Thanks for writing this. I agree. And when you compare it to the years-long dissembling, denials, personal attacks and threats engaged in by Bill Clinton, there is a stark contrast. Bill Clinton is still being slimy. His quasi-admission only came after all other efforts failed. It is difficult not to see Sanford as someone genuinely sorry attempting to apologize for what he knows was wrong. There are very few in politics these days that are that genuine. Yet you could see people behind him smirking and smiling. It was galling to me.

Watching this hypocrite that spent his time doing what you're doing now, squirm on television, reading his besotten emails and awaiting his eventual drumming-out is delicious. You and others like you have been moralizing on everything from same-sex marriage to the economy to the right to die with dignity. You've inserted your narrow, racist, pontificating noses into every issue of personal morality, and have been the less for it. Now, like you do with your demoralizing political losses, you nurse your defeat and wrap yourselves in false nobility and heriosm.

You gurantee your defeat by your low, vile, tasteless attacks and your depicable political tactics, I've said before that the RepubliKLAN will be lucky if they see a three-seat come-up in the next twelve years.

Now I think it may be sixteen.

Jim Simpson:

Thanks for writing this. I agree. And when you compare it to the years-long dissembling, denials, personal attacks and threats engaged in by Bill Clinton, there is a stark contrast. Bill Clinton is still being slimy. His quasi-admission only came after all other efforts failed. It is difficult not to see Sanford as someone genuinely sorry attempting to apologize for what he knows was wrong. There are very few in politics these days that are that genuine. Yet you could see people behind him smirking and smiling. It was galling to me.

Sanford gave his teary "confession" for the same reason as Bill Clinton and Larry Craig and Mark Foley, etc. HE GOT CAUGHT! His cybersex emails were being held over his head; his wife dumped him -- and this week was the denoument.

Sanford's weeping might have carried some resonance if he'd admitted he was wrong to rail out for so many years against the "immorality" of non-republicans. But that will always impossible for any Republican.

I think you are forgetting that reality has a decidedly liberal bias.

Mark 20:2-12 Sanford did not genuinely apologize for anything. In fact, if his rambling confessions revealed anything, it was that he found himself in a situation that he was no longer in control of in any way shape or form and he was totally unprepared for being in that position.

Let's review: Sanford abandoned his office. Sanford abandoned his wife. Sanford abandoned his kids. It was father's day weekend and he had disappeared. Before he got back from Argentina it was already obvious that his silly excuse of hiking the Appalachian trails was bogus and nobody in the press was buying it any more.

Now let's add to that the fact that after he got to Argentina and was able to watch this Maria woman "hold her things in the moonlight" he got the news that not only is his wife leaving him because of Maria, but Maria is going back to her husband.

Ouch.

This was not someone genuinely sorry attempting to apologize for what he knows was wrong. That would have been Clinton, publicly apologizing to his wife for what a little bumpy bump with a female intern that threw herself at him. What Clinton did with Monica almost didn't even qualify as sex in the legal terms the Grand Jury Prosecutors defined sex to be. Sanford was ducking in and out of the country for more than a year in his pursuit of this woman.

Clinton put his life with his wife and his daughter back together. Sanford didn't even try. Clinton can do with out Hillary if he wanted to - they are both independently wealhty. Sanford is going to find himself in pretty dire straits now that his wife (and her father) have cut up Mark's credit cards.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the slime here is Sanford, not Clinton.

What you lack is perspective.

The compare-and-contrast is interesting, beyond the expected 'gotcha' moments that practically write themselves in situations like this (Spitzer being a big one in NY as an example).

But we must recall, I think, the role of using public resources in this discussion. The press wondered 'where is Sanford?" and the story came out. A tax-payer funded prosecutor was allowed to ask President Clinton under oath questions that had absolutely zero relevance to the prosecution topic at hand. It would be as if Democrats had control and set up an inquiry into President Bush's financial dealings and were able to ask him, under oath, about his cocaine use.

Clinton was an adulterer, as was (is?) Sanford (and by the strict reading of Jesus in Matthew 19:8, so was Ronald Reagan). But the government should not spend its funds seeking out who-cheats-on-whom unless a law is broken (e.g. polygamy or age violations).

It seems the author is urging his readers to have "empathy" for Mr. Sanford. I was under the recent impression that Republicans thought empathy was a liberal value and had no place in the political and legal marketplace. Mr. Sanford proved this, by trying to deny the federal stimulus money that was going to keep teachers of his own state (often referred to as "constituents") employed.

oh please

he tried to sneak into the country

& when caught , was making it up on the fly in his press conference. it's not that difficult to understand. don't cry for me argentina.

Jim, we've seen lots of personal misbehavior in high office holders in recent years. The problem is less with the public's glee over the mighty falling than you seem to think. It's the public's astute understanding that if you campaign on, say, a no-tax-increase platform and then gleefully increase taxes all over the place you CAN'T BE TRUSTED.

Clinton didn't campaign on being a good husband. Hillary specifically advised us that she wasn't a 'stand by her man' kind of wife. In the end, he wasn't faithful, and she did stand beside him. They turned out to be slightly more family-value honest than they claimed.

But Newt Gingrich, David Vitter, Mark Sanford,Henry Hyde, Jim Gibbons, etc. all claimed to be of impeccable personal ethics and campaigned on a platform of equating personal morality with public good. All failed in personal morality. They were guilty of sanctimonious behavior. And that's why there's glee over Sanford's. It's not the adultery, it's the hypocricy.

What you have said is so incredibly off point and totally stupid that I almost couldn't believe it.

Every time a republican screws up, some right wing malcontent says that Clinton was worse.

Its almost like Clinton gives you guys an excuse to behave badly, how childish.