The Paperless Trail

CNN reports that embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford "wrote in a message to his political action committee e–mail list Monday that while he considered resigning, 'I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm.' "

That sounds good, but it seems to me that, if Sanford is half as smart as he is supposed to be (he has degrees from Furman University and the University of Virginia), he'd be wise to lay off the e–mail.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, in a brief rundown of his e–mail communications with his Argentine mistress, asks, "[W]hat's with Sanford's weird affinity for the word 'wherein?' "

In what she calls the governor's "self–immolating confession tour," Marcus observes that Sanford said, "There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn't have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line," using a word that he used in his e–mails to his lover.

It led Marcus to remark, "There's something sad about Sanford's inability to ditch his inherent stodginess even in the grip of passion."

Well, he's clearly in the grip of something — but we'll get back to that in a minute.

In recent days, I have been thinking about when it was that I first heard about e–mail. It seems to me that I first heard about e–mail at the reception following my mother's memorial service in May 1995. The internet was still pretty new in those days, and the place where I was working didn't have e–mail. A friend asked me for my e–mail address and I told him I didn't have one.

That wasn't an unusual response in those days, but a lot of things have changed since 1995. Most workplaces have e–mail now. And it's kind of astonishing for me to comprehend how many people really know a lot about how computers and the internet work.

But even folks who are not savvy about a lot of things in the computer world are familiar with a simple reality: You may think that what you've written or received in an e–mail message has been deleted, but the truth is that it never goes away. It's always there, waiting to be found, like the proverbial buried treasure.

On this blog 2½ months ago, I quoted a Baltimore Sun writer's observation that "nothing in cyberspace ever really gets deleted."

The topic on that occasion was the phenomenon called "sexting," which involves nude images taken with cell phones, perhaps accompanied with suggestive messages. With the exception of the pictures, all the activity takes place in the mind.

As far as I know, Sanford and his mistress never exchanged photos of over–exposed bodies, but their actual physical activities apparently left little to the imagination — and the governor apparently couldn't resist the temptation to write about them.

Look, I don't think anyone will deny that love makes you do foolish things. I heard a psychiatrist discussing this on TV earlier today, and she said that clinical observations indicated the brain of an insane person and the brain of a person in the throes of the early stages of love were nearly identical.

So, if it seems that love makes people do crazy things, there apparently is a good reason for that.

In this case, Sanford has said his mistress is his "soulmate," which sounds like he is in love.

Perhaps Sanford's situation can help others, though. If you're falling in love with someone, please stay grounded long enough to realize that you should not, under any circumstances, send e–mails to him/her.

Certainly if you are married with children.

And particularly if you hold political office.

But especially if people are talking about you as a candidate for president.

Buenos Errors

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Today, we're getting a flurry of news — nearly 40% of the states face the possibility of shutdowns as their budget deadlines approach, the world continues to watch as events unfold in Iran, the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona school administrators violated a 13–year–old girl's rights with a strip search and actress Farrah Fawcett has died of cancer — and the relationship between South Carolina's governor and a woman from Argentina doesn't seem too important to me.

Mark Sanford's press conference yesterday was a spectacle, all right. After days of speculation concerning his whereabouts, he made what Frank Wooten called in The Post and Courier a "cringe–worthy" appearance before the media.

I've been told that he was regarded as a contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Frankly, I was told the same thing about Nevada Sen. John Ensign, who revealed his own affair less than two weeks ago.

But such talk must have been confined to limited political circles. I consider myself to be pretty well informed on political topics, but I never heard either man mentioned as a serious presidential contender until after the news of their affairs broke.

I'm inclined to believe that these affairs wouldn't be regarded as matters of interest to most people across the nation if it weren't for the fact that both men are members of the Republican Party — the "family values" party — and are mentioned, if only in hindsight, as presidential contenders.

Indeed, I've heard the word "hypocritical" used to describe Republican politicians like Sanford and Ensign, who supported the move to impeach President Clinton, allegedly because he cheated on his wife. But, as Wooten points out, Clinton was impeached not because he had an affair but because he lied about it under oath. The articles of impeachment did not accuse Clinton of infidelity. They accused him of committing perjury, obstructing justice and abusing power.

Technically, that is so. But it is also true that these things get confused in the public mind. We're long past the time in our history when being divorced was an obstacle to the White House, but infidelity remains a significant stumbling block.

Gary Hart's presidential ambitions were destroyed when the public learned of his relationship with Donna Rice. John Edwards may have been able to seek the presidency again in the future if not for revelations of his affair with a campaign staffer; he may still be able to do so someday, but it seems doubtful right now.

And other politicians — the most recent and most obvious examples being Mark Foley and Larry Craig — have seen their political careers ended by sex scandals. To be fair, Foley was not guilty of infidelity, but his scandal, like Craig's, was homosexual in nature — and it involved minors, which was hypocritical in its own way, considering that Foley waged a campaign, while in the House, against pedophiles.

