Mark Steyn has a rather unique (shall we say) attempt at explaining Mark Sanford’s Odd Adventure in a column in theOC Register) (Jacko, Sanford and weirdness) wherein he pegs Sanford’s behavior as being “a consequence of big government.”
The more the citizenry expect from the state, the more our political class will depend on ever more swollen Gulf Emir-size retinues of staffers hovering at the elbow to steer you from one corner of the fishbowl to another 24/7. “Why are politicians so weird?” a reader asked me after the Sanford news conference. But the majority of people willing to live like this will be, almost by definition, deeply weird. So big government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits.
While perhaps mildly better than Limbaugh’s assignment of blame to Obama, one must confess that this is a bit of a stretch.
There is little doubt that one needs an enormous ego (and a good deal of ambition, talent and luck) to become governor of one of the fifty states (or one of 100 Senators, one of 435 Representatives, etc.). However, the degree to which Sanford’s specific behavior, or even whatever general weirdness Steyn wishes to ascribe to all politicians (and having met a fair number here and abroad, he may have something of a point in terms of the description) to “big government” is sheer nonsense.
I know that it can be a challenge thinking up something to write for a column, and nothing sells like controversial statements, but gee whiz, is this really the best he can do?
And like Limbaugh’s hypothesis I am again driven to note that I remember fondly the days wherein conservatives liked to point to quaint notions like personal responsibility rather than blaming bad behavior on huge forces outside of the control of the individual.
Part of Steyn’s evidence (so to speak) is that people got upset that Sanford went missing without telling anyone. Indeed, Steyn even take Charles Krauthammer to task on the subject:
Even Charles Krauthammer on Fox News professed to be concerned at a governor wandering off incommunicado. What would happen if there was a hurricane or a terrorist attack on South Carolina? Well, I’d imagine that state agencies would muddle through to one degree of competence or another, and that the physical presence of the governor would make absolutely zero difference – any more than, on the day, George Pataki made a difference to New York’s response to 9/11 (good) or Kathleen Blanco to Louisiana’s response to Katrina (abysmal and embarrassing, but deriving from the state’s broader political culture rather than anything Gov. Blanco did or didn’t do on the big day). In a republic of limited government, the governor, two-thirds of the state legislature and the heads of every regulatory agency should be able to go “hiking the Appalachian Trail” for a lot longer than five days, and nobody would notice.
While there is little doubt that the presence of a governor would not forestall a tragedy and it is also true that sans a given governor there are other people who could step in and do whatever needed to be done, but it is further true that if an emergency occurred and provisions had not been made for the chief executive’s absences, that unnecessary delays and difficulties would have ensued. That’s got nothing to do with the size of government, but with the simple fact that when pieces go missing from an organizational structure it causes problems for the functioning of that structure. An NFL team could take the field and even win a game if their head coach went missing at game time, but it certainly would cause a great deal of initial consternation and likely would result in subpar play in the first quarter as the team and staff had to adjust to the fact that the organization was having to adjust to the lack of a key member its staff. The same is true for a board meeting sans a CEO, a restaurant sans its manager and any number of other non-governmental examples.
And, having turned the conversation to the private sector, I would note that it is an unfortunate fact that government is not the lone domain of egoists (or even weirdos) and anyone who has lived very long at all and has had any contact with human beings in general well knows this fact. Indeed, the passing references to Michael Jackson in the piece, including in the title (all of which are superfluous to the column, btw) seem to highlight quite well that all that is weird is not in government.
It is a mistake to try and make ideological points from Sanford’s behavior, especially if one is conservative-minded, because at the end of the day his behavior is not defensible and nor is it anyone’s fault but his own.
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June 28th, 2024 at 7:45 am
Scapegoating or blame-shifting behavior has been documented in other Great Apes, as well.
Humans are just exceptionally good at it.
June 28th, 2024 at 1:20 pm
The “argument” of the piece (as I discern from your summary) is quite dangerous in a democracy. It seems to be that we do not need elected leaders to be present, because the bureaucracy will take care of a crisis. That is a very strange argument for someone allegedly opposed to so-called big government to be making.
June 28th, 2024 at 1:30 pm
A good point.
Of course, putting “argument” within scare quotes is spot-on. This is less an argument than it is a tortured attempt at scoring ideological points in the context of Sanford’s bizarre behavior.