Struggling to restore his political capital and hold onto his job, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford held a televised meeting of his cabinet Friday, during which he offered another emotional apology for an extramarital affair and six-day disappearance to Argentina.
He's really sorry.
State Sen. Tom Davis, one of the governor's closest allies, said Friday the governor's ability to remain in office "will depend on whether the people of South Carolina think he's sincere."
Is he really sorry? And, of what: doin' it, or gettin' caught?
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who took over as chairman of the governors group and is one of the most influential leaders in the party, said admissions like Mr. Sanford's do harm a party that has tried to define itself around strong moral principles, but that he is focusing now on gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.
"There's certainly a negative," Mr. Barbour said. "But as to a practical effect...I don't think a single voter in New Jersey or Virginia is going to be affected by what happened to Gov. Sanford."
THAT remains to be seen.
Showing posts with label Scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scandal. Show all posts
Saturday, June 27, 2009
A Political Wife’s Tough Stance Strikes a Chord
Dina Matos McGreevey, left, and Silda Wall Spitzer, right, stood beside their husbands as they admitted marital infidelity during news conferences. Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, center, faced the cameras alone.
When Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina gave what has become a ritualistically familiar part of American politics — the news conference on marital infidelity — there was no dutiful political wife to share the spotlight and, by her very presence, imply forgiveness.
The juxtaposition of the wifes in this picture and the absence of Jenny Sanford is stark.
Jenny Sanford, the first lady of South Carolina, left her husband alone to burble at length about his yearlong affair with a woman from Argentina. Instead Mrs. Sanford released a statement that was hard hitting and to the point: she said she wanted her marriage to continue but demanded nothing less, as her price, than her husband’s “repentance.” On Friday, she told reporters she had known of the affair since January but had waited for her children’s school year to end before separating from him.
O, and did he burble.
For thousands of women, responding on the Internet and Twitter, Mrs. Sanford’s decision to hold her husband accountable provided a catharsis, a kind of public exorcism of the ghosts of political wives past.
Meryl B. Koopersmith, a couples therapist with the Ackerman Institute for the Family in Manhattan, felt similarly pleased with Mrs. Sanford. “You see all kinds of reactions to affairs in families,” Ms. Koopersmith said, “but very few who stand there stoically. Then these political wives, they are a different breed, almost semiconscious. I am all for the wife who doesn’t stand there like some puppet.”
It's unfathomable to me that a woman would stand next to such a creep, in public, and absorb the humiliation.
Few could forget Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sitting next to her husband, Bill Clinton, as he acknowledged to “60 Minutes” that he had caused pain in his marriage; or Dina Matos McGreevey, looking half dazed as Jim McGreevey detailed a homosexual affair and resigned the governorship of New Jersey; or Silda Wall Spitzer, posing just behind Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York as he discussed hiring expensive call girls, her jaws clenched so tight that she could have cracked steel bars.
Great expression; a look at the picture confirms it.
Of course, Mrs. Sanford is hardly throwing the governor out for good. She has said she is open to reconciliation.
Still, for many women, this apparent softening did nothing to diminish her dignity. Cristina Nehring, the author of “A Vindication of Love,” a new book that argues that cynicism and pragmatism have corrupted American marriages — which, she says, should be more about true passionate love — called Mrs. Sanford’s performance “impressive” all the way around.
Speaking to the same issue, Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family studies and author of “Marriage: A History,” said she found Mrs. Sanford’s reaction “more authentic” than that of most other political wives. “She is saying she wants the marriage to survive but I am not coming out to humiliate myself in public for it,” Ms. Coontz said.
Indeed. And, in this case, the schmuck asked for permission to see his mistress again.
“If we assume the relationship is genuine on Sanford’s part, that is much more threatening to a marriage than just sex,” said Catherine J. Ross, a law professor at George Washington University and co-author of a textbook on contemporary family law.
He certainly seemed to be; he said he'd been crying for 5 days. And he missed Father's Day.
When Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina gave what has become a ritualistically familiar part of American politics — the news conference on marital infidelity — there was no dutiful political wife to share the spotlight and, by her very presence, imply forgiveness.
The juxtaposition of the wifes in this picture and the absence of Jenny Sanford is stark.
Jenny Sanford, the first lady of South Carolina, left her husband alone to burble at length about his yearlong affair with a woman from Argentina. Instead Mrs. Sanford released a statement that was hard hitting and to the point: she said she wanted her marriage to continue but demanded nothing less, as her price, than her husband’s “repentance.” On Friday, she told reporters she had known of the affair since January but had waited for her children’s school year to end before separating from him.
O, and did he burble.