Ensign's relationship may well be a subject for the people of his state to debate three years from now — that is when he is due to run for re–election. But Mark Sanford is barred by state law from seeking another term as governor in 2010. Unless he decides to seek another office, this is a matter that is between him and his wife and their four sons.

Nevertheless, the Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald Journal wasted no time in calling for Sanford's resignation. "Mark Sanford cannot navigate a deep and painful personal crisis and lead the state through its economic crisis at the same time," the newspaper wrote.

(To put things into perspective, the newspaper endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. It also endorsed George W. Bush when he sought re–election in 2004.)

Do you want to know what really concerns me in these matters? It isn't the fact that both Ensign and Sanford apparently violated their spouses' trust. I don't want to trivialize that. But I think it's something that is private.

The part that is public — and reflects poorly on their qualifications for the presidency — is their bad judgment. I think that is especially true of Sanford, who reportedly used taxpayer funds to travel to Argentina to be with his mistress.

It is appropriate for voters to assess the judgment of a politician. Whether it is Gary Hart insisting that reporters would be disappointed if they tried to catch him in the act (even though he knew they would not be) or Mark Sanford traveling to Argentina on the taxpayers' dimes, their actions speak volumes about their judgment.

I don't live in South Carolina so what Sanford does about the remainder of his term as governor does not concern me. But I am a citizen of the United States — and, as such, I am entitled to evaluate the judgment of any person who asks for my vote for the presidency.

In that regard, both Ensign and Sanford are far short of my standards.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

I've come to a conclusion today.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is blinded by her adoration for Barack Obama. And that colors (if you'll pardon the expression) how she feels about everything else.

I will admit, there was a time when I was a regular reader of Dowd's columns. In addition to agreeing with many of the things she said, I admired her way with words. But I've felt myself growing more distant from her in the last couple of years, and I have wondered why that was so.

Today's column brought a lot of things into focus for me.

In that column, she writes critically of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's apparent infidelities. This is not a new topic for her. She has written similarly critical columns about Democrats Bill Clinton and John Edwards, but Republicans have not been left out. On the eve of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, she obsessed about John McCain's "dalliances" that led to the breakup of his first marriage — and I presume she will write about John Ensign, too, when she gets around to it. And she'll probably have something to say about Mark Sanford after she's had a chance to absorb the news.

In fact, based on some of the things she wrote about President Clinton, I really thought she would be a supporter of Hillary Clinton during last year's campaign — if only out of sympathy. But she pretty much disabused me of that notion long before she wrote about a "duel of historical guilts" between misogyny and racism around the time of last year's Texas primaries.

Now, in case I haven't made this point clear in my previous writings, I don't approve of anyone, male or female, cheating on a spouse. I believe marriage is a commitment, and I was brought up to believe that you honor your commitments. In fact, it is for that reason that I have supported proponents of same–sex marriage. I am not gay, but I do not believe that two people who want to make a public commitment to each other should be prevented from doing so.

I believe that people who are in the public eye have a responsibility to set a good example. I don't believe that responsibility is confined to the bedroom. I'm not so sure how Dowd feels about it.

Dowd apparently watched Obama's press conference yesterday. She may have been one of the reporters who was there. I don't know. I didn't see her there, but that doesn't mean she wasn't there.

For that matter, she may well have been on hand when Obama signed the tobacco bill into law on Monday.

Whether she was or not, she seems far too eager, in today's column, to give Obama a free pass on smoking.

"Sneaking a smoke now and again is not the worst presidential flaw imaginable," she writes. (I think I can guess, from reading her column over the years, what she does think is the worst presidential flaw imaginable. If infidelity isn't at the top of her list, my guess is that appearing to be weak and indecisive might be, and I'm sure there are those who would agree.)

She goes on to make observations like this: Obama is "positively monkish" compared to Berlusconi. What does the word "monkish" imply to you?

Then, after reciting Berlusconi's transgressions at length, she writes that she finds it "interesting" that Obama, with his "daunting discipline," is unable to "apply his willpower to cigarettes."

She proceeds to turn the rest of her column into a defense of Obama's style. She never takes him to task for the mixed signals he sends to "the next generation of kids" that both Obama and Dowd insist the legislation is designed to help.

Perhaps that is because she fails to recognize that her own language belittles the effort it takes to quit smoking. She falls back on the word "willpower," which tends to imply that anyone who is unable to give up smoking lacks discipline or self–control.

"Willpower," to me, is as misleading, when one is discussing smoking, as the word "habit." Nicotine, as Dowd's own New York Times has been telling people for more than two decades, is tougher to shake than "heroin, cocaine or amphetamines, and for most people more addictive than alcohol."

