Mark Sanford’s contribution to the rhetoric of regret

After Chris Christie’s lengthy presser the other day crying the blues about how wrong his staff had done him, someone at the NYT had the bright idea of piecing together a bunch of recent (well, not all so recent), similar such moments into a sort of all-purpose mea culpa (or they-a culpa) speech.

Here’s the opening:

I rise today to deliver a very difficult speech. I’ll lay it out. It’s going to hurt. And we’ll let the chips fall where they may. I join you keenly aware that I am regarded in a different light now than I was a year ago. In recent weeks, serious questions have been raised about my conduct in office. … I welcome any and all appropriate investigations. I want the American people to know all the facts, and I am not afraid of having independent people go in and check the facts, and that is exactly what they did.

Anything sound familiar? Yep, the second, third and fourth sentences are classic Mark Sanford, from June 24, 2009.

The feature at the NYT is interactive — scroll over a section of the speech, and you see the source. Go check it out, if you like to wallow in that sort of thing…

 

2 thoughts on “Mark Sanford’s contribution to the rhetoric of regret

  1. Ralph Hightower

    Geez! First it was “Bridgegate”! Now, he plagiarizes other political speeches; although plagiarism may be too tough a word since he samples sentences from other political speeches. Based on the NYT’s analysis, this appears to be a crafted speech.

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