S.Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s Extramarital Wanderlust
by Jim Washburn
It's hard work trying to save your state from receiving billions in desperately needed federal bailout money. Just ask South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who was so exhausted by the grueling fight with his state's legislature that he went on walkabout, disappearing from his office and home without so much a word as to where he was going or for how long. "He's hiking the Appalachian Trial," his office finally announced, when people noticed their state was without a governor. Healthy, outdoorsy, patriotic even. Davey Crockett probably did the same after some tough legislatin'.
Except, as we know now, the state vehicle he'd borrowed was found at an airport, where he'd been seen boarding a plane. "Oh, he went to Buenos Aires," his aides explained, when people were starting to notice that Sanford had left the state with no plan in place in case there was an emergency in his absence.
When Sanford returned, a reporter at the airport asked him what he'd been doing down there, and he explained he'd spent five days driving along the Buenos Aires coastline. After some other reporters found the coastal road was only a few miles long and started digging, Sanford called a press conference.
There seems to be a new unwritten law in Republican politics that an extramarital affair doesn't count if you call a press conference to admit to it at least five minutes before the news breaks in the press. Sanford did that, admitting to an affair with a "dear, dear friend" and saying he'd spent his five days there crying, which is evidently what one does in Argentina. If only that darned Obama and his free-spending ways hadn't driven Sanford to this!
