Mark Sanford seems eager to talk about his sex life:
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday that he "crossed lines" with a handful of women other than his mistress — but never had sex with them. The governor said he "never crossed the ultimate line" with anyone but Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine at the center of a scandal that has derailed his once-promising political career.
"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."
Why is Sanford so eager to talk up his sexcapades and heartache? Because he knows that people will -- and should -- ultimately forgive his human frailty. His sex life is none of our business, except insofar as it impacts his public duties, or when it demonstrates his rank hypocrisy.
Sanford knows he's crossed far over the line on both the hypocrisy front and the public duties front. The last thing he wants to talk about is his erratic behavior, his attempt to spend 10-days AWOL in Argentina, or his misuse of authority to arrange a trade mission to visit his mistress.
So instead, he decides to blab about his sex life in a disparate attempt to distract attention from the real issue: his breach of the public trust as governor.