Jenny Sanford is All Things to All Pundits

The story of embattled political soon-to-be ex-wife Jenny Sanford is one of the rarest incidents in American politics: a story that both sides can spin to fit their narrative. Sanford went on a media tour to promote her new book, Staying True, that hit all three major cable news channels and the unofficial fourth power in journalism, The Daily Show. And despite the vast ideological gaps among the mediums, every interviewer wanted her on their team.

To Fox News, she was a devoted wife and martyr in the ascent of her husband’s political career. Sitting down with Fox and Friends’ Gretchen Carlson yesterday, Sanford spoke extensively about what she gave up to keep her family stable – namely, a lucrative Wall Street career – leading with Carlson rechristening her book Jenny’s Sacrifice. Sanford said she “was happy to support [her] husband” and that she did not see staying home to raise the kids as a sacrifice, but, rather, “putting [her] skills on hold.” Even her anecdote about Sanford pinching pennies – he apparently gave her a diamond necklace only to take it back – spoke to the governor’s fiscal conservatism.

Contrast this to the scorned, but dignified, appearance she made today on Morning Joe. To MSNBC, she was the anti-Silda Wall, a resilient post-feminist figure not afraid of life after the governor’s mansion. While she defended her husband as a politician (“There are very few politicians these days that stick to their guns, particularly on the conservative side”), she was unrelenting in her decision to leave her husband and move on, which particularly struck Mika Brzezinski compared to other political wives. “There’s nothing I can do to take away the blame from Mark,” she commented, continuing later to condemn his initial revealing press conference with a “thumbs-down” as both a wife and a political consultant.

Sanford shifted gears yet again for CNN last night from painfully truthful wife to self-help guru. Speaking to Larry King, she expressed concern for all women in her situation, emphasizing the fact that she wrote this book despite being a private person because she felt others had much to learn from her. Given the space of King’s deliberately broad questions (“Is it hard to talk about pain?”) to construct her personality in a more flexible narrative than on the other two cable news stations, she dismissed any possibility of self-loathing or pity from the situation. She explains that she had kicked Mark out of the house for a month before he “hiked the Appalachian Trail,” that she has not dwelled on the possibility of her having any guilt in the situation, and that standing beside her husband for the fabled sex scandal press conference “never crossed [her] mind.”

But despite her attempts to sell her story as that of a compassionate victim picking up the pieces of her life and using them to help others in similar situations, Sanford was at her most likable when being cornered into bitterness about her situation. With Jon Stewart, her attempts at steering clear of rage at her husband led her to nostalgically gloss over the most positive memories from her marriage: the way state inmates performed chores around the governor’s mansion — leading Stewart to quip that he’s “always found that the toughest thing about divorce is the loss of the inmates.” Her response to Stewart commenting on how sad it must be for Mark Sanford to have the entire mansion to himself elicited an uneasy “I guess so” not in tune with her more sympathetic responses on other networks. And of life with her husband and four boys, she noted disdainfully, “I’m surrounded by the self-absorbed male.” She is at her best when she is molded into Stewart’s narrative, laughing off her troubles rather than exploiting them. Watch the Daily Show interview below:

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.