Friday afternoon Gretchen put through a call from Mark Sanford, former Republican governor of South Carolina, nationally recognized defender of conservative values, renowned hiking enthusiast and noted aficionado of Argentine firecrackers.
Sanford: Hello? Is this Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes, governor, it is.
Sanford: I… um… Rand Paul tells me your first consultation is… uh…
Tom: Free of charge.
Sanford: Yes.
Tom: That’s correct.
Sanford: Oh, good, because my God, your rates, they’re, well, sort of… astronomical I guess is the word.
Tom: My regular clients understand the adage, “You get what you pay for,” sir; and in fact my schedule today, as on most days, including two or three Saturdays a month, is booked rather tightly with their appointments. And time is money – in my case, as you observed, quite a bit of it. Therefore, please tell me, how may I help you?
Sanford: Okay, sure, well… as you know, I’m running for Congress in a special election on May seventh.
Tom: I know – Jim DeMint resigned from the United States Senate last December to accept a post as president of the Heritage Foundation. Nikki Haley, the current governor of your home state, appointed Representative Tim Scott to fill the vacancy, which left an open seat in Congress for the First District of South Carolina. You’re running against Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, Stephen Colbert’s sister.
Sanford: That’s right, and South Carolina’s First District votes more than ten percentage points Republican over Democrat, so you’d think the National Republican Congressional Committee would consider every penny spent on my campaign to be a solid investment, but…
Tom: Earlier this week, they cut you off.
Sanford: Yeah, they did. Here I went from trailing her by four points to a nice, respectable five point lead in the polls, well on my way to pulling a solid seven, maybe even an eight point lead after the debate on April twenty-ninth. But no sooner do I get some decent momentum going than the NRCC cuts me off without a dime! Can you believe that?
Tom: Well, actually, under the circumstances, yes, I can.
Sanford: What – because I watched the Super Bowl with my fourteen-year-old son?
Tom: In your ex-wife’s house.
Sanford: Oh, come on! It was the family beach house! She was out of town! I tried to call before the game for permission, but she wouldn’t answer the phone! You think it’s right for a red-blooded American boy to have to watch the Super Bowl without his dad?
Tom: She caught you sneaking out the back door.
Sanford: Of course! That’s the door everybody always uses – it’s a beach house, not the governor’s mansion!
Tom: In the dark.
Sanford: Uh… I think the porch light was burned out – I don’t remember, exactly. Look, it’s not like it was part of some kind of pattern of behavior or anything.
Tom: That depends on who you ask. Your former wife previously complained that you failed to pay five thousand dollars per child for their educations. My sources at the NRCC say they were worried about that from the very beginning.
Sanford: But why?
Tom: They say it has the potential to create the perception of a “deadbeat dad.”
Sanford: It’s not the same! Not at all! Technically speaking, from a legal standpoint…
Tom: Voters don’t form their perceptions based on fine points of the law, though. And then there’s that… frankly rather strange affidavit she filed in March of last year, where it’s alleged you “flew airplanes” at your children. What was going on there, anyway, if I might ask?
Sanford: They’re toy airplanes!
Tom: Toy airplanes? The kind made of balsa wood with little plastic propellers turned by a wound-up rubber band?
Sanford: Um…
Tom: Or the gasoline powered scale models that hobbyists fly on steel wires?
Sanford: A toy airplane is a toy airplane, okay? Look, here’s Anthony Weiner, right? While he was a member of the United States House of Representatives – and married, no less – he sent… strange women, I guess you’d call them… pictures of his… erect… er… male organ… over that Twitter thing. He got caught, he lied about it, and then he resigned from Congress. And where is he now? He’s running for Mayor of New York City, that’s where, and he’s second in the public opinion polls, too, and I don’t see the Democrats running away from him like he’s got cooties!
Tom: So you’re saying, that, in some respects, you and Weiner are in similar situations?
Sanford: I donno, was I?
Tom: Well, you’re both married men who did something wrong involving sex. Weiner Tweeted his… um… wiener and you had an affair with María Belén Chapur in Argentina. And you both got caught; and you both lied about it. Weiner claimed somebody had hacked his Twitter account, and you claimed you were “hiking the Appalachian trail” in Georgia instead of exploring the twin peaks of Mt. Chapur in Buenos Aries. Then, when you were caught lying about getting caught doing what you were doing, you both put on a couple of truly masterful, histrionic performances, confessing your sins with Biblical contrition, complete with metaphorical gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, all washed down with buckets of crocodile tears.
