No impeachment for Sanford

[Guest StuCotts]

So much for political courage in South Carolina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/us/10sanford.html?_r=1&hpw

[AdamSmith]

Aww! When you and I differed over Spitzer's plight -- I saying I was encouraged by the resilience & irrepressibility of lust in the human species -- I still agreed that he was right to resign, given the blatant difference between his moral crusading and his personal actions.

But in the SC case, is there really reason to invoke the ultimate sanction of impeachment? As the committee chairman Rep. Jim Harrison said, “We can’t impeach for hypocrisy. We can’t impeach for arrogance. We can’t impeach an officeholder for his lack of leadership skills.”

I for one am relieved to see vigilante justice stop to consider that impeachment is the political version of capital punishment, and needs to be meted out with some care.

P.S. De Tocqueville was characteristically eloquent on this point: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/de-tocqueville/democracy-america/ch07.htm

[MsGuy]

"When the American republics begin to degenerate it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments."

Not a happy thought.

[TampaYankee]

I agree, you don't impeach for hypocracy. We'd be up to our ass in impeachments from all directions at all levels of government.

I'm satisified that just one more Family-Values/fiscal-conservative hypocrit has been neutered. Interesting how many political high flyers of both stripes bite the dust. However, my contempt is reserved for the hypocrits among them. Most of them seem to be right wing Conservatives. Just sayin...

[Guest StuCotts]

Aww! When you and I differed over Spitzer's plight -- I saying I was encouraged by the resilience & irrepressibility of lust in the human species -- I still agreed that he was right to resign, given the blatant difference between his moral crusading and his personal actions.

But in the SC case, is there really reason to invoke the ultimate sanction of impeachment? As the committee chairman Rep. Jim Harrison said, “We can’t impeach for hypocrisy. We can’t impeach for arrogance. We can’t impeach an officeholder for his lack of leadership skills.”

I for one am relieved to see vigilante justice stop to consider that impeachment is the political version of capital punishment, and needs to be meted out with some care.

P.S. De Tocqueville was characteristically eloquent on this point: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/de-tocqueville/democracy-america/ch07.htm

Hectic days make for delayed replies. Apologies.

Your argument is Tocqueville-based. Mine is inspired only by a wish to apply to this situation the standards set up over time by the participants.

Lindsey Graham invested many hours of shrill moralizing from his seat in the House on getting Clinton impeached for his carnality. In their gratitude, the voters rewarded him with his Senate seat.

SC legislators are ever eager to demonstrate the perfection of their Christian principles. An example is the license plate debacle. There are multiple links. One is below. I hope it works.

http://www.indecisionforever.com/2009/11/11/south_carolina_license_plates_are_a_little_less_jesus-y_today/

Sanford is guilty of adultery and other misdeeds, soft-pedaled as ethical failings, all amounting to thievery of some description. Each of these offenses features prominently among the thou shalt not's that Christians are enjoined to guide their lives by. From such righteousness as detailed above, I would have expected a sterner rebuke than the sniveling copout delivered.

Lastly, Tocqueville. Wonderful in a civilized context, but I submit that his ideas on the relationship between church and state would, gently put, cut little ice in the venue at issue. I'll hazard a guess that they would earn any proponent a strident denunciation as an America-hating traitor and heathen, sentiments that might elsewhere be expressed as, "I beg to differ".

Forgive the prolixity and infelicities. I take refuge in a paraphrase: I wrote a long post because I didn't have time to write a short one.

[AdamSmith]

"When the American republics begin to degenerate it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments."

Not a happy thought.

Well...really? One could counter that the small number of impeachments over our history is not such a bad record after all. And thus, per another thread here, credencing the argument that the framers did construct something that could be run, without ruin, from time to time by idiots.

[AdamSmith]

Your argument is Tocqueville-based. Mine is inspired only by a wish to apply to this situation the standards set up over time by the participants.

From the standpoint of shadenfreude in the public eye etc, I am right there with you. But, I fear, not into the domain of public sanction. If we apply their standards here, where will it end?

Must, instead, never begin. Or be fought tooth/nail.

