Mark Sanford is the governor of South Carolina. He's also been touted as one of four top choices for a 2012 GOP run for the White House. A few days ago he stirred up great concern after reporting to his staff that he was taking a hike through the Appalachia. He could not be reached and "the public" speculated on his whereabouts. Today at 11:30AM Pacific Time we found him on the major cable news stations: MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, giving a highly anticipated press conference a few hours after he initially told reporters he'd actually been in Argentina (a reporter met him at the airport).
I randomly tuned into the broadcast, knowing a little bit about the story beforehand, and immediately and not surprisingly guessed where his press conference was headed - straight to infidelity land. After making a series of heartfelt apologies to his family, father in law, staff, people of faith, etc. he announced that he had been unfaithful to his wife with a woman he befriended in Argentina 8 years prior. The relationship had "become something more" only in the last year or so and he provided lots of details during the Q&A portion of the press conference. He revealed that his wife/family had discovered the affair about 5 months ago and that this was his first instance of infidelity.
While I've followed most of the recent political affair-scandals in newspapers and on second hand reports via the local TV news, this one really struck me as surreal, since I was catching it live with the rest of the Nation. Here is a man, a governor of a state I know next to nothing about, who is apparently a top choice for the republican presidential nomination in 2012 (with others like Bobby Jindal). And he's telling the whole country of his lecherous behavior with an Argentinian woman. I just guess I had one of those, "we live in strange times" moments.
Other than the fantastical nature of the admission itself, I was curious about how the different cable news stations would cover this breaking story. I watched most of the live press conference on CNN and then some of CNN's commentary, later I switched to Fox News to hear their commentary. I was trying to put myself in a neutral mindset even though, I was expecting more searing commentary from CNN and a more defensive posture from correspondents and commentators on Fox News...
The woman at the CNN news desk expressed a restrained contempt for the Governor and towards the end of the segment praised the Governor's wife for not being "at his side" during the press conference as the correspondent felt it was a sign of being "fake". Strong feminist undertones, but with a calculated restraint. Fox News was interesting because they were able to get comments from people very close to the Governor and so the tone was extremely sympathetic... but even more interesting was what I perceived to be Fox New's strategy of how to frame this political-scandal narrative.
Governor Sanford has made a lot of enemies on both sides due to his rejection of the Obama stimulus package, he was overridden in South Carolina but made lots of fellow Republicans enemies in the process. The Fox News report went out of their way to suggest that perhaps a political opponent forced this scandal out in order to further weaken his strength SC and also his nomination potential in 2012. The guest on the program didn't think that was at all plausible, but the seed was planted. Fox News also went on to frame the Governor's plight in this way: that he was a responsible, fiscally conservative republican being ganged up on by egregiously spendy democrats and the socially conservative republicans that dominate SC politics.
I just have a hunch that the political commentary around this scandal will be interesting to look at retrospectively as we move closer to 2012 as republicans try to posture to find a fresh platform and fresh face for their next bid at the White House.
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