Staying True (14 page)

Or maybe I was just exhausted. Because of my recent surgery, I couldn’t keep up with the normal frenetic schedule. Most evenings I cut out early to sleep. I now know that while I was at our friend’s house resting one evening, Mark had the opportunity—and took it—to meet privately with the Argentinean woman he had met a few years earlier while in Punta del Este, Uruguay. Their reconnection, I was to learn when Mark gave an interview to the Associated Press about his affair, generated all kinds of sparks, and yet I detected nothing when he returned to me later that night.

He was able to make it all happen without me knowing and certainly without any immediate consequences from me or to his job. It’s ironic that I was more deeply in love with him than I had been in a decade while he was feeling powerful, independent, and righteous in his growing success. Everything about the world around him told him he could remain immune from the consequences of meeting up with an appealing stranger for a romantic meal in a secluded New York bistro.

After the trip to New York, Mark began to consider seriously whether or not he was going to run again. He expressed real uncertainty about his strength to fight for and then serve a second term and we talked through the pros and cons at great length. We discussed carefully what would happen if he were to run and win or to run and lose, or to choose not to run and thus, in effect, hand victory over to the status quo. We also talked about the boys and what would be best for them. They wanted him to run again, both because they didn’t want to see him give in and because they were enjoying their school and no longer wanted to return to Charleston. Mark decided to run this one last time.

Of course, from the moment Mark was elected in the first place his political opponents constantly called the media pushing one story or another designed to turn public opinion against him, even in tiny ways. I began to feel this political reality more once we were officially in reelection mode. I remember one particularly distasteful occasion when I agreed to help sell a new line of state pottery that had just arrived in our state gift shops. The pottery was elegant in its simplicity, made in Italy and decorated with the state logo. I allowed the state agency to include a postage-stamp-size photo of me in the sales brochure in which I was pictured drinking tea from one of the cups.

Soon after the brochure was released, a statehouse reporter called. He wanted my reaction to those who were criticizing me for my part in using state money to sell china that was not from South Carolina. I thought surely he must be kidding. I explained that I had nothing to do with the decision on where to manufacture or how to sell the china. I was merely trying to help the state make some money. He said others noted that we needed more jobs in our state and selling expensive foreign china—the cup and saucer cost $34—didn’t do so.

Backed against the wall by this surprising turn of events and with Mark in a reelection campaign, I had to defend myself. I responded that the former administration used a good deal of state money to buy china and French flatware for use in the mansion. That hadn’t created jobs in our state either. We even told this reporter of copies of the purchase logs for more than $100,000 worth of china and Christofle flatware. None of what we told him was in his story.

As with so many reporters, he knew the angle he wanted to take and the story would run as he wanted it to, whether honest and ethical in my view or not. This is exactly the kind of thing Mark had to deal with constantly, and I certainly didn’t envy him that. It’s amazing to me what sort of contortions we needed to go through to rebut this ridiculous phantom of a story. It didn’t feel good to feed information to the press that might be damning to someone else’s character, especially when they too had done nothing wrong. Yet I knew there were likely plenty in our state who might read such an article on the china and take their reaction to the polls against Mark.

That’s the press, though: Frequently there when you don’t want them around and rarely there when you do. I wish I had had the presence of mind to ask the press camped out at the end of my drive after Mark’s return from Argentina where they had been for my many speeches, press conferences, or events on health, the cause I have promoted as First Lady. As a family, we did runs and walks and biked across the state and kayaked rivers to highlight the need for more regular exercise in our sedentary state, often with little notice. On one such bike ride in Aiken with a pack of other bicycle enthusiasts, I was saddened that there was almost no press to help us highlight this obvious social problem. Sadly, this is not unique to me or to South Carolina; it is all too common everywhere.

On Sunday of our last weekend before the gubernatorial reelection in November 2006, we attended the groundbreaking for the City of Light, a large Christian evangelical center that Mark had helped bring to South Carolina. Mark was on a stage adjacent to a big dirt pit full of bulldozers with other speakers and performers, some wearing sunglasses because of the bright industrial lights focused on them. The boys and I sat in the second row watching Mark give a speech that was broadcast across the globe.

Afterward, Mark said his face felt sunburned. In the middle of the night, I woke up to him sobbing next to me, his body shaking from pain. He said he couldn’t open his eyes. I called an ophthalmologist friend in Charleston, even though it was two in the morning. He said it was likely that faulty lights at the event that afternoon had burned Mark’s corneas. He found an all-night pharmacy in Columbia that carried the drops Mark needed. I sent security to get them and stayed up all night putting drops in Mark’s eyes each hour to help soothe the pain.

