Don’t Cry for Mark Sanford, Argentina
The truth is Mark Sanford went to Buenos Aires.
The Mark Sanford quasi-disappearance story gets weirder:
Gov. Mark Sanford arrived in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport this morning, having wrapped up a seven-day visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, he said. Sanford said he had not been hiking along the Appalachian Trail, as his staff said in a Tuesday statement to the media. [...] Sanford, in an exclusive interview with The State, said he decided at the last minute to go to the South American country to recharge after a difficult legislative session in which he battled with lawmakers over how to spend federal stimulus money. [...] When asked why his staff said he was on the Appalachian Trail, Sanford replied, “I don’t know.”
In fairness to Sanford, I took a flaky last-minute poorly-planned solo trip to Iceland (photos here) in the summer of 2005 so I don’t find it inconceivable that this is all on the level. That said, it’s obviously strange behavior for a governor. The larger issue with Sanford, however, continues be that “difficult legislative session” in which he decided to jeopardize the well-being of South Carolina’s students and unemployed workers in order to bolster his national cred with the hard right.
55 Responses to “Don’t Cry for Mark Sanford, Argentina”
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June 24th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Cherchez la femme.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Hahahahaha
You can’t make this up.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:25 am
what kind of man goes on a vacation to Argentina on Father’s Day weekend WITHOUT his family?
June 24th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Maybe he was visiting the neighborhood of Buenos Aires known as “Villa Freud” for its high concentration of psychoanalysts.
Anyway, it explains the puzzle of why his last cell phone signal came from near Atlanta (the airport).
June 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
ou cherchez l’homme
June 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
what kind of man goes on a vacation to Argentina on Father’s Day weekend WITHOUT his family?
A man with a girlfriend.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Iceland? Is that another one of those famous typyglesios? I can see a last minute impulse trip to Ireland…
June 24th, 2009 at 9:34 am
yeah, but you are a young single man in your mid20’s with no ties to anyone or organization. Also, please note that both Iceland and Argentina are top destinations for men who want to see (and hopefully meet) the world’s most beautiful women.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:40 am
exactly.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Wait a minute, I thought conservatives were such he-men that they didn’t run away from a tough fight or flee to South America when things didn’t go well.
Obviously, Sanford should be immediately removed from office for dereliction of duty or mental instability.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Speaking to local media through the partially opened front door of the Governor’s mansion Mrs. Sanford said she STILL had not been contacted by her husband or told of his present whereabouts. Mr. Sanford could be heard in the adjacent hall bathrooom taking a tinkle.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Yeah, but did you fail to tell anyone at all that you were leaving the country? That’s positively weird, governor or not.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:49 am
This is excellent. Matt, I think you should offer JPM a gracious apology for questioning his “flood the zone” approach to the story. The man has a fine, fine sixth sense for political stories.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Or a man with a boyfriend.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Didn’t Obama get criticized for taking a family vacation to Hawaii during the campaign – just too exotic for a true man of the people?
June 24th, 2009 at 9:55 am
You couldn’t find a better Argentina picture than Madonna in a movie? I expect better.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:56 am
…. and I’m an idiot for conflating Josh Marshall’s initials with those of Talking Points Memo. For the record, I meant Josh Marshall.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Nobody’s suggesting he went to Argentina for a secret meeting with neo-nazis? Or maybe zombie Hitler?
June 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am
In the spirit of overthinking this, a lot of these guys have chippies on the side, and don’t flee the country to have their affairs. Usually a Motel 6 in Kalamazoo will do. Also, why hide it from staffers, when often their staffers are there to protect them from being discovered. Moreover, they’d find some business pretense for the foreign trip – meeting local business to foster trade ties, making a sister-city connection, something like that designed to make the trip appear legitimate. Furthermore, wife Sanford is openly saying she hasn’t heard from him. Either it’s a big, big affair, or it’s something stranger, like a mental break, a drug problem, or a man.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am
In fairness to Sanford, I took a flaky last-minute poorly-planned solo trip to Iceland (photos here) in the summer of 2005 so I don’t find it inconceivable that this is all on the level.
Did you also not tell your wife and four children where you were for a week? Because otherwise it’s not quite the same thing.
If this was, say, Richard Harris or Peter O’Toole, yes, you expect them to go off on a bender. But this is strange behavior indeed for a middle-aged family man and governor.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Cherchez la femme.
Considering this is a Republican politician, more likely cherchez l’homme.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:07 am
The responsibilities of the Governor of South Carolina for emergency management and homeland security in the state are described in a 2004 CRS report available here:
http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/permalink/meta-crs-6590:1
In contrast, bloggers have no corresponding emergency management and homeland security responsibilities.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:10 am
I believe “Sanford” translates into Spanish as “macaca”
June 24th, 2009 at 10:12 am
what kind of man goes on a vacation to Argentina on Father’s Day weekend WITHOUT his family?
A man with a girlfriend.
