Mark Sanford Exposed

Recently Jenny Sanford, the wife of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was interviewed by Vogue magazine about the effect of the Governor’s publicly revealed affair with Argentinean woman Maria Belen Chapur. She said:

“I have learned that these affairs are almost like an addiction to alcohol or pornography. They just can’t break away from them,” Sanford said.

This is a predictable take that doesn’t really intrigue me all that much, though I think she’s probably right. Of course the Governor was “addicted” to these sexual affairs. He split the country without telling anybody, couldn’t be reached by even his high level staffers, then, when he finally got in touch, fatuously lied about where he had been. (He claimed he was hiking in the Appalachian Mountains.) Certainly, these actions are, on the surface anyway, insane. Why would a man who spent his whole life acquiring power throw it away on such a blatant gamble? What would motivate a person to risk it all for nothing more than the transitory pleasure of sex?

Jenny Sanford says this: “I think my husband has got some issues that he needs to work on, about happiness and what happiness means. I think when a lot of men get to this midpoint in life, they start asking questions that they probably should have asked a long time ago.”

Now this is interesting. Is the real issue that Mark Sanford doesn’t understand “happiness or what happiness means?” It seems to me that he had complete comprehension of and control over his conception of happiness and pleasure. He knew exactly what he wanted, and it wasn’t just sex. He was pursuing the thrill, chasing the high; he wanted to see if he could get away with it. Probably, he’s guilty of a thousand other indiscretions, gambles and insanities that nobody ever found out about, more intelligently hidden and safely guarded. But ultimately, he kept pressing and faced the inevitability that every addict knows is out there: exposure. Now we all know Mark Sanford for who and what he really is. And some of us know that, deep down inside, he will never, ever change, even if his overt behaviors do.

Welcome home, Mark Sanford. We love you for who you truly are.