Mark Sanford, would you please go now?

If he were a woman, the next step would be to pose for Playboy. But why not? Maybe on a bear rug.

He was in the wrong, no excuses or equivocations. He obviously had some unhappiness which he met in an improper way. But, are we permitted to ask _why_ he was unhappy? May we ask if his wife was putting much energy or imagination or warmth into the relationship? Interesting that this never gets asked. If even mentioning this constitutes oafishness or insensitivity, I regret it and stand corrected.

john -

Is it really our business, particularly if we only get one side of the story? They have four boys. His wife also put a huge amount of effort into his political career. I don't really want to hear his excuses.

Who here has been to Argentina? There are more beautiful women there per capita than any other place on earth - no question. It is unbelievable. The boy, Sanford, was a sweet obsessed kid in a candy shop. Give him a break. I am not excusing his behavior, but I understand . . . much more so than I understand Bill Clinton's indiscretions: Sienna Miller (most any Aregentine) vs. Rosanne Barr (Monica Lewinskey). What a contest! Barney Frank and his bugger buddies? Forget it. What is the legal term? Attractive nuisance? Get off your high horses. If the home life is nirvana, neither will stray.

So remind me again, Rod... why is that conservative, Bible-thumping fools like Sanford, Ensign and Larry Craig (you got to love the ex-senator from Idaho!) can trash the concept and meaning of marriage with their goofy private lives but still rail against gays and lesbians from marrying. A little hypocrisy there, no?

And I'm just curious, why haven't you called in your blog for Sanford to resign? If you did so for Clinton (or at least, wanted impeachment), I would then expect at least the same reaction to this creep.

I think that holier-than-thou religious conservatives just need to keep their traps shut on issues like gay marriage. Is that why the poll numbers for support of gay marriage are going up so much?? Opposition to gay marriage is becoming a real joke when you have people like Ensign and Sanford as leaders.

Dear Mark Sanford: Too much information.

And Eliot Spitzer isn't helping his cause by telling someone "I didn't fall in love with any of them" (while I was doing something illegal and immoral).
Well then-- I feel so much better....

You guys got it all wrong.

The 'soulmate' line was directed towards his wife. He wants out but he wants her to do it. He's taunting her through the press.

He's a coward.

I am not the least bit impressed with Sanford's behavior or his sharing intimacies. I also believe in loyalty and commitment where love and certainly marriage is involved and have never violated a sacred trust therein. And I also believe that children deserve to have parents who sacrifice for their greater good in the name of good and God. I cannot imagine anything that would make me risk losing my 4 children.

That said, to deny that someone can fall in love with someone else when they are married to someone else has no useful purpose other than avoiding the obvious. If I had a nickel for everyone I have seen who, despite being 'happily married' found themselves in love with someone else despite every effort to not do so...and past history supporting their historic fidelity... I could rent a time share in Maui.

Sanford is merely one more human being who had loved his mate and one day found himself in an arrangement at home that was more about responsibility than the evolution of devout love. It can hardly be news to any adult who looks at life rather than runs from it that people do outgrow each other, as tragic and harmful as this can be. And no few act on this in their 40s. Rod, you know many examples yourself of those who were blindsided by the loss of what they believed was their lifelong earthly partner. You blogged last year about a friend whose wife had left him, a man who cried on your shoulder.

When my mother left my father after 25 years, he never got over it. He had been 31 and she 19 when they fell in love at first sight. Dad mourned losing her until the day he died. It came down to this: My father only loved once in his life while Mother loved twice. She suffered greatly telling him she wanted a divorce. But it was long overdue because at that point, it was not about them, it was strictly about us...the two kids. And we were old (11 and 14) enough to understand that the life of our parents cannot only revolve around and be about us. We adapted to the sad transition.

I feel for his wife, but who are we to judge? Really. The man is discovering who he is and being led by love. What really is the problem? If he loves the woman, then perhaps he needs to be with her. How can we condemn him? Love is messy, life is messy. Love is it's own justification is it not?

Rod, you left out what was to me the most jaw-dropping part of that AP interview. However, it's not surprising given that the AP story didn't include it and the only reason I'm aware of it is that I happened to be listening to Curtis Sliwa's program on the drive home from work tonight. Sliwa played an audio clip in which the Governor tells the interviewer that one way a situation like his could be resolved was with "a bullet to her head."

Sliwa was incredulous, and I can understand why. Mark Sanford is obviously a person who is, at best, a person with very poor judgment where speaking to the press is concerned, and at worst... well, the jury's still out on that. I've done a Google search and can't find the quote or the exact context anywhere yet, which is remarkable given its potentially explosive nature. But I know that Sanford did use those words.

Perhaps someone else here was listening to Sliwa's show and can put the remark in the proper context? (Maybe he was referring to a childhood dog that had contracred rabies and I did in fact misunderstand his meaning...)

Sanford left his job, unannounced, for almost a week.
This is the scandal - everybody else would be fired for this.
He is now re-paying money to the state for a mostly private trip.
OK, ---> resign ! What other conclusion is there ???

Sex scandals are just childish chit chat meant to distract the public.

Now I see that Sanford, the public moralist, has had a history of affairs and deception. This man is to be trusted running a state? WHY don't Republicans demand that these hypocrites get out? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?

Who here has been to Argentina? There are more beautiful women there per capita than any other place on earth - no question. It is unbelievable.

