Mark Sanford - Two Roads Diverged: A Second Chance for the Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, the Nation— and Ourselves

TWO ROADS DIVERGED

Copyright 2021 by Mark Sanford

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To my sons, Marshall, Landon Bolton, and Blake

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I took the one less traveled by.

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

CONTENTS

R obert Frost wrote these words about someone faced with a crossroads: Two roads diverged in a wood, and II took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.

For reasons Frost does not explain, the speaker takes the road less traveled, and Frost leaves us with the words And that has made all the difference. But Frost doesnt say whether the difference that less-traveled road made was for the better or for the worse, just that it made not only a difference, but all the difference.

We each face crossroads at different points in our lives. Many of us take the road more traveled rather than the less-traveled road, and those who do invariably arrive at the next destination more safely than do those of us who chose the other path. But sometimes, for reasons we can never satisfactorily explain, we take that less-traveled road, and we find, as Frost says, that the choice to take that course brings very different consequences.

For better or worse, our country took a road less traveled in 2016, and we spent the next four years making our way through hazardous terrain that has led us into uncharted political territory. Now, in different but still powerful ways, we are continuing down the same path toward ruin with the Biden administration. His administration has committed to more new spending in its first hundred days than any other on record. Four trillion in new spending is anything but moderate, though he promised to govern from the center. He was portrayed as a moderate and embraced this image. It made sense, given his many years in the Senate. After all, its an institution by its very design biased to protecting the views of the minority, and so people understandably surmised that someone who had spent over thirty-five years there would be sympathetic to its traditions.

His governance has not fit this.

Over the administrations first few months, some of the largest expansions in government since Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in the era of the New Deal have been advanced on a single-party basis. The filibuster, with its inherent advantages to the minoritys perspective, and something that not so many years ago Biden defended, is now seen as a relic that should be jettisoned because it slows single-party governance. Yet the design that so bothers all of us when we think about getting things done in Washingtonand that so frustrated Trumps efforts to go in politically opposite ways from Bidenis the very design of our political system. It should be celebrated. The day we get to true single-party governance will be the day we get to a post-constitutional America. Our virtual speed bumps in the form of checks and balances and divided government have given some measure of stability in preventing us over the years from lurching from one side to the other. Accordingly, it needs to be recognized that Biden is working against this when he pushes for legislative victory by way of single-party votes. The same is true when he agrees with Senator Schumer on the idea of discarding the filibuster. And the same criticisms would fit the Trump administration regarding judicial appointments and more.

In short, we are spinning out of control. Its as if centrifugal force is pulling us further and further apart. At some point, if we pull hard enough in opposite directions, things break. Divided we cannot stand, and yet increasingly we live in a land that is not only divided but bitter in its division. Given the vitriol pervading Washington, many days it seems there is no path to redemption.

But one thing Frost neglected to mention is that every fork in the road inevitably leads to yet another. Like ripples on a pond, the ever-expanding effect of choices made grows with the passage of time. And just as that first choice makes all the difference, so, too, do successive choices that follow. Time has a way of expanding the effect of each of our significant decisions in life, but the fatalism of Frosts phrase And that made all the difference belies the fact that sometimes God gives us second chancesand with them the chance to learn from ones previous decision and begin anew and fresh.

As I write this in the late spring of 2021, our nation stands at another crossroads. The road we take going forward will determine the future we leave to those who will follow us. The implications of these decisions will be borne by our childrenand their childrens children. Our choices today are significant because they will stand as monuments in reflecting who we really are and what we stand for and believe.

I took a road less traveled at a different crossroads in 2009, and it was not along the Appalachian Trail. That year I fell deeply in love with a woman who lived five thousand miles away and was not my wife. I completely mishandled that chapter of my life, and its consequences were disastrous. It was a journey that cost me dearly, and I dont know that I will ever fully comprehend its total cost. Just as those ever-expanding ripples on placid waters define the reverberations that Frost alluded to in his description of paths taken in the journey of life, so, too, will the consequences of my choices reverberate until the day I die. I wish I could go back and do many days differently in my life, but those days stand out above all others.

But going back is not real life.

We get our one shot at each day, and on some days we do far better than we could ever have imagined while on other days we fall far shorter than we could ever have dreamed. And though we can choose our sins, we can never choose their consequences, and under their weight we move forward as best we can in this all-too-short journey called life.

In the wake of all that came after 2009divorce, trust lost, and condemnation aboundingI was cut off and alone. Isolation forces deliberation and soul-searching, and I tried both to make amends where I could to the people who would accept them and, with some measure of humility, to absorb the condemnation of those who would not forgive me.

The story of that road I took is part of this book not because I want to justify my actions but as a way of registering the fact that my lifes path has given me an acute appreciation of Frosts notion of crossroads and the consequences of differing pathsas well as the power of grace, the chance to learn from ones past, and the opportunity for refocusing that comes with that learning.

Even those most wounded among us have something to offer. We can learn and see more if we take the time to look at things through anothers eyes. Whether we have the humility to do so is one of the great mysteries of life, but its through the normal course of speaking, listening, and learning that we have the chance to gain each others perspectives and become the wiser for it.