Mark Steyn: Jacko, Sanford and weirdness | governor, state, bubble, sanford, one - Opinion - OCRegis

Leave it to Steyn to figure out how the whole Gov. Sanford fiasco relates to small government:

Mark Steyn: Jacko, Sanford and weirdness | governor, state, bubble, sanford, one - Opinion - OCRegis

But a more basic question is: Why does the minimally empowered executive of a midsize state with no particular national prominence need to be in "the bubble" in the first place?

Evidently he is. Much of the charade involved in the scandal arose from the need to throw off his "security detail": The Chevy Suburban pulling up outside the Governor's Mansion, Sanford casually tossing his running shoes, a pair of green shorts and a sleeping bag in the back, turning off the GPS locator… Although staffers kept up his ghostwritten tweet of the day on Twitter, by Monday state senators were revealing that they hadn't heard from the Governor since Thursday.

And we can't have that, can we?

...Even Charles Krauthammer on Fox News professed to be concerned at a governor wandering off incommunicado. What would happen if there was a hurricane or a terrorist attack on South Carolina? Well, I'd imagine that state agencies would muddle through to one degree of competence or another, and that the physical presence of the governor would make absolutely zero difference – any more than, on the day, George Pataki made a difference to New York's response to 9/11 (good) or Kathleen Blanco to Louisiana's response to Katrina (abysmal and embarrassing, but deriving from the state's broader political culture rather than anything Gov. Blanco did or didn't do on the big day). In a republic of limited government, the governor, two-thirds of the state legislature and the heads of every regulatory agency should be able to go "hiking the Appalachian Trail" for a lot longer than five days, and nobody would notice.

Instead, we have the governor of South Carolina resorting to subterfuge worthy of one of those Mitteleuropean operettas where the Ruritanian princess disguises herself as a scullery maid to leave the castle by the back gate for an assignation with a dashing if impoverished hussar garbed as a stable lad.

And you know what? He's totally right. Because we think that the Government should take care of us, we frightened when a Governor walks off for a few days. Nobody should be that important.