Bullet dodged

Obviously the big political news of the day was the bizarre story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s attempt at a secret jaunt to Buenos Aires (over Father’s Day, no less!) to tryst with his mistress—news that was especially painful coming so soon after the revelation of Senator (R-NV) John Ensign’s extramarital affair (a revelation that came only when the husband he’d cuckolded tried to extort money from him). Aside from saying that the GOP will be better off when neither of these two men represent it in any significant way, the only comment I trust myself to offer is this: I am deeply grateful that the speculation last summer that Sanford might be John McCain’s running mate did not bear fruit. Whether it was Sen. McCain’s instincts or A. B. Culvahouse’s vetting, it’s a very good thing that the old maverick went another way; for all the attempts to convince people that Sarah Palin hurt the ticket, if Sanford had been on it, this would all have blown up and the campaign would have been over before the convention.

Oh, and one other thing: the worst sort of hypocrite is the sort who uses their hypocrisy for personal gain, and the worst type of those would have to be those who use it to gain political power. There but for the grace of God go I, I know, but I pray that my soul is never so twisted that I can really comprehend how a man can leave his wife to raise his children while he jets off to another country to have sex with another woman. I know, I am a man, nothing human is alien to me—but I don’t really understand that, and I don’t want to understand that. That’s not the treason of Judas, but it’s not too far short of it, and Judas looks too uncomfortably familiar to me as it is.