For thousands of women, responding on the Internet and Twitter, Mrs. Sanford’s decision to hold her husband accountable provided a catharsis, a kind of public exorcism of the ghosts of political wives past.
Meryl B. Koopersmith, a couples therapist with the Ackerman Institute for the Family in Manhattan, felt similarly pleased with Mrs. Sanford. “You see all kinds of reactions to affairs in families,” Ms. Koopersmith said, “but very few who stand there stoically. Then these political wives, they are a different breed, almost semiconscious. I am all for the wife who doesn’t stand there like some puppet.”
It's unfathomable to me that a woman would stand next to such a creep, in public, and absorb the humiliation.
Few could forget Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sitting next to her husband, Bill Clinton, as he acknowledged to “60 Minutes” that he had caused pain in his marriage; or Dina Matos McGreevey, looking half dazed as Jim McGreevey detailed a homosexual affair and resigned the governorship of New Jersey; or Silda Wall Spitzer, posing just behind Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York as he discussed hiring expensive call girls, her jaws clenched so tight that she could have cracked steel bars.
Great expression; a look at the picture confirms it.
Of course, Mrs. Sanford is hardly throwing the governor out for good. She has said she is open to reconciliation.
Still, for many women, this apparent softening did nothing to diminish her dignity. Cristina Nehring, the author of “A Vindication of Love,” a new book that argues that cynicism and pragmatism have corrupted American marriages — which, she says, should be more about true passionate love — called Mrs. Sanford’s performance “impressive” all the way around.
Speaking to the same issue, Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family studies and author of “Marriage: A History,” said she found Mrs. Sanford’s reaction “more authentic” than that of most other political wives. “She is saying she wants the marriage to survive but I am not coming out to humiliate myself in public for it,” Ms. Coontz said.
Indeed. And, in this case, the schmuck asked for permission to see his mistress again.
“If we assume the relationship is genuine on Sanford’s part, that is much more threatening to a marriage than just sex,” said Catherine J. Ross, a law professor at George Washington University and co-author of a textbook on contemporary family law.
He certainly seemed to be; he said he'd been crying for 5 days. And he missed Father's Day.
Governor’s Wife Is Hurt but Unbowed
Jenny Sanford, the first lady of South Carolina, at the family’s beachfront home Thursday on Sullivan’s Island, S.C.
As Jenny Sanford headed off for a boating trip, the day after her husband, Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, told the world he had been unfaithful, she met the throng of reporters waiting outside her South Carolina vacation home, all inquiring about her emotional condition.
“Am I O.K.?” Mrs. Sanford repeated, from the driver’s seat of a vehicle. “You know what? I have great faith and I have great friends and great family. We have a good Lord in this world, and I know I’m going to be fine. Not only will I survive, I’ll thrive.”
No shrinking violet, or mumbling loyal wife, she.
It was, friends and former aides say, classic Jenny Sanford — strong willed, steely, anything but a victim. Mrs. Sanford, a former New York investment banker, largely gave up her professional life and turned to helping her husband’s political career, but those who know her well say she was also never one to abandon her sense of identity, her direction, or her own opinions.
Anything but a victim; good for her. And for others.
To one reporter who wondered what might come of Mr. Sanford’s political career, Mrs. Sanford answered sharply: “His career is not a concern of mine. He’s going to have to worry about that. I’m worried about my family and the character of my children.” And with that, Mrs. Sanford, who spent much of Thursday with her husband and said she was working on her marriage, pulled away, smilingly telling the assembled cameras, “I wish we had room on the boat for you all, but we do not.”
Now, buzz off.
Jenny Sanford was described by friends as strong willed.
Even within the dimensions of her husband’s political life, Mrs. Sanford was not merely a helpmate in a traditional first lady role, but managed her husband’s political campaigns (at first, from their basement) and later acted as a sounding board on matters of policy, a fact that one former aide to Mr. Sanford said regularly irked some members of his staff. She often studied data that was sent to the governor’s office and helped develop positions, one senior legislative staff member said, describing her as “the real brains behind the operation.”
A, so he's the air-head. And a putz; to wit:
Through a spokeswoman, Mrs. Sanford declined requests to be interviewed for this article, but told The Associated Press she learned of her husband’s affair early this year when she found a letter he had written. She told him to end the relationship, but he repeatedly asked permission to visit the woman in Argentina in the months that followed.
“I said absolutely not,” Mrs. Sanford told The A.P. “It’s one thing to forgive adultery. It’s another to condone it.”
He asked his wife's permission to keep seeing his mistress, the weasel. And this jerk was supposed to be presidential timber?
“She is one of those people who is always the smartest person in the room,” said Marjory Wentworth, a friend who is also the poet laureate of South Carolina.
