Sunday, July 19, 2009
We need more quitters!
From an article about Mark Sanford's idiotic insistence on staying in office:
Skipping the weird part-Christian part-hippie psychobabble about forgiveness ... Just exactly what are you seeking when you hang around after your balls have been clipped? It's not power, because your power is gone. Your agenda is finished, and you have to be "less strident" to survive. It's not pleasure, because it can't be any fun when everyone is mocking you. It's not sex, because your wife and your mistress are both unavailable now that you've ruined both of their lives.
Maybe it's just a matter of vesting your pension? If that's the case, we need to change some laws. Make the pension for civilian office depend on an honorable discharge, as with military officers. Such a provision might encourage more officials to get the hell out after they soil the nest. (Note that I didn't say it would encourage more officials to be honest in the first place. That ain't gonna happen, nohow, noway.) ¶ 12:00 PM
"It's in the spirit of making good from bad that I am committing to you and the larger family of South Carolinians to use this experience to both trust God in his larger work of changing me, and from my end, to work to becoming a better and more effective leader," he wrote. ... Legislators said the governor's previous pledges to work together always quickly disintegrated. ... Sanford, who has long fought to give the governor's office more control in the legislatively strong state, wrote that he would continue to push his agenda. And although he said his approach needed to be "less strident," critics said Sanford's contrition came 6 1/2 years too late.
Skipping the weird part-Christian part-hippie psychobabble about forgiveness ... Just exactly what are you seeking when you hang around after your balls have been clipped? It's not power, because your power is gone. Your agenda is finished, and you have to be "less strident" to survive. It's not pleasure, because it can't be any fun when everyone is mocking you. It's not sex, because your wife and your mistress are both unavailable now that you've ruined both of their lives.
Maybe it's just a matter of vesting your pension? If that's the case, we need to change some laws. Make the pension for civilian office depend on an honorable discharge, as with military officers. Such a provision might encourage more officials to get the hell out after they soil the nest. (Note that I didn't say it would encourage more officials to be honest in the first place. That ain't gonna happen, nohow, noway.) ¶ 12:00 PM
