EDITORIAL: Calculating apologies and unemployment

Gov. Mark Sanford keeps saying that it’s for others to decide if he should be impeached.

In the two months after his infidelity’s initial exposure, more than one call has been made for him to resign. House Speaker Bobby Harrell and at least 60 other members of the State House said Sanford should leave. Those announcements and calls for resignation come before the State Ethics Commission investigation is complete.

The investigation was prompted by Associated Press reports of misuse of state airplanes and travel funds, failure to disclose private plane trips and questionable reimbursements from his campaign account.

That media! Always checking on the way politicians spend taxpayer money. No wonder, Sanford watches his words so carefully around them.

Sanford knows if he has done anything that would qualify as an impeachable offense. With his attitude, he can’t believe his actions would pass the legal muster of “serious misconduct” or a “serious crime.” That’s a political calculation.

Sanford said he hopes more lawmakers will be willing to work with him now that he doesn’t have further political aspirations on the horizon.

“In an odd sort of way, there’s some opportunity in this that we’ve never had as a state,” he said.

Sanford says that none of this is about politics. In the 16 months he has remaining in office, Sanford said, he wants to take the opportunity to change the 19th-century structure of the state’s government to a more modern framework.

Sanford had six years with Republican control of both the house and senate, and he could not get a consensus to solve the state’s problems, including chronic unemployment.

Sanford says he wants to streamline the S.C. Employment Security Commission. Does that mean he would work to help the commission function better and find people actual, permanent jobs?

Or does that mean stripping people from the unemployment rolls to make the numbers look better? It wouldn’t be the first time the commission has adjusted the way it calculates the unemployment rate.

He wasn’t clear on that point.

Sanford has been clear that he doesn’t want to join the 12+ percent of South Carolinians waiting in those unemployment lines.

“The question of life is, ‘Where do you go from here?’” Sanford said in his address to the Hartsville Rotary Club on Tuesday.

Where do we go from here?

Maybe apologizing is enough. Maybe playing on the faith and forgiveness of Christians and the American love of the underdog will keep Sanford in office.

If he stays, I hope he does get some work done with the General Assembly. Legislators will probably use him as an excuse not to get things done though. Anyone remember the cigarette tax or the payday lending bills from the last few sessions?

If Sanford becomes just an excuse or a political ploy, more people will lose their jobs or drop off the unemployment rolls because they’re “discouraged workers,” and fewer will be added to the official count.

Sanford wants his time as governor to count. He wants to leave a mark on state government through his restructuring plans.

The question is: Can we count on him or the General Assembly? Especially with the 2010 elections drawing near, every vote seems to become a political calculation about negative advertisements or grandstanding gestures.

“At the end of the day, we’re all South Carolinians,” Sanford said.

I couldn’t agree more.

Can the citizens of this state have a voice in Columbia more than on Election Day? Darlington County’s unemployment is more than 14 percent. Can we get some help?

Tell your legislators what you want, whether it is to impeach the governor or to work with him to solve our state’s problems.

Otherwise, our votes don’t count.