Don't Cry For Me, South Carolina

The Mark Sanford saga gets weirder by the hour...

Holy crap. This past weekend, I thought this was the most un-newsworthy story I'd heard this year, but today it's rapidly devolved into an enigmatic quagmire. Giggity.

Apparently, the Gov wasn't actually off getting raped by naked mountain people like we all thought he was on Monday. As one poster commented, "In all fairness to his aides, 'I'm getting some Argentinian tail' sounds a lot like 'I'm hiking the Appalachian trail' when you're on a fuzzy satelite[sic] phone connection. Who hasn't had that kind of innocent misunderstanding?"

Affairs are nothing new, and they happen all the time. Sure, it's easy for us to throw stones -- and this is a BIG target. But if you're the Governor of the buckle on the Bible Belt AND the president of the Republican Governor's Association... well, I guess he did relegate his sinful ways to a foreign country at the far end of a foreign continent... but c'mon, did we learn nothing from the lessons of Bill C.? "Excuse me while I whip this out" will not get you to the White House in 2012. Thank you, drive through.

I like the fact that he did stand up when called to the carpet, and in front of God and everybody proclaimed the shameful truth. He could have done the ol' Democrat Shuffle, but he just laid it all out there. That took a certain measure of testicular fortitude. ::golf clap::

However, the future is now immeasurably bleak for the Gov. One of a mere handful of Republican contenders for DC: 2012, he has surely shot himself in the ass. Hate to say, but I'll bet you before the week is out we'll hear the "I" word emanating from the Senate Chamber.

And it is unfortunate because, while we consistently denigrate politicians as lying, smarmy lowlifes who are not to be believed or trusted, we simultaneously hold them to some ridiculous moral standard and rip 'em to shreds when they fail to live up. We do this regardless of the fact that personal frailties and private foibles have precious little to do with the job. I'll bet Gary Hart is somewhere laughing his ass off right now.

(Which brings up a tangential point: You think a cripple in a wheelchair who doesn't look so good on TV could ever be elected President of the United States again? I mean, it's front-page news when a presidential candidate has an appointment with the cardiologist, for chrissakes. F.D.R. wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell today, yet we elected him to FOUR effin' terms just sixty-odd years ago because a majority of folks weighed the issues and decided he was the best candidate for the job. My, how our priorities changed.)

OK, so the Gov's no Brad Pitt, but if I'm going all the way to Argentina for some piece and quiet, it had better be jumping out of a cake, landing on my randy johnson, and spinning around with sparklers and a horn section. I can't wait to see this gal. She better be like eleven times hotter than that Angelina chick.

He should have just taken a page from Laura Bush and kept it all to himself. Giggity goo.

-=B