In the morning Mark was taken by his security detail to the doctor. I had arranged for the boys to skip school so we could fly around the state on our last media tour before election day. We did so without Mark. Thus we entered our final election day with Mark out of commission because he had been blinded at an event about faith!

Mark met the boys and me on Sullivan’s Island Monday night. He could see, but his eyes were quite swollen. I continued to put drops in his eyes through the night. Tuesday morning we all went together to cast our votes for Mark at our home precinct, but because Mark had with him only his driver’s license, which had a Columbia address, and no registration card, a woman in charge there wouldn’t let Mark vote. Clearly either she was not his biggest fan or she was a real stickler for rules. By this time I was thinking
Lord, what are you telling us? Is this a sign of things to come?
But any foreboding I might have felt passed quickly. Off we went to North Charleston, half an hour away, to get the appropriate documents before returning to vote and then heading to Greenville and finally Columbia to meet more family, friends, employees, and volunteers for what would turn out to be a celebration of Mark’s having won another four years in office.

Mark again decided not to have a formal Inaugural Ball because the state was still in tight times, but the Republican Party paid for one as a fundraiser. In keeping with the austerity of the times, Mark chose not to wear a tuxedo, ever mindful of the image presented on camera to the general public. To match him in style and in spirit, I wore a pretty dress I borrowed from my sister-in-law Julia and a few pieces of my sister Kathy’s jewelry. Even with these pared-back events, every bedroom in the mansion was filled with family, and overflow family and close friends were all in nearby hotels. There was activity everywhere and excitement in the air.

I woke on the morning of the reception to find that our dogs Jeep and Julius had discovered the packages of linens for the event that night and for the brunch the following morning and had chewed them up and strewn the remnants all across the great lawn. Surely life in this house was never dull! The party had to go on regardless of the dogs and their antics. I gathered the linens and hurried back into the house to see if we could quickly wash and press the ones the dogs had not torn and perhaps find others to make up the difference. We did, and the parties went on, with the rescued linen for the next morning safely locked away overnight.

At the second inaugural morning prayer service, our friend and pastor Greg Surratt’s sermon was more than prescient in light of what has happened in the last year. Greg remarked that we will all be remembered for something and the only question that remains to be answered is, for what? He counseled Mark to remain focused in his last years of public service, as did the Old Testament character Joshua, who concentrated on serving the Lord. He urged Mark to “be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:6) and to finish strong by remaining humble and listening to others while continuing to act on his convictions. He reminded us all that while Joshua wasn’t perfect (and none of us are), Joshua didn’t succumb to the selfishness and scandals of other leaders of his time. Joshua had finished well.

Mark’s inaugural address was about a time for vision, and he spoke of the struggles he had faced in his first term, saying, “I stand before you a little grayer, a little wiser and tempered by reality, but nevertheless affirmed by my conviction that we can, together as South Carolinians, make a change for the better.” After he took the oath, four Air National Guard F-16s flew overhead, leaving a trail of noise and smoke in the clear blue sky.

Once again we shook hands for hours as the public visited the mansion and the boys played with friends and cousins on the lawn. This time when we prepared for the barbeque at the fairgrounds we knew our way around a house that was now almost our real home. It was a joyous and happy occasion on so many levels. Instead of worrying about things to coordinate and organize, this time, I remember thinking that I should enjoy every minute I could.

ELEVEN

W
HILE I HAD EXPECTED MARK TO SLOW DOWN IN HIS SECOND term (at the very least the fundraising would taper off) his pace quickened instead. I suppose he didn’t really take in Pastor Greg’s sermon advising him to make sure every action he undertook reflected the legacy he wanted to leave. I knew, of course, that his days would be packed with state responsibilities, but I didn’t expect him to take on even more. Almost from the moment of his inaugural, I saw him committing to fundraisers for the Republican Party, if not for himself, to help enact his agenda for reform. Mark began to give speeches around the country and to be courted by national conservative organizations and the national press. His restlessness was evident again. What would he do when
this
term was up? Could he be satisfied returning to real estate? Should he run for another office?

Perhaps this is how our lives together started to twist out of balance. Our fundamental differences in pace probably should have worried me years before when I saw the lists of his goals. Instead, I believed the difference between Mark’s desire for immediate success and my sense of the story of our lives spooling out over time would balance each other out. I could take the long view, and he would specialize in the here and now.

For a very long time, my marriage to Mark and our commitment to our family has allowed me to work toward my goals daily, even as true balance often eludes us. A woman’s life is a juggling act, to be sure, and I’m not the only mother who feels that whatever you devote your time to this moment cheats someone else. Every day requires recalibration. Today it is Landon’s turn for attention because he is graduating, while tomorrow it might be Marshall because of his tennis match. Whoever gets sick gets my time, but next week might take me away from the boys to travel with Mark or this evening might find me away from all of them for a First Lady event.