Sanford: Thank you.
Tom: You’re welcome.
Sanford: And neither of us did anything all that bad, either, not really, that is, in comparison to what other politicians have done.
Tom: You mean, like when Bill Clinton lied about having sex with an intern at the White House, and was impeached by the House of Representatives, although the Senate fell seventeen votes short of convicting him?
Sanford: Yeah, sure. That poor Lewinsky girl, she was young enough to be his daughter and yet these days, Clinton’s some kind of international elder statesman!
Tom: Or perhaps Congressman Wilbur Mills, who gallivanted around Washington with an “exotic dancer” who called herself Fanne Foxe?
Sanford: I hear that actually helped him win the next election – folks back home in Arkansas said they didn’t know he had it in him!
Tom: True, that one had a certain joie de vivre about it not usually seen in such situations, and also, Mills was out front about it all – no prevarication, no cover-up, nothing like that. He ran around with Fanne in public, right there in front of God and everybody, like it was the most natural and appropriate thing in the world. Not like, say, John Edwards lying about cheating on his wife when she was dying of cancer; or Mark Foley lying about sending dirty IMs to underage male Congressional pages; or Eliot Spitzer lying about spending huge amounts of money on prostitutes; or Senator John Ensign lying about having an affair with one of his female staffers; or Representative Dan Burton lying about his illegitimate child; or Senator David Vitter lying about the DC Madame finding willing girls to indulge his diaper fetish, or Senator Bob Packwood altering his diaries while under subpoena in order to suppress evidence of alleged sexual assaults; or…
Sanford: Yeah, yeah, I get it – what you are saying is, it’s not so much that what they did was bad, it’s that they got caught trying to fib their way out of it.
Tom: Sure – dishonesty is a big factor. But so’s hypocrisy. When you have arch conservative Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Helen Chenowith and Henry Hyde beating up on Clinton for philandering and then we found out – lo and behold – they were all adulterers themselves, the hypocrisy of the situation can really shake voters’ confidence. Or take, for example, the case of James West, the gay-baiting right-wing Republican mayor of Spokane who got caught participating in a gay Internet sex scandal, or when anti-gay Mormon Senator Larry Craig from the rock-ribbed conservative state of Idaho was nabbed soliciting gay sex in an airport men’s room; or when…
Sanford: Uh, yeah, yeah, I understand. Are you saying that Weiner gets a pass on Tweeting his wiener around to sexy women because he’s a liberal Democrat, while I have to be treated like political garbage because I fell in love with another woman besides my wife?
Tom: You’ve hit on a key difference, sir – there was no “other woman” in Weiner’s case.
Sanford: No, there were several other women.
Tom: But he never… um… consummated… anything with any of them.
Sanford: And that’s a big difference?
Tom: Not to a social conservative such as yourself, I’m sure. Social conservatives consider thinking about Doing the Big Nasty to be just as evil a sin as actually Doing the Big Nasty. Liberals, on the other hand, make a distinction, and all Weiner was doing was thinking about where his wiener might go, not, in fact, putting it there, unlike you, who…
Sanford: Yeah, yeah… So Weiner’s voter base will forgive him, whereas the NRCC was afraid my voter base won’t forgive me?
Tom: Of course – take for example Congressman Barney Frank, who was embroiled in a gay prostitution scandal. His reaction involved two very significant and important elements, however. First of all, he told the truth about everything from the beginning, and secondly, he’s openly gay and consequently there was no hypocrisy factor. And since Frank represents a very liberal district in Massachusetts, everything turned out just fine.
Sanford: All right, then, it’s a double standard and Weiner gets a pass and I don’t. So I what should I do?
Tom: Well, nothing much different until after the election, obviously. Fight as hard as you can with the resources you have and rely on the naturally conservative, misogynist nature of South Carolina politics to win the election for you.
Sanford: Stay the course until after May seventh?
Tom: Yes. Sometimes the best thing to do is exactly what you’ve been doing all along.
