A disengaged governor

Year-to-year calendars suggest that Gov. Sanford lost his focus on state business.

Gov. Mark Sanford no doubt hopes that the successful wooing of a Boeing jet assembly line by the state will bolster his image as a can-do governor. But it might be too late for that, and a recent review of the governor's calendar over his seven years in office presents a more complete and less flattering picture.

The look by The State newspaper at Sanford's day-to-day scheduling since taking office in 2002 indicates that Sanford entered office with a desire to make major changes in the state and pursued his goals energetically at first, jumping from meeting to meeting as he sought to rally support for his vision of a smaller state government and a more powerful governor. But the calendar indicates that Sanford began losing steam during his second term and became more and more disengaged with the governor's job as time passed.

As The State story notes, the second-term calendar indicates that Sanford's focus was somewhere other than South Carolina for much of the time. That became even more pronounced as Sanford, head of the Republican Governors Association, found himself on the list of prospective vice presidential candidates on Sen. John McCain's ticket and, later, as presidential timber in 2012.

After the November election, Sanford began buffing his credentials as a national political figure, especially with his high-profile opposition to federal stimulus money for the state. His calendar in 2008 and earlier this year was dominated with media interviews.

At its peak — in March or April of this year — Sanford had no state business but media interviews for eight days. Most weeks, he conducted more than a dozen interviews.

The walls came tumbling down in June, when he was forced to admit an affair with an Argentine woman. His political career is in ruins.

But that was the culmination of 18 months of disengagement with state business. In 2008, for example, his calendar shows 54 weekdays with no events, meaning the governor effectively was working four-day weeks. His meetings with staff declined from a high of 454 in 2004 to 288 in 2008. Even ceremonial activities declined from 196 in 2003 to 50 through the first six months of 2009.

Some might say Sanford's gradual loss of focus on his job should be more fodder for the effort to impeach him. That, we think, is a stretch; ineffectiveness is not grounds for impeachment.

But Sanford's record and his increasingly empty calendar should be on voters' minds as they go about selecting his successor next year. Voters should seek candidates in both parties who can work effectively with state lawmakers and remain part of the legislative process throughout their time in office.

South Carolina needs a governor who not only has good ideas but also has the ability to implement them.