Wednesday, June 24, 2009

He'll Be Back, And That's Okay

I spent a good bit of the day cooking, but I admit that every moment I wasn't up to my elbows in food, I was feasting on the salacious tidbits about the Trailblazer. I therefore regard myself as fully qualified to pontficate on a couple of points.

One, he'll be back. In a world that gave us Bill Clinton, Dave Vitter, Gavin Newsom and Newt Gingrich (again and again and again)-and where even Eliot Spitzer seems positioning himself for a comeback--I'd say that Sanford's purely pneumatic vices are not much more than routine. And in the unvarnished hypocrisy sweepstakes, I suspect Sanford pretty small potatoes compared to last week's 90-minute wonder. There do seem to be some real issues here--e.g., who was in charge while the governor was off on a frolic? But this particular bit of wonkiness--like Bill Clinton's lying under oath--is not the reason we are all un an uproar.

And two, tht's okay with me that he come back. Not that I'm that crazy about his politics (though I concede that he is more interesting than most products of the Republican cookie cutter). But forget the pure politics andremember, for once, what we tell ourselves every time we plunge into a new sleazefest: this stuff really isn't any of our business to begin with, and the mere fact that Mark Sanford (eg) happened to be a public official does not make it so. Maybe someday we will get so jaded with this stuff that we will come to greet it with a theraputic yawn. Meanwhile, I have to concede this morning I hung on every saucy detail.

Update: Yes, and John Edwards, but we haven't seen his comeback attempt yet.

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