No, a man with a boyfriend. As every gay man worth his salt knows, Buenos Aires is the San Fran of South America. He took a plane there but might as well have taken a cruise, if you get me.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Either it’s a big, big affair, or it’s something stranger, like a mental break, a drug problem, or a man.
Dood, he’s obviously into llama sex. Nazi llama sex.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Marshall, I think it was the Ensign story, not this one, that Matt thought TPM was covering tabloidily. Though obviously the point holds that scattershot coverage can be useful in discovering real news.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:23 am
In further fairness to Sanford, he expanded on the last part of what Yglesias quotes in defense of his staff. He said he’d frequently hiked the Appalachian Trail on these trips before, which is certainly something that could cause them to hazard guesses that he’s currently doing the same.
I guess that’s a defense of his stand-upness re. his own staff’s reputation, not defense of taking off without telling anyone, which is farcically bad judgment. It’s the premise of some kind of Robin Williams movie.
Sanford 2012 has ended.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:24 am
So I don’t get it, a governor leaves the country and nobody knows about it? Wouldn’t the Customs officials know about it? They check my passport when I leave the country. Not his?
June 24th, 2009 at 10:28 am
If I was close to cracking up after an arduous week at work and I felt I just had to get away from it all and unwind, I can think of better places than BA. Splendid city, wonderful people and all that, but, you know, a bit frenetic. Probably a lot more so than Columbus SC.
And the obvious headline for this post would have been “GOTCHA!”
June 24th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Fostert: Sure, but I don’t think it’s their policy to publicly release that information, thank goodness. Of course, someone blabbed somewhere, since a reporter was there to meet him on his return.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Ironically, I recently took a solo trip to Iceland and managed to snap a picture of the same [mule? horse?] public art as you, MY.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/6iJSz5Fola1683lv46O4Wg?feat=directlink
Maybe there’s something about it that’s uniquely appealing to the idle wanderer.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:42 am
fostert — Customs check your passport when you leave the country? When I leave, some guy at the security checkpoint looks at my passport, or whatever kind of ID I hand him, looks at me, and that’s it. Nobody writes down my name, though no doubt it’s on a flight manifest. Customs cares about who’s coming into the country, not who’s leaving.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Funny, Bill Clinton just played in Buenos Aires:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603088.html
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/BreakingNews/View/4182
Maybe Mark Sanford heard about Andrea Rincón, a shocking “morocha” (brunette) who was well-endowed and a former participant in the popular TV reality show “Big Brother”
June 24th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Right Wing psycho governors in general repulse me, but I LIKE that someone in his position went and did what he did when he wanted to do it and SO THE FUCK WHAT?
Obviously, SOMEONE knew where he went; probably more people than we know. And HIS WIFE was unconcerned, so what’s it to anyone else?
Screw the MSM scolds and the lefty puritans: anything that pisses this many self-regarding people off can only be a GOOD thing.
Seems to me that someone who feels the need to take a break from the utter bullshit and stupidity that is public/political life in this country should be SCORING points with people who have brains.
The media and lefty floggin of this issue is concern and outrage trolling.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Matt, I think you should offer JPM a gracious apology for questioning his “flood the zone” approach to the story.
But I questioned his “flood the zone” approach to the John Ensign story, not this story.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Tim
I don’t at some level disagree that what Sanford did has a neat, refreshing appeal to it.
But you ignore that for a governor of a state to leave the country and being incommunicado for nearly a week is staggeringly irresponsible.
There are things only he can oversee and authorize in case of an emergency – tornados hitting, prisoners rioting and taking hostages, a tanker blowing up in Charleston harbor, a nuclear power plant leaking. If he is away, the Lt Gov can become acting governor until he returns – but ONLY if arrangements have been made.
He is CEO of a multi-billion dollar entity. Had he been the CEO of a businee of the same side, and done the same thing, he likely would be fired.
That’s the real issue here, although of course the “weirdness” factor as well as the lying will also do him in.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:15 am
No, a man with a boyfriend. As every gay man worth his salt knows, Buenos Aires is the San Fran of South America. He took a plane there but might as well have taken a cruise, if you get me.
I agree. We have another Larry Craig. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just funny because some of his supporters will be disillusioned.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Ah, the governor of my great state.
Of course, had he wanted to unwind, he could have simply stepped outside his beachfront house on quiet Sullivan’s Island. It’s five minutes away from me, so I can tell you it’s quite a nice and relaxing beach.
Then again, there’s always Argentina.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I’m thinking a posh rehab facility. Out-of-country for extra down-low points. Sort of like they do with Survivor contestants until after they air the show.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Someone knew where he was? All the quotes I’ve seen indicate that as far as the SC chain of command knew, he had simply dropped off the map.
It’s fine if he wanted to take a private vacation and not have it be public knowledge where he was off to, but to not even tell the Lt Gov that he was going out of town and that the Lt Gov was in charge until he got back is some combination of flaky, strange, and stupid.
