Impeach Sanford, but for right reasons

By Terry Plumb - Special to The Herald

The Associated Press reports that Gov. Mark Sanford could owe the federal government a heap of back taxes for using state aircraft for personal or political trips. Nine flights since 2008 could amount to more than $19,000 in taxable benefits, AP concluded.

Failure to pay taxes is what got Al Capone in trouble, a comparison that delights legislators, who would love to see the IRS do the heavy work in removing Sanford from office.

As long as critics are calling for Sanford to settle up, they ought to seek reimbursement for his untaxed benefits the six years he served in Congress. Sanford is fond of boasting that he slept on a futon in his office. Which of his constituents wouldn't have enjoyed rent-free accommodations in Washington, D.C., for six years?

In truth, the public is less worked up about political perks than the capital press corps, which blithely was unconcerned about our gallivanting governor's travel habits over most of the past six years. Taxpayers understand that high office carries with it certain benefits. The governor, for example, enjoys free room and board, along with round-the-clock bodyguards, chauffeurs and servant

About the only gigs with better benefits are admiral in the Navy and president of a university. In theory, people who ascend to such posts answer to higher authority; in practice, so long as they don't flout abuse of office by, say, flying off to Argentina for an illicit affair, the public generally accepts the axiom that rank has privileges.

President Obama, for example, took heat for flying to Copenhagen last week to lobby on Chicago's behalf in the Windy City's Olympics bid. Obama may have had an ulterior motive � distracting attention from the battle over health care reform or painful deliberations over Afghanistan � but most people understand that the president never gets a day off.

Being governor of South Carolina isn't in the same league, but the job brings with it responsibility that sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish between public duty and private life. Some say Sanford broke the law by using state aircraft to fly to a son's soccer game. Any father whose job has ever caused him to miss a child's baseball game or dance recital might be slower to condemn.

Sanford has defended his use of state aircraft and acceptance of free flights on grounds that his travels had a public purpose. Moreover, he says, he didn't do anything his predecessors didn't do. While the latter argument reinforces the notion that the legendary penny-pinching Sanford is a hypocrite, it doesn't mean he broke the law. He certainly didn't set precedent.

Not long after The McClatchy Co. purchased The Herald, in the early 1990s, I was invited to fly on the corporate jet to Sacramento, Calif., for an annual meeting of editors and publishers. As we boarded at the Rock Hill airport, I was surprised to see that the governor of South Carolina, Carroll Campbell, was a fellow traveler.

At the time, McClatchy's practice was to ask publishers to invite a prominent elected official to be keynote speaker. Campbell was in his second term, so he couldn't stand for re-election, but he had been mentioned as a potential GOP nominee for president or vice president. Speaking to a group of newspaper executives, mostly from the West Coast, would have appealed to a politician with national ambitions.

As it turned out, I never got the chance to ask Campbell. We had been aloft a short while when he got a call alerting him that the town of Greer was about to annex land where BMW was to build a massive assembly plant. Campbell was livid at what he said would have been a deal-killer. He spent the rest of the flight on the phone. We tried not to eavesdrop, but I can testify that the tenor of his conversations was not friendly.

In the end, Campbell prevailed and BMW came to the Palmetto State. In the meantime, I'm sure, the governor would not have been pleased if anyone had suggested his trip to California had been a relaxing vacation.

Impeach Mark Sanford? Sure, but do it for the right reasons.