Mark Sanford makes public feel his pain

OK, I had my fun with my June 24 blog post about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's admission of an affair with an Argentine woman. But if you watched the video (a short version of the 20-minute press conference is included on my blog post; the longer video is even weirder) or read quotes from Sanford's rambling monologue, you know this is more than just some quickie sexual fling. Although Sanford did something about as stupid as any sitting governor can do (Mike Easley, make a note), the guy was truly anguished. He was tearful. He seemed to be madly in love, in a teenage kind of way. Even hard-hearted reporters and political commentators felt sorry for the guy. And a surprising number of people commenting on the Columbia State newspaper's Web site defended the guy and recommended that he run off to Buenos Aires to be with his True Love.

This reaction is based largely on a reading of emotional e-mails exchanged between passionate lovers Mark and Maria, which the State obtained last December and published after the governor's apology-laden news conference Wednesday. (No one has explained to my satisfaction why the newspaper waited so long to go public with the e-mails.) The e-mails are passionate, romantic, somewhat explicit and so filled with longing that they would fit in a Nicholas Sparks novel. They are almost painful to read. If you're looking for theme music to accompany them, I don't know whether it should be "Lara's Theme" from "Doctor Zhivago" or "Teenager in Love" by Dion and the Belmonts.

While many commenters at The State online defended Sanford and urged him to follow his one True Love ("life is too short" was the rationale), another commenter had the more mature perspective. "Love is not an emotion" this person wrote. "It's something you DO every day, day in and day out, whether you feel like it or not. When you stop (in a marriage) is when things go awry." (If you're interested, the commenter is Solow, who posted 6/25 at 1:15 p.m.)

It's easy to make comparisons to the long list of other politicians who have been felled by their lusts in recent years. Sen. John Ensign apologized for his affair just last week. N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer decapitated his political ambitions by frequenting prostitutes. John Edwards admitted to an affair with his campaign's videographer. Long ago when I worked in Washington, Rep. Wilbur Mills lost his powerful post by falling for an "Argentine Firecracker."

There seems to be some connection between the adulations and egotism of political life and the need or desire for sexual adventure. Presidents FDR, JFK, LBJ and Bill Clinton all had documented affairs, but only Clinton's was publicly known during their lifetimes. And you don't have to be American. Just look at the mess Italy's Silvio Berlusconi finds himself in. Recent escapades, including Sanford's, have been compounded by a stench of hypocrisy as the adulterous politicians have been defenders of traditional morality, marriage and fidelity. Sanford and Ensign were known as family values types. Spitzer, as attorney general, prosecuted public figures he deemed immoral. Edwards touted himself as the perfect loving husband and father.

Sanford gets some credit for being genuinely contrite and remorseful. He stood and answered questions, he went into details. He rambled on about the meaning of life, and he apologized to his wife, his children, his staff, legislators and everyone else he could think of. And he humbly admitted that what he had done was "wrong, period." That's a rare admission for any politician. I'll give him credit for that.

But if Sanford's political ambitions are not completely snuffed out, and he runs for another office, I suggest his theme song be "Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love?"

North Carolina: still humble but not apologizing

I had long ago heard North Carolina described as that "vale of humility between two mountains of conceit" (Virginia and South Carolina), but I never fully understood it until South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford explained it all to me Wednesday, when he returned from his quick jaunt to South America.

You see, we here in North Carolina had a guv-nuh was a bit old fashioned. He was interested in money. He wanted to take everything that wasn't tied down and fly off on fun vacations with his best pals, who were doing business with the state, and get his wife a lucrative job at N.C. State University. He also liked to drive other people's automobiles. The News & Observer got into quite an uproar about Guv-nuh Mike's excesses, and the U.S. attorney is subpoenaing everybody with a state government e-mail address. But Guv-nuh Mike was just going after a little money.

Guv-nuh Mark Sanford, on the other hand, was getting laid! Not only that, he was doing it with a foreigner, when, it has been pointed out, he could have helped the state economy by having his affair with a home-grown mistress. (What's he got against South Carolina women, anyway?) To top it off, after he finally had to confess that he wasn't hiking the Appalachian Trail (although he apparently did get a little exercise) and confess that it was all about the sex, he had the temerity to lecture the press and the whole darned state of South Carolina about morality and responsibility and forgiveness and sin and family and any darned thing else that happened to fall out of his confused mind.

(This might be a good place to ask that troubling question: What is it about Republican politicians? They can't stop playing around all the while they're preaching "family values." Sen. John Ensign just confessed to an affair last week. It's not all Republicans, though. Democrat Eliot Spitzer of New York found himself in a mess last year, too, and no one has forgotten Bill Clinton's interest in women of all types.)

We North Carolinians thought we had a pretty good scandal going with Mike Easley's free trips and his coastal real estate deal and his cars and his wife's $170,000 a year job, but we weren't even close. South Carolina just couldn't abide the thought that North Carolina would exceed South Carolina in something, even if it was a political scandal. So Mark Sanford, out of a sense of obligation to his state's pride, had to make up a cock-and-bull story about hiking when he was actually involved in a different verb altogether. And then he had to get caught in it and apologize to everybody he'd ever known.

We North Carolinians can at least take some pride in the fact that Mike Easley hasn't apologized, and he doesn't show any sign of doing it any time soon. Sanford might have had more fun doing what he did, but Easley is simply too humble, in keeping with state traditions, to confess to anything.