Um, I meant "more on Sanford."  Freudian slip.  Anyway, three additional thoughts about this, the gist of which you can probably already figure out:

(1) Sanford might have survived a garden variety affair, even with some Presidential aspirations intact.  But add the disappearance, the lie about his whereabouts, and the fact that he had gone halfway around the globe for this, and I feel pretty comfortable thinking he's done.  Thinking that he could jet off to Argentina for a weekend for an affair and that no one would know is pretty amazingly poor judgment.

(2) There's probably only about seven or eight hundred people who serve as Governor, Senator, or Representative in a given decade.  That's a pretty select group of people.   I know a lot of people with about that many Facebook friends, and I'm guessing I've been relatively well acquainted with a pretty decent multiple of that number in my life.

Yet from that relatively small sample, in the last decade alone we have sex scandals from Sanford, Paul Patton, John Ensign, John Edwards, Jim McGreevey, Ed Schrock, Don Sherwood, Eliot Spitzer, Gary Condit, Mark Foley, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Vito Fossella, and Tim Mahoney.  Those are just off the top of my head.  And a good number of those aren't your run-of-the-mill affairs; they're first-rate flameouts.

Maybe I'm just naive, maybe I lead a boring, mundane life, but I don't think there's too many random samples of 700 people in America where you'd get two people who consorted with prostitutes, a guy who tried to solicit a prostitute in an airport bathroom, a guy who jetted off to Argentina for an affair, a guy who choked his mistrees, a person who has TGIF Specials with his wife and best friend and puts his lover in a pretty important patronage position, to say nothing of the few mundane affairs in the mix.  I've met a lot of people in my personal and professional life, and dealing with lawyers I've especially dealt with some difficult personalities, and I can only think of a handful of stories I've heard that even approach this stuff.

And even if I'm wrong about this and the sample is representative, few of those people would be in the public eye.  To me that's the most amazing thing about this -- not so much that Eliot Spitzer paid a prostitute, but that he thought that as Governor he had a decent chance of not ever getting caught (because if there's any group of Americans known for their honesty and discretion, its prostitutes).  Heck, three of the people on the list above were prospective Presidential candidates -- John Edwards was apparently carrying on during a Presidential campaign.  John Ensign was gearing up for one.  And again (sorry if I keep repeating this, but it blows my mind) Sanford disappeared for a weekend to Argentina to have an affair, while he was in the semi-Presidential spotlight.  And he thought that he might get away with it. And of course there's an actual President who thought that a 21-year-old, starstruck intern would keep her mouth shut.

If one has any faith in the rationality of man, one has to think that the higher degree of scrutiny politicians are subjected to would deter such behavior.  I guess there's an offsetting "rock star" quotient that might give more opportunities for affairs than the average person.  But again, most of these aren't just average, everyday affairs of the Jim Bunn or Tim Hutchinson variety.  They're stunning displays of hubris and stupidity.

So I find it really, really disturbing that so many people who are in charge of so many important things -- potentially even with a finger on a nuclear trigger -- display such amazingly poor judgment so frequently.  On the other hand, I guess it also explains a lot.

(3) As a good friend just quipped, Republicans need to consider adding a "keep it in your pants" pledge to the "no taxes" pledge.

UPDATE:  Tom just posted Jenny Sanford's statement, which is simply fantastic.  And I guess this explains why his family didn't know, and it raises the possibility that he didn't travel to Argentina just to have an affair; it could have been to end things (of course, a telephone call would have raised fewer suspicions).  I don't think my bottom line is changed any though -- its amazing the number of politicians in the national spotlight who feel they can get away with stuff like this.

UPDATE2:  Aaaaand Sanford wrote e-mails to his paramour from his government account, which a newspaper has obtained.  Apparently Sanford was carrying on while he was being considered as a Vice Presidential candidate.  And apparently ellipses are the only form of punctuation in Argentina.