In that way, our life is kind of like a seesaw: The up and down is the only predictable part, and each one of us clusters on one side to bring some equilibrium back to the one who is flying high. What keeps me sane is the knowledge that over time the attention we all get will even out. The fact that no two days are ever the same with kids in tow has stretched me to my limits, most times happily so, but I’ve had faith that the priority I’ve given our boys will pay dividends through
their
good character and their happiness. I’ve trusted that Mark and I would one day have time alone again together and have drawn strength and a sense of calm from having this long-term sense of achieving goals and shared values.

I think it’s fair to say that Mark has not felt this peace or this calm. Mark has always scanned the horizon for fresh opportunities and grander ways to achieve his goals. Honestly, when we met, I loved him for this too. I had lived briefly in that world of short-term goals and immediate gratification at Lazard. I understood the attraction of creating a rare opportunity and running at it with everything you had. Mark’s unrelenting drive was attractive to me, given that it was married with what I thought of as a more soulful and humble character.

But Mark’s anxiousness was even evident when he scheduled vacations. After Mark won reelection, we realized that we had spent so many years campaigning in some manner or another, we had never taken the boys on a spring break vacation. Mark set about making up for lost time, making plans for a one-week family adventure out West. After surfing on Laguna Beach, we toured the sights in LA and then traveled east to the Kelso Dunes and the Hoover Dam before the highlight, hiking the Grand Canyon. This was one of the prettiest hikes and one of the most enjoyable adventures we had ever shared together. In true Mark Sanford form, however, it wasn’t just a mild hike. We hiked to the bottom to spend the night, then swam in the cold river before hiking back out the next morning. Then we drove to Las Vegas for an overnight and early departure the next morning. In Vegas, Mark and the boys went out on the town, touring the sights of the strip. I chose to have a glass of wine at the bar and went to bed.

That glass of wine and time alone were essential for me after all we had jammed into the previous days together, just as continuing to go, go, go was what Mark and the boys needed. I knew that if I had tried to keep them in the hotel room for some quiet time with me, it would have been Five Bulls In A Hotel Room. A boy’s balance, and Mark’s balance as well I supposed, is like a gyroscope; he has to keep spinning to feel calm at the center. My hope was that over time I could help my sons see that there is also value in a quieter life, the one that I was yearning for daily.

I began the summer of 2008 at the beach with the boys, as usual, while Mark finished off state business in Columbia. In late June, he went on a business trip to South America with the state’s commerce department, and as I later came to learn, he completed the trip with a rendezvous with the woman he knew in Argentina. After his return, we spent a busy two weeks of work and fun at Coosaw, though I shiver when I think that while I was cleaning up after a delicious family meal with the boys and their cousins, he was emailing his “soul mate” with visions of her tan lines.

Mark had booked the entire summer with not a moment to rest. We traveled to New York City and then to Philadelphia with other governors and their families, taking a detour to visit Gettysburg. Then we were off to the Far East with the boys. In China, we met with dignitaries, including a formal Chinese lunch with our old friend Madame Wu Yi. We toured the sights in Beijing before heading west by train to visit Tibet and the base camp of Mt. Everest, followed by two days in India, a day in Bangkok, and a day in Hong Kong. We packed plenty into this whirlwind trip, and the boys returned with all sorts of rocks from their visits, but Blake somehow left his beloved Blankie Bear in Beijing. Aside from the frenetic pace, nothing Mark did during that trip hinted that his heart and mind were elsewhere engaged.

But when home that fall, I began to notice changes in Mark, a distracted quality; he didn’t slow down. He began to travel to hunt on any free day, even during the week. He stopped reprimanding the boys when they acted out of line or spoke rudely to me or to others. This was a break from his previous stern approach to everything from dishonesty to back talk. As I watched him pull back from this practice, the boys took more liberties as they saw their boundaries disappear.

I found this incredibly frustrating, but he ignored me when I pointed out the change and he ignored my pleas for assistance. Instead, he began to advocate a much softer approach. “Let’s just love them,” he might say, as he continued to indulge their limit-pushing. He also scaled back his devotion time with the boys. This, too, frustrated me, as he was becoming in many ways as detached from the family as he had been while he was away in Congress.

I decided not to call him too harshly on the changes I saw in him, thinking he was going through another period of searching. I knew that the approaching big birthday—when he would turn fifty—was weighing on his mind and that things would return to normal as he came to terms with that milestone.

