem from years, even decades, of bad policy and neglect, not from a few weeks or even months of distraction. Being the butt of national jokes (for which Mr. Sanford is not the only one to blame) wouldn’t keep jobs away if we had a highly educated work force and the policies in place to produce and support a good quality of life.

And although state employees are enjoying all the gossip and jokes, the people who are consumed by all of this are not bureaucrats; they’re legislators, the governor and his closest staff.

• It’s disingenuous to complain that Mr. Sanford has lost the ability to lead.

Mark Sanford has never been able to lead our state, in part because of who he is and in part because of the way our government is set up. Even before his Appalachian-hiking escapade, his obstinate objection to federal stimulus funds that would reduce the number of state layoffs, on top of his threat to cut off unemployment benefits right before Christmas, had so angered everybody who matters in the Legislature that the chance he would accomplish anything in his final year in office was less than zero.

So the question that has to be considered as legislators heat up the tar and gather up the feathers is not whether Mr. Sanford can be an effective governor in the wake of the forced admission of his Argentine affair and continuing revelations about his travel. The question is whether the Legislature can get anything done, or whether legislators will be so distracted by their attempts to remove him that they once again fail to come to terms with our deepening budget woes or correct long-standing flaws in our tax policy or find a way to enhance job development or get serious about giving all children the opportunity to get a good education.

This is where my overdeveloped sense of fairness (and unfairness) kicks into high gear. Although it is essential, there’s something ironically unjust about this question.

The Legislature is populated by people who cannot stand Mark Sanford; that’s understandable and, in some (but not all) ways, justifiable. The Legislature is populated by people who have not been focused particularly well on economic development or education — or much of anything else other than doling out tax giveaways to special interests and (when there was money) tax dollars for hometown parades, festivals and other frivolities. The Legislature has the power to do pretty much anything it wants, regardless of who’s governor.

So essentially, the very convenient argument the House Republicans are making is this: We in the Legislature aren’t capable of focusing on the work we claim we want to focus on, so we need to get rid of the governor we never liked anyway. In a sense, then, Mr. Sanford’s resignation would reward the Legislature for a job not well done.

(Mr. Harrell says the governor has to go because otherwise the Democrats will make it impossible for the Legislature to get anything done. I’m sure they’ll try; but their input will be superfluous.)

Mr. Sanford hasn’t done anything (that we know about) that I would feel comfortable calling an impeachable offense. However, he’s getting closer every day, with his responses to being closely scrutinized for the first time in his political career, and being held to the standard he has set for others.

He seems to think that acknowledging he shouldn’t have had an affair and left the state for the five days he’s now referring to as “a weekend” gives him a free pass on every other misdeed he’s ever committed.

This is particularly galling given his pledge — which he keeps making, and which rings more and more false by the day — to approach his job, and the Legislature, in a new spirit of humility. If he could only manage to muster a little bit of that, it would go a long way toward getting us out of the mess we’re in.

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

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