Mark Sanford went missing.
Not on a particular question of policy… but, as in, where is he, physically? South Carolina’s press corps is in a meltdown today because it appears as if the governor skedaddled out of town in a black SUV on Thursday and hasn’t been seen since. His cell phone was traced to a tower in Atlanta. His wife says she’s not worried. His staff says he’s taking some R and R but won’t say where. There appears to be some confusion as to whether Sanford’s state police security detail knows — or is looking for him. And why wouldn’t he tell his wife? I’ve heard stories of his personal libertarianism, but that’s a little much.
Talking Points Memo has a few posts up. Two from Josh Marshall, here and here and one from Eric Kleefeld.
The Fix at WaPo
Mark Sanford told his staff where he would be and that he would be “difficult to reach” before setting out last Thursday night to points unknown, according to his communications director Joel Sawyer. “The governor put in a lot of time during this last legislative session, and after the session winds down it’s not uncommon for him to go out of pocket for a few days at a time to clear his head,” said Sawyer in a statement provided to the Fix. “Should any emergencies arise between the times in which he checks in, our staff would obviously be in contact with other state officials as the situation warrants before making any decisions.”
Both his personal cell phone and his state phone are turned off and, according to one critic who claims to have spoken with the police, this isn’t the first time that he’s ditched his security detail. I assume this means he’s not running in 2012, as the thought of a C-in-C who’d jet off in the dead of night to Mexico to lie on a rock and just “be” isn’t what most Republicans have in mind for an age of terror — unless he takes the guy who carries the nuclear football with him, of course. Exit question: First this, and now news this afternoon of an earthquake in Alaska. Is he who bestrides the earth like a god finally taking cosmic revenge on stimulus opponents?
Update: The State reports that he’s been in touch and is fine, so no foul play here, just dereliction of duty. Whew!
There’s a lot of discussion of this killing his political future, some of it a little mean.
It sounds to me like the guy may have had a nervous breakdown and I hope everyone lays off. Anybody can suffer from mental illness and when they do, they deserve sympathy, not mockery.
Well, we got the Kings of Mockery right here. Wonkette:
His “whereabouts” have been “unknown to state officials since Thursday,” the news outlets report. This country should consider itself lucky to have survived the weekend! So did he get kidnapped in Mexico or something? Hopefully, but those close to him — and no, that does not include his family — claim he is just crying in private for a few days after losing a political battle.
UPDATE: For further snark, James Wolcott:
Well, if you really want to know, AWOL South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and I were on a Vision Quest together this weekend, which was marred when Red Bison Who Refuse Bailout, as he insisted we call him, lasted about three steps into his firewalk before yelping, “Ow–ow, ow, ow, ow!” and bunny-hopped away to have his feet iced. His patriarchal pride was injured and it was all our VQ guides could do to persuade him to take part in the ceremony of the night sky, where we lay on our backs and listened with our eyes to the constellations; even in the silence, you could sense his sulking. He peeled out early the next morning and received an “incomplete” grade on his Vision Quest. I have to say I was really underimpressed by his warrior spirit.
Mary Katherine Ham in TWS
UPDATE: Josh Marshall:
This is, to put it mildly, a tricky story to make sense of. We still have the several contradictory explanations that Sanford’s office and family gave out over the course of the day. But if we take the most recent statements basically at face value, the story sounds something like this …
The governor left on Thursday telling staff he was going to go hiking on the Appalachian Trial. He goes on trips sometimes without his security detail — which isn’t terribly surprising. But he’s never been completely out of touch for this long. Then there’s the added detail — also noted earlier today — that this last known whereabouts was near Atlanta …
Sanford’s last known location was near Atlanta late last week. A mobile telephone tower there picked up a signal from his phone, according to a source familiar with the situation.If the governor were a civilian, I would say that this kind of data on the whereabouts of his cell phone strongly suggested that an active investigation into his whereabouts was underway. But of course, he’s not a civilian. He’s a governor. Possibly the whereabouts of his cell phone are routinely tracked. And if not, the state of South Carolina could probably easily pull those records. Still, the fact that this information is in the mix at least suggests that people in the state government have already made some efforts to track down just where the governor is.
Put it all together and this is starting to sound a lot like the governor is genuinely missing.
UPDATE #2: Jim Geraghty in NRO:
For now, this is a p.r. disaster; imagine if the equivalent of yesterday’s train crash had occurred in South Carolina while the governor was incommunicado. Having said that, political life is full of moments that seem momentous at the time and fade into irrelevance — in 1988, Bill Clinton gave what was called the most boring convention speech in American history, in 2000, George W. Bush bombed in his appearance on the Letterman show. At one point it was considered a big deal that George H. W. Bush said, after debating Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, that “we tried to kick a little ass last night.”
Another veteran strategist who has worked with Sanford in the past thinks that this is normal for Sanford, but that his usual behavior looks different under national scrutiny.
“His m.o. when he takes a few days off is to do it very under the radar and totally check out, but this time political opponents — of which there are a lot more after this stimulus battle — whipped up a firestorm on a slow news day and the immediate responses from his camp didn’t do much to calm things down,” said the veteran of Palmetto State politics. “I do think these political opponents overreached on this one, though, and any political damage they hoped to cause the governor will be mitigated by the transparency of their motivated attacks.”
UPDATE: Most everyone is still questioning this story, especially with the revelation that Sanford has been seen in Atlanta.
Zachery Roth in TPM
UPDATE #2: He was in Argentina
Zachery Roth in TPM
We didn’t know the Appalachian Trail went all the way down to Buenos Aires!
AWOL South Carolina guv Mark Sanford resurfaced at the Atlanta airport this morning, and told The State newspaper he hadn’t been hiking the trail, as his staff said. Instead, he’d taken a jaunt down to Argentina…
Michael Crowley at TNR:
It’s eccentric, to be sure, but I still maintain there’s something cool about that. Don’t lots of people spend a fair amount of time fantasizing about making a getaway like that? If you can’t show any harm done to the peoples’ business, and his family doesn’t care, I’m not sure what the big deal is.
UPDATE #3: Jeffrey Goldberg:
Gov. Sanford’s strange vanishing act — he was thought to be hiking the Appalachian Trail alone, until he washed up in Argentina — prompts me to wonder if he suffers from a condition known as dissociative fugue disorder. When a person is in this fugue state, he’ll pick up and travel suddenly to some random point, not at all sure why he’s doing it, and sometimes with little memory of who he is. For a fuller description of this unusual condition, read this.
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