You’d think that he’d at least have told someone how to get in touch in case the shit really hit the fan.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Yeah but…. did you leave over Father’s Day weekend and leave your children to celebrate the day by themselves? Did you have people lying for you about your whereabouts? Did those closest to you know where you were? And sorta most importantly, were you the head of one of the fifty states when you took your trip?
June 24th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I don’t buy the affair rationale. If it was simply a question of having an affair, I have to think he’d do a better job of hiding it. This is a head of state disappearing without -anyone- knowing where he was for almost a week. And now the story is that he was in Argentina?
It strikes me that psychotic break is a much liklier explanation.
June 24th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
The one-way plane ride down there took him 10.5 hours. WHO hops on a plane for 10.5 hours at the spur of the moment?? If no one knew where he was, wouldn’t Canada be a better choice? Or England? Or maybe just Atlanta?
And, either the (Republican) Lt. Gov. was lying (always a possibility with Republicans) or NO ONE in the state gov’t knew of his whereabouts. And, after this stunt, I imagine his wife was hoping he’d gotten kidnapped by trigger-happy terrorists.
‘Lucy, you got some ’splainin to do.’
June 24th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
It may be fun to speculate as to why he traveled to Buenos Aires (my theory is that he’s a fan of Argentine literature, and was hunting for Julio Cortazar [he's still alive, right?], and looking for rare copies of Borges), the real problem with this is that he is the governor of a state. Heaven forbid there were some sort of Katrina-level emergency in SC, but if that happened and the only response from the statehouse was “We think the governor is on the Appalachian Trail,” he would be resigning pretty quickly after he got home. It’s not where he went, it’s why no one in his office knew that he had left the continent. I hope he had fun, because this little jaunt probably destroyed any ambition he might have had for higher office.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
There is no doubt “Nazi llama sex” wins the thread. Hands down.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
“Gov. Sanford Admits Affair and Explains Disappearance”
Wow. That was fast.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
**Dan Says:
June 24th, 2009 at 9:25 am
what kind of man goes on a vacation to Argentina on Father’s Day weekend WITHOUT his family?**
I guess the same guy who goes and plays 6 hours of golf on father’s day.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
There is one difference. Obama bought his daughters frozen custard on Father’s Day. Sanford flew thousands of miles away from his family to have an affair.
I know, it’s a subtle difference.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Dood, he’s obviously into llama sex. Nazi llama sex.
Of course, his fellow Republicans will probably forgive him, unless it was homosexual Nazi llama sex.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Andrea Rincón
Oh boy, what a nice rump.
…
I think it really should be checked that Sanford was with a woman.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
This adds new meaning to passive-aggressive behavior. If he was skittish about being The Golden Boy and really didn’t WANNA run in 2012, he coulda just said, “I am not, nor will I ever be …”
But the story’s so bizarre, I gotta vote for the lure of Nazi llama sex.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
@hopeless pedant: Hear, hear. Dude, my grandparents live in SC! Don’t disappear! What if they need you?
Also: Am I the ONLY person thinking that Sanford wanted to live out his own personal Gilda fantasy? Come on, guys, it’s a classic!
June 24th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Obviously, SOMEONE knew where he went; probably more people than we know. And HIS WIFE was unconcerned, so what’s it to anyone else?
His wife has issued a statement saying she didn’t know because they’ve been secretly separated and living in different households for the last two weeks. He said he went down there to break it off as a last ditch effort to save his marriage and even lied to his staff about it.
It seems like a seriously stupid thing to do, but considering he’s desperate to save his marriage and doing political damage control at the same time, I don’t find it hard to believe that someone could do such as thing under duress. Not to mention that the man is a fool in the first place, that helps out a lot too.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
My Mom is an old 81. Her time is short. A month ago my brother and I decided to get her a computer. We wanted her to get a feel for the power of the web. A glimpse of the future, I guess. Plus, I’ve grown tired of doing her Netflix. Eliminate the middleman, I always say.
A couple of weeks ago I was showing her Youtube. Ma had just seen the movie Evita for 5th time, and wondered if we could see Madonna sing the grand theme song. I said no. I said let’s try some other versions. We checked out dozens. Everybody has song the song it seems. We checked out versions from the usual suspects, the power singers, like Sarah Brightman, Ellen Paige, Andre Reiu, and the not so usual suspects, like Donna Summer, Sinead O’Conner, Olivia Newton John (introduced by Wolfman Jack), and a weird Karen Carpenter version with Japanese animation.
Mom still believes Madonna does it better than anybody. But, this was her second choice. It gave her chills, she said. That’s how she knows. Too funny. The power of the web.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYFqhXIW1o&feature=related
June 25th, 2009 at 1:05 am
he decided to jeopardize the well-being of South Carolina’s students and unemployed workers in order to bolster his national cred with the hard right.
Why do you automatically assume it was a cynical ploy for national attention and not his sincere beliefs that led him to fight against taking the stimilus money? Sanford has a very long and verifiable history of libertarian and small-government leanings and has clashed with the SC legislature repeatedly since 2002 over similar arguments. He wasn’t trying to bolster anything. That’s just what he really believes.