Lastly, Tocqueville. Wonderful in a civilized context, but

So, again, as above.

I wrote a long post because I didn't have time to write a short one.

Twain, or Shaw? I think the latter, but cannot remember. Time is the enemy.

[MsGuy]

"Time is the enemy" but Google is your friend.

Pliny the Younger write 2000 years ago ``I apologise for this long letter. I did not have enough time to shorten it.''

"I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make

it shorter."

Pascal, Provincial Letters XVI

There is also the Thoreau one:

"Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short."

Maybe it's a case of great minds think alike or maybe the old guys weren't above plagiarizing a clever conceit.

[Guest StuCotts]

"Time is the enemy" but Google is your friend.

Pliny the Younger write 2000 years ago ``I apologise for this long letter. I did not have enough time to shorten it.''

"I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make

it shorter."

Pascal, Provincial Letters XVI

There is also the Thoreau one:

"Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short."

Maybe it's a case of great minds think alike or maybe the old guys weren't above plagiarizing a clever conceit.

A cold shower for anybody who aspires to novelty on any level.

[Guest StuCotts]

where will it end?

It never will. Keep the offender or ditch him, nothing essential will change, much less end.

You and I argue about principle, as is our (certainly my) hand-rubbingly gleeful wont. Fact is, principle is irrelevant in this matter. The only meaningful constant is the electorate, which demands to be gulled by flimflammers who claim the heaven-sent ability to bring it literally closer to the angels, and votes accordingly.

So it's really true that people get the government they deserve?

[MsGuy]

So it's really true that people get the government they deserve?

I think the underlying purpose of the Founders was to give us a better government than we deserved. Not necessarily a good one, just a better one than we would have had if left to our own devices. All things considered, they didn't do such a bad job of it.

[TampaYankee]

I think the underlying purpose of the Founders was to give us a better government than we deserved. Not necessarily a good one, just a better one than we would have had if left to our own devices. All things considered, they didn't do such a bad job of it.

I disagree. I believe they sought to give us a less despotic government than was the norm for the times. In that they did succeed. The cost was in sacrificing more 'effective' government. But that also fit nicely into the philosophy of many founding fathers and many of the governed. In those times 'effective government' was seen as effective for the few. Not an inaccurate assessment for the times.

More effective government has evolved slowly in fits and starts along two lines: one to benefit social fabric of the country and the other to benefit commerce fabric of the country. The social activists among the founders were the anti-slavery contingent concentrated mostly in the North. The commerce activists of the times were the pro-slavery contingent mostly in the South but supported, at least implicitly, by strong business interests in the North.

Over the long run the commerce activists have had the upper hand as power, i.e. money, is concentrated in that sector. Improvements in the social structure are more tied to convulsive events: Civil War, Workers Rights and The American Labor Movement, The Great Depression, Civil Rights unrest in the 60s. It's arguable whether Medicare would have passed without the concurrent civil rights social upheaval that primed much of the country to awaken a broad based social conscience.

That tension continues between those sectors as seen in the strong pro-commerce Bush II years and today in the Health Care drama.

[AdamSmith]

A cold shower for anybody who aspires to novelty on any level.

Ahhh! The deep structure of this thread emerges.

...In college some chums in a rock band penned a song about this conundrum. Refrain:

...Just more derivative art

Just more derivative art

And everything we try to do

The Beatles they have done it too

Just more derivative art!

[AdamSmith]

That tension continues between those sectors as seen in the strong pro-commerce Bush II years and today in the Health Care drama.

Whole disquisition is the most extraordinarily astute analysis I've seen in moons.

Of which I see many.

You should submit it to one of the journals.

[Guest rimchair]

He is impeached now, National GOP cuts off $$ for this egoic prick...

""Following revelations that his ex-wife accused him of trespassing on her property earlier this year, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford ® has lost the support of his national party.

The news comes as controversy continues to swirl around Sanford and his personal life — a process that began with his well-publicized 2009 affair but was inflamed, the Washington Post has learned, when one of the Sanfords’ sons met Mark Sanford’s former mistress for the first time the night he won the GOP nomination.""

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/17/national-gop-abandons-mark-sanford/