"Addiction" is the appropriate word. How else can you explain why millions of Americans continue to smoke in spite of the clear evidence of the death and disease smoking causes?

For many people, giving up smoking may require someone's help. It may require medication. It is not simply a bad habit that can be broken by the sheer force of "willpower." It is not a moral shortcoming.

The tobacco companies have known this for a long time. It is why they manipulated the nicotine content in their products.

One of the things this new law is designed to do is allow the feds to monitor the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. That's good, but it isn't enough to deter young would–be smokers.

When I began smoking as a teenager, I didn't read the warning labels on cigarette packages. Tobacco companies might have been manipulating nicotine in those days as well. I don't know. I didn't check whatever such information was printed on cigarette packages when I was in high school.

But I did observe what the adults — the famous and the ordinary — said and did.

What's the message that Barack Obama is sending to the young people he would like to discourage from smoking when he calls himself a "former smoker," yet admits he still smokes from time to time?

Because I have been what I call a "recovering smoker" for more than two years, some of my friends who are trying to shake their addictions have sought my advice. A friend of mine, who lives in another state, called me a few weeks ago to tell me she had gone a month without smoking. I congratulated her, but I knew from experience that it wasn't over.

And it wasn't. About a week later, she sent me an e–mail telling me that she had been on vacation for a week. She visited a cousin who, unaware that she was giving up tobacco, had purchased a carton of cigarettes for her before her arrival.

"I only smoked a couple each day," she said, apparently proud of her "accomplishment." Sorry, but, if you smoked at all, you're still a smoker.

Smokers have a way of rationalizing these things. And that's what Obama is doing when he claims to be a former smoker but he admits that he still smokes from time to time. He rationalizes it by telling people that he doesn't smoke every day, that he doesn't chain smoke.

Mr. President, this isn't about volume or frequency.

The truth is, you aren't an ex–smoker until you've purged your body of nicotine completely. And, even if you do that, you may prefer to continue to think of yourself as a "recovering smoker," as I do. As I wrote yesterday, asserting that you are a former smoker implies that you believe you have won the struggle with tobacco.

I respect this adversary far too much to assume that.

And, for Ms. Dowd's benefit, what does it say about Obama's marital commitment? Before he entered the 2008 presidential race, he made a deal with his wife. In exchange for her support for his decision to run, he would give up smoking.

Obama announced his candidacy on Feb. 10, 2007. That was more than 28 months ago. His wife held up her end of the bargain. Has Obama held up his?

Infidelity isn't the only way someone can betray a spouse's trust.

Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa?

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Back in 1884, when it turned out that Democratic presidential nominee Grover Cleveland had fathered a child outside of marriage, it was part of one of the most vicious presidential campaigns in American history — to that point.

The Republicans had won the White House in six consecutive elections, ever since Abraham Lincoln was first elected in 1860.

In nearly a quarter of a century, the only Democrat to be president was Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's second vice president who became president when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 and thus served most of that term. Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant handily won the 1868 and 1872 elections for the Republicans.

But in 1884, at the end of a four-year term that had seen the assassination of the duly elected president (James Garfield) and the lackluster presidency of his successor (Chester Arthur), the country seemed ready to elect a Democrat.

Cleveland's opponent was Maine Sen. James G. Blaine, who had been denied his party's nomination in the two previous elections because of a scandal that had erupted over the discovery of the "Mulligan letters" — correspondence from Blaine that showed he was guilty of selling his influence while in Congress.

The "Mulligan letters" had been found by a Boston bookkeeper named Mulligan in 1876 and made public. Blaine refused to admit that he had written the letters.

Democrats liked to attend Blaine's speeches in those days and chant, "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine!"

When Blaine finally got the Republican nomination in 1884, his party thought it had found the personal character issue that would level the playing field against Cleveland:

"Grover the Good," as Cleveland was known, had been involved with a woman and allegedly fathered a baby with her. The child had gone to an orphanage, and, according to the story, the woman had flipped out and been committed to an asylum.

In fact, the woman didn't flip out. And she had received child support from Cleveland, even though, at the time of her relationship with him, the woman was involved with several other men as well.

No one ever knew who the actual father of her child was, and it was believed by many that Cleveland took responsibility because he was the only bachelor with whom the woman was involved.

Cleveland's instructions to his staff were simple. "Tell the truth." Thus, the campaign decided the best way to handle the issue was to be candid about it from the beginning.

No awkward denials of having a relationship with that woman.

To be sure, there were some uncomfortable moments — Blaine's supporters countered the anti-Blaine chant with their own version, which has become much more famous in the annals of history — "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!"

But Blaine continued to have problems of his own.

Although Catholics would not become legitimate contenders for the presidency until well into the next century, their votes mattered in 1884, and Blaine's campaign suffered from a remark by a Republican Protestant preacher in the closing days of the campaign:

"We are Republicans," he said, "and we don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion."

