Media
Remember Mark Sanford?
Former Congressman Mark Sanford is a good friend of term limits. In fact, he’s so good that a few years back he wrote a book on term limits called THE TRUST COMMITTED TO ME.
I know, I helped publish it. So I said to him, “Hey Congressman Sanford, now that you’re about to step down from Congress in compliance with your voluntary term limit, why not use this best-selling book as leverage to become the governor of South Carolina?”
Okay, maybe it wasn’t a bestseller, and no, I didn’t say that. But anyway, Congressman Sanford is now Governor Sanford, even though the pundits didn’t think somebody as honest and forthright as Mark Sanford had a chance.
He is still making waves. Lately he’s been in the news for doing something that might not seem like a big deal if you’re not in politics, but really is. He’s endorsing primary candidates for legislative and statewide posts. Candidates he thinks can help him do his job as governor. He wants to change politics as usual in the state, not just run in place.
The people who press Geiger counters to everything a politician does to check for radioactivity and fallout say Sanford isn’t being very savvy here. Because what if somebody he doesn’t endorse wins? There might be backlash!
Sanford shrugs. “Backlash goes with the world I live in,” he says. He understands that good politics, like good government, isn’t about appeasing the petty.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.