In 1989, the couple married, but it was not until she had her second child that politics entered their family picture. “It was quite a surprise to me,” she told The Greenville News of South Carolina. “When he told me, I was in the hospital, and we had just delivered our second son. So we had a 15-month-old and a newborn, and he says to me, ‘I’m going to run for Congress.’”
Sounds a mite selfish.
From home, Mrs. Sanford managed that first campaign in 1994, and then his run for governor.
Friends, however, credit Mrs. Sanford with the ultimate juggling act: happily serving as a first lady who would choose one of her son’s class plays over a presidential dinner anytime, but who was also perfectly comfortable discussing intricacies of the state’s finances.
“So often when a woman is business minded, they’re not good at being a cookie baking soccer mom, but that’s the thing about Jenny,” said Jennifer Pickens, a friend for over a decade. “You cannot stereotype her that way. She can be either one of those things and do it effortlessly.”
In recent weeks, and even on Wednesday, as her husband acknowledged his affair, friends said Mrs. Sanford had remained cheerful, gracious and strong. Lalla Lee Campsen, a friend of 20 years, was with Mrs. Sanford that day and described it as a time “when Jenny exuded, perhaps as never before, her great strength of character.”
Her friends praised the statement she issued that day, saying that she would press to repair her marriage and forgive but that she had also asked her husband to leave — at least for now.
“That was definitely her, all her,” Ms. Pickens reflected. “It reeks of her. She will survive this beautifully.”
Reeks? Perhaps not the best choice of words, but the sentiment is clear.
As Jenny Sanford headed off for a boating trip, the day after her husband, Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, told the world he had been unfaithful, she met the throng of reporters waiting outside her South Carolina vacation home, all inquiring about her emotional condition.
“Am I O.K.?” Mrs. Sanford repeated, from the driver’s seat of a vehicle. “You know what? I have great faith and I have great friends and great family. We have a good Lord in this world, and I know I’m going to be fine. Not only will I survive, I’ll thrive.”
No shrinking violet, or mumbling loyal wife, she.
It was, friends and former aides say, classic Jenny Sanford — strong willed, steely, anything but a victim. Mrs. Sanford, a former New York investment banker, largely gave up her professional life and turned to helping her husband’s political career, but those who know her well say she was also never one to abandon her sense of identity, her direction, or her own opinions.
Anything but a victim; good for her. And for others.
To one reporter who wondered what might come of Mr. Sanford’s political career, Mrs. Sanford answered sharply: “His career is not a concern of mine. He’s going to have to worry about that. I’m worried about my family and the character of my children.” And with that, Mrs. Sanford, who spent much of Thursday with her husband and said she was working on her marriage, pulled away, smilingly telling the assembled cameras, “I wish we had room on the boat for you all, but we do not.”
Now, buzz off.
Jenny Sanford was described by friends as strong willed.
Even within the dimensions of her husband’s political life, Mrs. Sanford was not merely a helpmate in a traditional first lady role, but managed her husband’s political campaigns (at first, from their basement) and later acted as a sounding board on matters of policy, a fact that one former aide to Mr. Sanford said regularly irked some members of his staff. She often studied data that was sent to the governor’s office and helped develop positions, one senior legislative staff member said, describing her as “the real brains behind the operation.”
A, so he's the air-head. And a putz; to wit:
Through a spokeswoman, Mrs. Sanford declined requests to be interviewed for this article, but told The Associated Press she learned of her husband’s affair early this year when she found a letter he had written. She told him to end the relationship, but he repeatedly asked permission to visit the woman in Argentina in the months that followed.
“I said absolutely not,” Mrs. Sanford told The A.P. “It’s one thing to forgive adultery. It’s another to condone it.”
He asked his wife's permission to keep seeing his mistress, the weasel. And this jerk was supposed to be presidential timber?
“She is one of those people who is always the smartest person in the room,” said Marjory Wentworth, a friend who is also the poet laureate of South Carolina.
In 1989, the couple married, but it was not until she had her second child that politics entered their family picture. “It was quite a surprise to me,” she told The Greenville News of South Carolina. “When he told me, I was in the hospital, and we had just delivered our second son. So we had a 15-month-old and a newborn, and he says to me, ‘I’m going to run for Congress.’”
Sounds a mite selfish.
From home, Mrs. Sanford managed that first campaign in 1994, and then his run for governor.
Friends, however, credit Mrs. Sanford with the ultimate juggling act: happily serving as a first lady who would choose one of her son’s class plays over a presidential dinner anytime, but who was also perfectly comfortable discussing intricacies of the state’s finances.