They did not. We hosted receptions for supporters at the mansion but sadly, he still sometimes asked, “Who are my friends?” I pointed out the friends we had hosted as guests at football games, invited for overnights at the mansion or weekends at Coosaw. These were people who were truly fond of him as a person as well as supportive of his agenda. But he was right to notice that he didn’t have a group of close friends—at least not that he had kept up with or met with regularly—that would keep him accountable and down to earth. As rich as our life may have seemed to an outsider, in some ways, Mark’s life in politics has made for a lonely existence for all of us, especially given the isolated nature of the compound on which we lived in Columbia. I understand how he had become so compartmentalized and walled off from real understanding of his friendships and their value. With Mark as governor, we were often so busy that we saw very little of the kind of people who knew us well and would always be brave enough to hold us accountable for our actions. Friends share a healthy respect for one another and their similarities, differences, strengths, and weaknesses. In this crush of people who wanted to be friends with us for their own reasons, many valid, I found myself starved for real friendship. Many of our true friends were reluctant to call us because they assumed we were busy. I would often learn, after the fact, that they had been in Columbia for, say, a child’s soccer game and stayed in a hotel, not wanting to bother me. All I wanted was the company of real friends instead of the tiresome busyness and loneliness that came with the job and the house. I began to encourage friends to please call when they were in Columbia. I told them I would honestly let them know if we were busy or not. Some were better at staying in touch when in town than others, but all had great intentions and remain close today. In time, I also made great friends in Columbia for all the right reasons, as did our boys. But for Mark it has seemed loneliest.

Indeed, he spent most of his time asking others for help with his campaign or pushing an issue and seemed to spend little time reassessing himself and whether he was living life according to the goals and values he held dear. Though always for good causes, charity dinners and political events can’t replace casual, unstructured, let-down-your-guard time with old and dear friends.

Though I wouldn’t have thought anyone could take much more than Mark was already juggling, in the fall, the pressures on him increased dramatically. The economy in our state soured, and then the national markets collapsed. Mark traveled to hearings on Capitol Hill to speak. He stood firmly against the stimulus package that President Obama and others promoted as the solution to our financial crisis. When he was fighting to reject federal stimulus money in early 2009, the bulk of the political class and the media and a large majority in the public couldn’t conceive of someone being against so-called “free” money, even as his popularity with conservatives was incredibly high.

From late 2008 to June 2009 Mark did somewhere close to eighty national interviews on the stimulus and government spending, an astonishing number. The more outspoken he was, the more the press wanted him on air. People began to call or write from all over the country urging Mark to consider running for president in 2012 and, regardless, to continue to fight Obama and the huge increase in spending. Our country needed him, they said, and he was eager to rise to the occasion. Whether with adulation or criticism, the media attention that came with his position and notoriety fueled both his belief in his convictions and, I now see, his ability to compartmentalize his emotional response to it all. Wrapped up in staying true to his message, he became empty of connection to almost everything else.

Mark and I traveled to Miami for a Republican Governors Association conference in November 2008, where he was elected chairman of that organization. Shortly thereafter, he traveled to Ireland to shoot birds with other RGA contacts. At the end of the trip to Ireland, he disappeared. He had stopped calling home, and I called his staff to find out what was going on. They said he had flown to New York, but they were unclear on the purpose of the visit. I didn’t know either, but I would soon come to know that this trip to New York was for a rendezvous with his mistress. When he finally called, I asked him what he was doing in New York and who he was with. He told me he was alone. I said that I didn’t believe him. The pressure had been getting to him, he said, and, unbelievably, he was also upset about the bald spot that was forming at the back of his head. He just needed some time away from all of the stress and his worries. I cut him some slack. I can’t say I completely bought the line he was selling me, but I put the unaccounted-for time out of my head. I chose to ignore my doubts.

In any event, I had plenty of reasons to appreciate the pressures he was under, pressures that seemed to mount every day. In December 2008, Mark and his staff worked long hours trying to finish the budget for the next fiscal year. The state revenues were down substantially. Mark came home drained every night, telling me of the awful choices he had to make on the budget, where each proposed cut was as difficult as the next and every one of them slashed at something that had already been cut to the bone. Though the legislators held the power, the governor led with his budget, and he would take most of the blame. Every possible moment he was not needed at the office, he seemed to be on the television or away at a new hunting spot or traveling to give a speech or raising RGA funds or money for his own cause. When he was home, he was often speaking on the local or national news before dinner, sometimes returning to a television studio to appear again on the late-night news cycle. His frantic schedule coupled with his frenetic drive to fill every minute as well as his unquenchable ambition were all tearing him apart. He looked exhausted and had bags under his eyes; he had lost weight and his eyes appeared glazed. It seemed to me that Mark had become the empty-eyed politician he used to abhor.