Sanford: Why He Shouldn’t Quit

For more than a week Mark Sanford has been in the news, first with speculation about his whereabouts and then due to his “confession” to the public. All of which I found sad and pathetic

How many people can one man apologize to for his affair? He is not the first nor will be be the last. I don’t mean to sound as if cheating on someone is alright. Of course it’s not we all know this; we have all been cheated on or cheated someone else and we know it’s destructive and hurtful. Yet, it happens all the time. This man apologized to everyone he has ever known or served in his life. It was too much. Why do the people of South Carolina deserve an apology? He did not cheat on them. He promised to take care of the state by being it’s Governor. He has done that and whether you think he has done a good job or a bad job, he is doing the job. His personal life, is just that personal.

I agree that if he took funds from the state to pay for trips he should repay those and perhaps for that he should resign or be impeached! Can you all imagine what the unemployment line would look like if we took all of the unfaithful people and fired them? People are fallible. He fell in love with someone who is not his wife. We are not talking about a hooker he met a few times on state money and time. We are not talking about an underage girl or a staff member, we are talking about a friendship that turned into something more. Here is a man who was trying to work things out with his wife, who clearly can not get the other woman out of his system. It happens. Love does not always come conveniently!

He is now quoted as saying that the “mistress” is his soul mate, but he is going to work on falling in love with his wife again. Do you see what his religious guilt, his political guilt, his public guilt has done to him? He would rather make the public, his constituents, his religious leaders happy than himself. I don’t see this as a step forward in humanity. Kings had Queens and mistresses a plenty. It has been a part of history. The behavior of man has been this way for as long as we have had history. Clearly the bible mentions coveting, because it had already happened. It was a problem.

The problem is that our society is obsessed with looking good. We are obsessed with building people up and tearing them down. We are obsessed with evil, yet we pretend to insist everyone be good. It’s an impossible ideal. We should all strive to be good, of course. He made a mistake and now because of the backlash a man who has found what it seems most people want, what all great love stories describe, will sacrifice what is true in his heart for the same people who are calling for him to be fired. It seems to me he is giving up a lot for the state of South Carolina and the rest of those on the apology list. He just walked away from  his heart, so why should he have to walk away from his job too?