Community Organizing

[kandrathe]

Are you saying this is rational behaviour? Or just that people overreact stupidly to what they can understand ("I'd never spend 500,000 on a trip! What a bunch of pampered jerks!") while their eyes glaze over when you talk about things that might actually matter?

No, it's the mob electorate. Human nature has not evolved in a mere 300 years, such that with enough suffering, it leads to anger, which leads to violence. I'm just noting that, yes, it can happen here.

Not that this is relevant to Sanford. His career was over the moment he went AWOL (Argentina Without Leave...) The reason made it even worse, and the revelations about expenditures are just the cherry on top. Do you really think people were just going to give him a pass up until they found out he'd been spending substantial, but in the big picture trivial, amounts of money on private stuff?

You are probably right, although I doubt he would have been booted from office (mid term) for a being philander, he alienated his more conservative constituency and gave his rivals an issue which would have ended his career at the next election. His fiscal misappropriation is an actionable offense, which might land him in jail, and certainly out of office. What is similar is the mob reaction. It's the tendency of the electorate to give tentative trust and marginal appreciation until there is any issue which causes doubt, and then to quickly go from ambivalence to hate.