I'm buying my plane ticket tonight, and telling my wife that I'm going on a business trip! :D

I think most married people would be lying if they said they had never been attracted to someone else in the course of their marriage. Contrary to popular belief, God did not place just one person on this earth they you can fall in love with (soul-mate????). However, when you do fall in love and marry, He expects you to be faithful and to flee temptation. Sanford ignored God and pursued a forbidden relationship. And I don't know how His wife will ever be able to stay with Him after the public idiot he's making of himself.

Where is the religious establishment, calling on him to obey his marriage vows? Where were they with Mel Gibson? Where are all the people who protest abortion, or gay marriage, when something like this happens. Adultery/divorce is the #1 family and moral issue of our time, yet no one from the Christian leadership is speaking up about what this idiot Sanford is doing. It's disgusting.

This is actually a pretty good question. Where are all the loud public moralists??? There is no shortage of Christian leaders to tell us at the top of their lungs what God thinks of gays and gay marriage...so where are they now, if they're so interested in protecting marriage?

That said, to deny that someone can fall in love with someone else when they are married to someone else has no useful purpose other than avoiding the obvious. If I had a nickel for everyone I have seen who, despite being 'happily married' found themselves in love with someone else despite every effort to not do so...and past history supporting their historic fidelity... I could rent a time share in Maui.

Of course.

But the underlying fallacy here is the idea that being "in love" justifies breaking a solemn vow made to someone else. Oh, and the idea that being "in love" is a sort of zombie-hood, where you completely lose control of your emotions and your actions.

Marriage is not all about "being in love." Human beings being what we are, "in love" is usually a transient state. It comes and it goes. (Wait long enough, and it will come around again, by the way.) If it's all about "stay together as long as you are still in love" we don't need to make promises, do we. Promises are why you stay around during those periods when you are NOT "in love" or when you are, God forbid, "in love" with someone else.

I've heard enough from Mark Sanford to be convinced that if he divorces his wife and runs off with his Argentinian squeeze, by the way, that in due course he will proclaim that he is not "in love" with her any more either, but with someone else. Who he will then demand to marry.

The problem person here is not the wife.

There are four children in this picture, children whose welfare must be considered ahead of the welfare or alleged welfare of the adults. That's the First Law of Adulthood, right? That's the acid test. That's how you tell adults from children. Adults believe, and act on the belief, that the welfare of children is more important than the welfare of adults.

Because. Because they are innocent, and didn't ask to be brought into this situation. Because they are the future. Because adults who didn't take this attitude didn't have HAVE surviving children, and are now out of the gene pool.

Btw, Mr. Dreher, that was a nice Dr. Seuss tie-in. "Gov. Mark Sanford, Would You Please Go Now ?"

Somewhere Else, Theodore Geisel is probably smiling at you.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Your Name @ 11:17 AM writes:

“Ralph, he may also be acting on legal advice. Any divorce attorneys there" Milord Karth?”

I don’t practice in South Carolina; I’m in central New York. I also don't do divorce work, not since '97 or so. But you’re very kind to think of me.

In any event, if I was so unfortunate as to be Gov. Sanford’s matrimonial counsel, I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t advise him to do what he’s doing. Every word he utters in public just buries him deeper. Assuming that he IS acting under advice from counsel, I’d have to say that he’s anticipating a jury trial, and he’s trying to muck up the waters by tainting any possible jury pool—“pre-infecting” them, so to speak. If all these allegations are “old news” by the time that the matter goes to trial, any jurors dealing with that particular case may give that testimony a bit less weight when they decide who gets the divorce and how much gets awarded and who gets custody. It decreases the emotional impact on the jury.

The most likely benefit to him would be increased access to his minor-age children. His wife has an open-and-shut case on getting the divorce, and he’s going to get crucified on the issue of asset distribution.

It’s an interesting tactic, but I wouldn’t recommend it for very many cases, myself.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

I heard somewhere that Mrs. Sanford has more than ample assets of her own. If this is true, asset allocation might not be on the top of anyone's mind.

My opinion? I think he's just a dork, no further analysis needed.

Winston, that's hilarious. Well played, sir.

Mark Sanford is a complete jackass. End of story.

Lord Karth, thanks for the giggle at 11:02 AM. You and I rarely agree, but you sure started my morning out with a giggle! At this rate, no doubt we can expect the made-for-TV-movie in the next few years or so…

I think Andrea is right on target. I've seen this dynamic at work elsewhere. The man wants his freedom, but doesn't want to take responsibility for a divorce. So he goes on a passive-aggressive campaign to humiliate his wife until she snaps and does the dirty work herself. Then he can tell everybody, "Gee, I dunno what happened. Sure I made some mistakes, but I was willing to work on the marriage! She just went all crazy on me and insisted on a divorce." Being able to play the victim-of-divorce card will help him with his constituency, too, if he wants to stick with the religious right platform.

Like Bill Clinton and others, Sanford seems to regard himself as indispensible. It like they're saying: I made a mistake and doesn't everybody once in while. There's several million people in South Carolina and aren't there at least a few who are as competent as Sanford sees himself to be and who haven't made a mistake that big? This guy has shown himself to have absolutely no judgement even in matters of personal survival. How could he have believed that his disappearing act to South America could have not ended badly? He appears to be clueless and should not be trusted with anything let alone running a whole state.