“So often when a woman is business minded, they’re not good at being a cookie baking soccer mom, but that’s the thing about Jenny,” said Jennifer Pickens, a friend for over a decade. “You cannot stereotype her that way. She can be either one of those things and do it effortlessly.”
In recent weeks, and even on Wednesday, as her husband acknowledged his affair, friends said Mrs. Sanford had remained cheerful, gracious and strong. Lalla Lee Campsen, a friend of 20 years, was with Mrs. Sanford that day and described it as a time “when Jenny exuded, perhaps as never before, her great strength of character.”
Her friends praised the statement she issued that day, saying that she would press to repair her marriage and forgive but that she had also asked her husband to leave — at least for now.
“That was definitely her, all her,” Ms. Pickens reflected. “It reeks of her. She will survive this beautifully.”
Reeks? Perhaps not the best choice of words, but the sentiment is clear.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Silvio yet again
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says he did not pay a woman to stay overnight at his residence.
Check the facts; the first paragraph of the story is a mite different than the photo's caption.
Facing a growing wave of criticism about his personal life, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi went on the defensive this week, saying that he did not recall meeting a woman who claims he paid her to spend the night at his Rome residence.
Silvio being Silvio.
In an exclusive interview to be published Wednesday in Chi magazine, which Mr. Berlusconi owns and which is Italy’s equivalent of People, he was asked if he had ever paid a woman “so she would be with him.”
He owns the magazine, and is PM. Speak of controlling the spin cycle.
“Naturally, no,” he responded. “I have never understood what satisfaction there is if not in the pleasure of conquest.”
A, conquest.
Although Mr. Berlusconi governs virtually unopposed, because of the collapse of the country’s left and his popular support among Italians, some analysts say they believe that the questions about his personal life could start depleting his political capital.
The more he is depicted as morally compromised, the harder it will be for him to govern, they say. “He could face a war of attrition,” said Stefano Folli, a columnist for the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. The simmering scandal is “a point of political weakness,” he said, adding, “It poses greater difficulty for governing even his allies.”
Members of Mr. Berlusconi’s center-right coalition have not leapt to his defense. And the Catholic Church has been more insistent in its criticism.
Even the Church is distancing itself from Silvio; that is not good for Silvio.
L’Avvenire, a newspaper published by the Italian Bishops Conference, said Friday that given the “growing unease” about Mr. Berlusconi’s personal life, it was necessary “to arrive as quickly as possible at a sufficient clarification.”
American bishops are a lot more righteous in their opinions.
One of the women who said they were paid to attend parties at the prime minister’s residence, Patrizia D’Addario, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera last week that she had visited the residence several times, and that Mr. Berlusconi asked her to spend the night once. She said she tape-recorded her visits and also took some photographs.
Taped and photographed her visits? Seems rather premeditated. Silvio should have read his Nixon history a lot better than he obviously did.
Check the facts; the first paragraph of the story is a mite different than the photo's caption.
Facing a growing wave of criticism about his personal life, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi went on the defensive this week, saying that he did not recall meeting a woman who claims he paid her to spend the night at his Rome residence.
Silvio being Silvio.
In an exclusive interview to be published Wednesday in Chi magazine, which Mr. Berlusconi owns and which is Italy’s equivalent of People, he was asked if he had ever paid a woman “so she would be with him.”
He owns the magazine, and is PM. Speak of controlling the spin cycle.
“Naturally, no,” he responded. “I have never understood what satisfaction there is if not in the pleasure of conquest.”
A, conquest.
Although Mr. Berlusconi governs virtually unopposed, because of the collapse of the country’s left and his popular support among Italians, some analysts say they believe that the questions about his personal life could start depleting his political capital.
The more he is depicted as morally compromised, the harder it will be for him to govern, they say. “He could face a war of attrition,” said Stefano Folli, a columnist for the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. The simmering scandal is “a point of political weakness,” he said, adding, “It poses greater difficulty for governing even his allies.”
Members of Mr. Berlusconi’s center-right coalition have not leapt to his defense. And the Catholic Church has been more insistent in its criticism.
Even the Church is distancing itself from Silvio; that is not good for Silvio.
L’Avvenire, a newspaper published by the Italian Bishops Conference, said Friday that given the “growing unease” about Mr. Berlusconi’s personal life, it was necessary “to arrive as quickly as possible at a sufficient clarification.”
American bishops are a lot more righteous in their opinions.
One of the women who said they were paid to attend parties at the prime minister’s residence, Patrizia D’Addario, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera last week that she had visited the residence several times, and that Mr. Berlusconi asked her to spend the night once. She said she tape-recorded her visits and also took some photographs.
Taped and photographed her visits? Seems rather premeditated. Silvio should have read his Nixon history a lot better than he obviously did.
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