Mark Sanford: Governor In Lust

June 25, 2009

Mark Sanford and family, in better days.

Sometimes for a man in the midst of a passionate pursuit, the compass points in only one direction, south.

You might think we mean below the belt line, but now Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina has added new meaning to going south as he has added a new twist to the recent sordid history of male governors behaving badly.

Starting with the resignation of New Jersey governor James McGreevey in 2004, who shocked his constituents with the statement, “My truth is that I am a gay American,” to the bizarre case of Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York who was forced from office in March 2008, just fourteen months into his first term, after it was revealed that he was a frequent patron of a high-priced prostitution ring.

Yesterday, after having gone missing for nearly a week, South Carolina’s Sanford appeared before a mob of reporters and tearfully confessed that he was not hiking and enjoying the wilderness of the Appalachian Trail, as his staff had announced days earlier, but was actually pursuing a tryst with a woman in Buneos Aires. The governor’s pronouncement that the Argentine capitol is a “great city,” did not lessen the media’s interest in why the conservative Republican was pursuing a woman thousands of miles and 12 hours by air away from his home in Columbia, South Carolina.

The governor, who according to his staff, was unwinding after a long legislative session, actually flew the coop and left no one in charge prompting one legislator to ask, ”What would we have done if there had been a homeland security crisis?”

An outraged State Senator John Land told local reporters, “The governor’s office misled the media , the lieutenant governor, and the people of South Carolina. Never in my 32 years as a state senator have I witnessed a governor and his staff act in a more dishonest, secretive, and bizarre manner. There is something very wrong here and serious questions need to be asked about the governor’s six-day disappearance.”

Keep in mind that governors McGreevey and Spitzer pulled some pretty strange stunts of their own. Take the case of McGreevey for a start. Simply announcing that he was leaving the state’s first lady because in truth he was a gay man, as shocking to some as that may have been, was not the principle issue behind his resignation. McGreevey was facing ongoing questions about the credentials of several of his appointees, one of whom, Golan Cipel, a former Israeli naval officer and part time poet was chosen by McGreevey as one of the state’s top security advisors. Cipel and McGreevey traveled together frequently but their affair unraveled after the governor had to ask him to resign and Cipel threatened to sue him for sexual harassment.

Spitzer is equally strange because he built his political reputation on chasing down white collar criminals only to become embroiled in a high price prostitution ring that left lingering questions about what part of his recreational pursuits were funded from his own wealth and what portion was supported by redirected campaign contributions. Spitzer reportedly spent $80,000 on call girls. The son of real estate tycoon Bernard Spitzer, the former governor is now considering a career in philanthropy.

Now of course none of this takes into account other sexual scandals of the past decade from President Clinton to Idaho Senator Larry Craig. As more women move into prominent positions of leadership, from the senate to the state house, it leaves one to wonder if we will ever see this level of sexual misconduct among females. That appears unlikely if these past years provide any indication.

Perhaps it comes back to that same issue of direction, when it comes to sexual arousal, men start south and move north, while women take the reverse path, starting north and then heading south. Women appear to more carefully weigh the consequences of their sexual conduct, men on the other hand often are led by their desires and consider the consequences of their action thousands of miles, and won wrecked marriage later.

Click here to watch Governor Mark Sanford’s Press Conference:

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