Sanford: But supposing I lose? I’ll be forever known as the guy who had his butt kicked by Stephen Colbert’s sister! What then?
Tom: Have you ever considered becoming a woman?
Sanford: What?
Tom: If you lose, then I suggest you switch genders and switch parties.
Sanford: And become a female Democrat? Holy smokes! What about María, my fiance?
Tom: After the gender reassignment, you and María will be a lesbian couple.
Sanford: Yeah, I guess we would, hypothetically speaking. So?
Tom: So, then you move to New York City and obtain a same-sex marriage there.
Sanford: Then what?
Tom: Then you run for Mayor of New York City.
Sanford: As a Democrat?
Tom: As a transgendered, lesbian, liberal Democrat.
Sanford: You… you think I could win like that?
Tom: In New York City? Are you kidding? How could you possibly lose?
Sanford: I donno, Collins, doing that would mean giving up… a lot of things… including my… my…
Tom: Conservative principles?
Sanford: Uh, yeah, those, too. Um… no… no, I’m pretty sure I don’t think I could do that, not even to be Mayor of New York. Isn’t there… a… viable alternative of some kind?
Tom: If you lose a US congressional election to Stephen Colbert’s sister?
Sanford: Um…
Tom: Have you considered beekeeping?
Sanford: Uh… I’m allergic, I think.
Tom: Pig farming?
Sanford: Pigs?
Tom: It can be very profitable, you know, particularly if you get into the specialty meats – organic, Spanish acorn-fed, Russian boars, that sort of thing.
Sanford: Boars?
Tom: Okay, then, how about running a bed-and-breakfast? Out on the beach, maybe, or in historic Old Town Charleston?
Sanford: I don’t think María would go for all that cooking, much less making the beds, and I know she doesn’t trust… you know… the kind of help you would hire in South Carolina, either.
Tom: Want to try media pundit, then? You’d have to start small, though; build your name recognition, branding and so forth. The bed-and-breakfast would probably pay better for the first five years.
Sanford: Would I have to argue with Ann Coulter?
Tom: Actually, you’d have to work your way up to that.
Sanford: Rachel Maddow?
Tom: Eventually.
Sanford: Sean Hannity? Joe Scarborough? Bill O’Reilly?
Tom: In the fullness of time, yes.
Sanford: I donno – spouting conservative talking points at South Carolina rednecks is one thing, but those people on television, they’re sharp. I’m afraid I might look, um… ah…
Tom: Stupid and ignorant.
Sanford: Gee, you didn’t have to be so darn quick about it.
Tom: Okay, in that case, if you’re concerned about your… level of, ah… cerebral fortitude and erudition, and should you, God forbid, lose the election, I suggest you apply for a job at a place where a person with less of either of those qualities than are necessary to run a pig farm, a bed-and-breakfast or an apiary…
Sanford: Who said anything about raising apes?
Tom: An apiary is where a beekeeper keeps bees.
Sanford: Oh.
Tom: Anyway, if you lose the election, why don’t you lean on Jim DeMint for a position at the Heritage Foundation?
Sanford: What… um… what would I do at the Heritage Foundation?
Tom: What they all do there – be conservative. Worship Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher. Vilify the New Deal, FDR, the Kennedys, the Great Society, John Maynard Keynes and Barack Obama. Quote the Federalist Papers back and forth to each other in endless e-mails. Deny global warming. Question evolution. Justify Old Testament morality. Promote big business. The Heritage Foundation is a warm, well-upholstered nest for people with strong, archaic convictions, limited imaginations, shallow learning and mediocre brains who can’t – or won’t – produce anything useful. So, as a former governor of South Carolina, you are imminently qualified, and it’s a cinch you’ll fit right in.
Sanford: You think so?
Tom: That’s affirmative.
Sanford: Okay, if I lose the election, that’s what I’ll do – ask my buddy Jimbo for a job at the Heritage Foundation.
Tom: Good – but don’t worry, you’ll probably win.
Sanford: Thanks, Collins.
Tom: You’re very welcome, governor.
Sanford: Okay, well… goodbye for now.
Tom: Of course; call back anytime.
Sanford: For free?
Tom: Ah… no, I didn’t mean that.
Sanford: Oh, oh, right. Sure. Okay, ‘bye.