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Jewish World Review
Sept. 3, 2009
/ 14 Elul 5769
Mark Sanford and the Odd Fellows
By
Bob Tyrrell
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Why is the governor of South Carolina still a
national news story? This past week, Gov. Mark Sanford was again in the
news, and neither sex nor romance had anything to do with it. I can
understand his first great news splash, after he completely vanished from
the face of the earth. Then he duped his staff into announcing that he was
communing with the birds and the bees along the Appalachian Trail. Then it
was discovered that he had actually been emulating the birds and the bees
down in Argentina with a secret Argentine inamorata. She is easy on the eyes
and certainly would have been worth the trip, if only he were not married
with four children and if that bizarre deception about woodsy trails had not
been attempted.
At the news conference following the debacle, he referred to his
Argentine beaut as his "soul mate." Obviously, the guy was in love. It was
the real thing. Had he been from a more romantic place than South Carolina,
his ratings would be sky-high. Sanford should be the mayor of Paris or an
alderman in Monte Carlo, if they have aldermen in Monte Carlo. Yet South
Carolina is not Monte Carlo, and his fellow Republicans from the Palmetto
State want him to retire, or he will be impeached when the Legislature
convenes in January. So now he calls news conferences and invites reporters
to follow him as he travels throughout the state to Lions Club meetings and
Kiwanis meetings and perchance an occasional meeting at an Odd Fellows
lodge. He does seem a bit oblivious. At these statewide meetings, he
apologizes and then implores the assembled he calls them "friends" to
help him ram through important legislative changes. He calls them
"conservative reforms."
Well, I, for one, find Gov. Sanford tedious. Even his syntax is
tedious. On the front page yes, the FRONT PAGE of The Wall Street
Journal, Gov. Sanford is reported as saying: "I have a newfound level of
humility, knowing how hard I work and how hard I push is not the ultimate
driver of change. Power resides with people." Now, I always have said that
of all the virtues, the one that I find absolutely mystifying is the
so-called virtue of humility. I mean, what is the point of it? Gov.
Sanford's declaration strikes me as a concatenation of non sequiturs. What
does his hard work have to do with humility? What does the power of the
people have to do with humility? From all I can tell after reading this
week's news stories, "the people" of South Carolina want him to resign.
Nonetheless, the governor is traversing his state working to
advance a conservative agenda of reform. It sounds as if the reforms are, as
the Journal reports, "dull." One would set up a government department to
monitor state spending. As things stand today, that function is performed by
a board controlled by legislators. All right, that is like a board of foxes
monitoring the henhouse. Gov. Sanford's reform makes sense. But it is,
indeed, dull. It is nothing like major regulatory reform, major tax cuts,
privatizing government functions, perhaps paying for major roadways with
user fees.
This brings us to one matter that is, for a certitude, a
national story. Gov. Sanford is a conservative, and so successful have
conservatives been at governing during the past 20 to 30 years that they do
not have much of an agenda left. They succeeded throughout the country at
fighting crime, lowering taxes, streamlining government at least, making
an effort to streamline government. To a large degree, conservatives are the
victims of their success. Their policies solved most of the major problems
of the last half of the 20th century: the Cold War, the urban crisis,
stagflation.
If it had not been for the 9/11 attacks, President George W.
Bush would not have had much to do during his presidency. He might have
addressed the housing bubble, but there was no clamor to do so. In fact,
both sides of the aisle seemed to think subprime mortgages were written into
the Bill of Rights.
Yet with the Obama administration in place, it has become
increasingly clear that very soon, the conservatives will have plenty on
their agenda once again. They will have the fiscal mess that Obama is
creating. There will be health care in need of market reform and malpractice
reform. Foreign policy is going to be in dreadful need of adult supervision.
Most alarmingly, after the Obama administration demoralizes our intelligence
community and mucks up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our defense
policies are going to need urgent attention.
So very soon, conservatism will have a very full agenda, though
I doubt that Gov. Sanford will be very much involved.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.
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