If Blaine, who was in the audience, was unaware of the anti-Catholic implications of "Romanism," a Democratic operative in the audience was aware of them, and the Democrats spread the word of the slur.

It was enough to make Lee Atwater proud.

The preacher's remark was said to energize Catholic voters and motivate them to support the Democrats. In the end, Cleveland triumphed. Narrowly.

Cleveland won the Electoral College vote, 219-182, and the popular vote by less than one-half of 1%. The New York governor was elected because his home state barely gave him its 36 electoral votes — possibly on the strength of the Catholic vote.

That was an era of truly close elections. Four years earlier, Garfield won the popular vote by less than 2,000 votes (one-tenth of 1%) but achieved a wider margin in the Electoral College, 214 to 155.

The election of 1876, though, was the closest and most disputed election until the Gore-Bush election of 2000. The compromise that put Rutherford Hayes into the White House (by one hotly contested electoral vote) brought about the conclusion of Reconstruction.

When he sought re-election in 1888, Cleveland's infidelity wasn't the issue. In fact, he won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. In 1892, Cleveland was nominated for the third time and was elected, becoming the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.

I guess what I'm leading up to is simply this: The voters of America can be very forgiving if a candidate is honest about these matters when they come up. But they tend to be less forgiving of liars.

(As Dwight Eisenhower once remarked, upon reflecting on the U-2 incident in his final year as president in which his administration tried to convince America and the world that it hadn't deliberately violated Soviet airspace, "When you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, there's no point in pretending that you were out in the field someplace.")

John Edwards' campaign for the 2008 presidential nomination ended in January when he announced his withdrawal.

If it isn't clear to everyone by now — including Edwards — any chance that he could ever be nominated for president ended this week when he conceded the truth of the rumors of his extramarital affair. Rumors that have been circulating for nearly a year.

Edwards admitted the affair with a former campaign employee in an interview with ABC News' Bob Woodruff, but he said the woman's child isn't his.

The family of Edwards' former mistress wanted him to take a DNA test to remove all doubt. But Edwards' former mistress apparently has ruled that out.

The piling on has begun.

"[T]he National Enquirer, whose initial report last December set about the chain of events that produced Edwards' admission on Friday of an extramarital affair, has done what three failed national campaigns couldn't by ending Edwards' future in national politics," says Steve Kornacki of the New York Observer. "The catch is: Edwards doesn't seem to realize it yet."

Kirsten Powers of the New York Post is blunt in her assessment of Edwards: "If it looks like a phony, walks like a phony, quacks like a phony, it's a phony."

In an editorial, the Post takes aim at everything Edwards has said and done and labeled it "sleaze."

I'm not sure that's fair, but I have to admit that Edwards has brought it on himself.

As someone who supported Edwards — and, frankly, was disappointed when he dropped out before I could vote for him in the Texas primary in March — I've been having many thoughts about this matter.

I'm no prude, but I'd like to see people who want to be the leader of the last superpower on earth show that they are committed to certain principles.

I don't want to elect a pope. I want to elect a president.

As a centrist Democrat, I was drawn to Edwards' solutions for the problems facing this country.

I agreed with his complaints about income inequality in America. The sanctimonious symbolism of the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has made no tangible difference in the quality of the lives of most blacks and women in this country.

The stability of employment and income can make a difference — for everyone — white, black, male, female, young, old.

I was also drawn to Edwards' apparently sincere appeals for affordable and accessible health care, particularly in light of his wife's cancer.

And a coherent, long-term strategy for weaning this country from its addiction to foreign oil is desperately needed. Not the blatant attempt to buy votes with a meaningless "summer gas tax holiday" or the finger-pointing (and ultimately ineffective) calls for a windfall profits tax.

But I'm dismayed that the Democrats who seek the presidency frequently have this character flaw — whether it's the ones like Edwards, Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy, who do not get the nomination, or the ones like Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who not only win the nomination but the election as well.

Clinton's infidelity sidetracked his second term.

Kennedy's infidelity allegedly led him to compromise national security secrets in his conversations with his lovers — and may have ultimately led to the death of Marilyn Monroe (if one believes the tales that have circulated about that relationship).

Roosevelt's infidelity nearly cost him his marriage — and could have kept him from being nominated for president.

Of course, Democrats aren't the only ones who have this problem.

General Eisenhower had a wartime affair.

Warren Harding had an affair with the wife of an old friend.

Even John McCain cheated on his former wife with his now current wife.

So neither side has a monopoly on this issue.

Edwards will not be the Democratic nominee in November. After the recent revelations, I don't expect to see his name on a national ticket again.

So let him fade from the national stage.

I just hope whoever is elected president this year will have the wisdom and the courage we need.