Mark Sanford Refuses To Take A Hike

Is Mark Sanford’s quest for the mythical reluctant Trump voter noble or pathetic?

- Olivia Nuzzi

THE ROAD BACK to the campaign trail begins with the Look. Do you know the one I mean? The Look is one of searching, of scanning, of wanting. For half a second, the eyes swell with hope—cartoonish, glassy. Every passing person presents an opportunity. Do you know me? the eyes ask. Can I shake your hand, slap your back, kiss your baby?

Mark Sanford was giving the Look left and right. In the direction of the young couple sitting in a hammock. An older couple on a bench. A man approaching on his jog. A golden retriever.

It was dusk in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the suburban town six miles from downtown Charleston where Sanford lives. A short drive from his house, there’s the ocean walk—a beautiful stretch of pavement and palmetto-studded grass that extends through the marsh to a pier on the Cooper River. Sanford walked along the path in his flip-flops. He was preparing for a trip to Iowa, a euphemism for declaring your candidacy for your party’s presidential nomination. Some people recognized him, even offered words of encouragement. Others breezed past, unaware or uninterested in the man whom the president was, in fact, tweeting about at that very moment.

“Can you believe it? I’m at 94 percent approval in the Republican Party, and have Three Stooges running against me. One is ‘Mr. Appalachian Trail’ who was actually in Argentina for bad reasons …,” Donald Trump wrote.