GOP Co-Star: South Carolina's Sanford Wants It So Bad He's...Speechless

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford wants the veep spot. He wants it so badly he salivates at the very thought of four years living at Number One Observatory Circle--the big, Queen Anne style Victorian residence of the Vice President of the United States of America.

The former U. S. Congressman's chances of moving back to D.C. aren't so hot. Two reasons: South Carolina isn't as risky or as valuable for the GOP as, say, Florida; and Sanford really blew his own shot when he balked at endorsing McCain during the week before the S.C. primary. Bad move. Lousy timing. Some folks say he was being a really smart, savvy pol, keeping his options open in a state where Mike Huckabee could have preached his way to a win. McCain supporters? They're not so generous about where Sanford's loyalties should lie when it counts most. It was, at best, a bad audition.

Now Governor Mark, seeking a spotlight somewhere, is tap-dancing as fast as he can to make up for lost momentum. How do you prove yourself months after the main act has left the stage? Well, duh? You go for the lead in the Sunday Morning Talking Head Show Line-up. Sanford performed on Sunday's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. Oh, my. It was not an Emmy-level debut as Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. A comedy? Maybe.

Like I said, he's salivating for the veep role. Face it, swallowing all that drooling ambition can hamper the best of soliloquies.

Poor Mark. He looked so good. Casual and tan as always, effortlessly pseudo-rumpled upper class. All those white teeth. That captivating Southern grin. Gawd. He was practically Rhett Butler. What could possibly go wrong?

Wolf Blitzer. He ruined everything. One question -- like the bad apple -- can spoil the whole bunch. Given John McCain's new propensity to embrace all things Dubya, Blitzer recklessly asked Mark Sanford if there would be any real difference between McCain's economic policy and the Bush fiasco.

Sanford bared his pearly whites in pure-T South Carolina rapture.

"Yeah!" he declared.

And then the script failed him. There was a pregnant pause, folks -- and you know how the GOP feels about unsanctified pregnancies. Sanford looked in every direction but the camera's while he groped for a line. "Yeah...I mean...for instance...take...you know...umm...ahhh...take for instance the issue of...uhh..." Governor Mark Sanford, vice presidential hopeful, rap-tap-taps his knuckles on Wolf's table.

"...I'm drawing a blank," he says, grinning, trying to Southern-charm his way out of the hole he's in. "I hate it when I do that...Oh -- yeah! Earmarks!"

Sanford launches into a spiel on Maverick John at the Pork Barrel Corral. It almost works. We can see McCain, both six-shooters drawn, bullets a'flyin', mowin' down the Earmark Gang at high noon and God Bless America!

But Blitzer cuts and runs. Cut: NAFTA. Run: Okay, Obama may have nuanced his policy for NAFTA reform a la general election mode, but as far as NAFTA is concerned, aren't Bush and McCain on the same page?

Sanford hangs down his head like Tom Dooley. "They are..." he admits, pauses. "...For free trade."

Not one to give up the economic ghost, Sanford goes on to say how John McCain is solidly behind the demise of pork barrel spending -- like that awful farm subsidy stuff. McCain, he declares, was all for limiting subsidies like the ones given farmers who earn more than $250K a year. Times are hard. We've got to cut spending. We can count on McCain.

Sanford went off-script. Truth to tell, there were two Senate votes in December, 2007 about farm subsidies. One, S AMDT 3695, was to limit subsidies. The other, S AMDT 3810, was a vote to adopt an amendment that grants subsidies only to part-time farmers, ranchers or foresters with an average adjusted income that DOES NOT exceed $250K and to full-time farmers, ranchers and foresters with an average adjusted income that DOES NOT exceed $750K.

McCain did not vote. No vote. None. Either time. For or against either amendment. Hardly a testament to a dedicated, do-or-die foe of both the pork and the barrel it came in.

If there's such a thing as guilt by association (see GOP rule as it applies to Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright), McCain is guilty as sin. His pet lapdog Lindsey Graham voted against both subsidy amendments. No limits on this man's pork. Pay up to that rich farmer, buddy boy. Here's your constituency.

Mark Sanford just doesn't get it. Can't blame him. His personal script was crafted to win elections in South Carolina, where we have the highest high school drop-out rate in the nation and are ranked 49th in ACT/SAT scores. We don't expect much. We like a Good Ole Boy in office, and we'll vote for him almost every time. Mark Sanford sold us on his Po' Boy creds. He understood all about hard work, long hours and sacrifice, he told us. He learned those earthy values growin' up, workin' hard on his daddy's South Carolina farm. We could practically smell the rancid sweat of hard labor wafting all around Sanford as he talked about the bad old days.

But Mark did not grow up working on daddy's Carolina farm. Daddy wasn't a farmer. He was a cardiologist and Mark was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Mark was born to privilege. He and his family came to South Carolina to spend summers and holidays on daddy's proppity. A farm? Sorta. Take a look at Coosaw Plantation, the Sanford "farm" in the South Carolina Low Country.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Sanford's real history. We're born to the families we're born to--we don't get a vote. But it gets mighty tiresome hearing all these overgrown children of the upper-middle class and the wealthy lying about how they really, really understand us because they, too, have struggled to live the American Dream.

It's the worst kind of elitism. Sanford floundering, then pandering as usual--lying to the poor American unwashed like we're too dumb to dig up the truth.

This South Carolinian reckons Mark Sanford did more than shoot himself in the foot on Sunday with Wolf Blitzer. He blew his lines. His foot? He blew the whole thing right off at the ankle. It's his own fault for trying to bluff his way out of a bad script.

And it's partly John McCain's fault as well. He gave Sanford damn little to work with.

Comments

[luckismine]

I saw the video myself, Linda, and felt sorry for the poor man. No one should be allowed to be that self-destructive on camera...

Once again, your wit and insight have served this campaign well. Thanks for offering the kind of commentary we can't find elsewhere.