South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who’d been missing for several days, gave an incredible press conference this afternoon about his affair with a mystery woman in Argentina. Most of these affair admissions last minutes, no questions. But Sanford went on and on, taking questions, delivering long sonnets to the forbidden love between him and Miss Argentina. He spent the last few days with her holed up and “crying,”—a detail I’m sure his “absolute jewel” of a wife would love to know. He decided that yes, there was something “real” there ”from a heart level” but because of various obligations—his wife and also his “fiduciary relationship” with South Carolinians, he couldn’t go through with it. And then my favorite moment—he actually shushed the press so he could narrate the whole love story, including how they met. If anyone doubts that Christianity is going through a sexy moment, here is your proof. Their relationship started with him counseling her that she should go back to her husband and children because it’s “God’s law.” After that, things got steamy.

Tags: mark sanford affair, mark sanford press conference

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Absent from Gov. Mark Sanford's amazing press conference: His wife, Jenny. Present: A man so utterly in the middle of a self-made disaster that he had to process it in front of us. Could it have possibly been more mortifying? Hanna, you're right, Sanford just couldn't save himself from total mortification even when the press threw him a rope. In the middle of one of the most unfortunate and self-indulgent bits, when Sanford was going on about how he met his "dear dear friend," a reporter tried to ask a question. "Wait, let me finish," the governor said, holding up his hand. Oh no no. He should have gotten down on his knees to thank that reporter for cutting him off. And never, never uttered this made-for-late-night-TV line: "I spent the last five days of my life crying in Argentina."

What a completely bizarre combination of Too Much Information and vague obfuscation. Sanford apologized to an interminable list of people and groups, last and apparently least "people of faith across the nation." This was the confessional version of a bad Oscar speech. Sanford also talked about working with a Christian bible study group called C Street in Washington, D.C., over the past five months. Which he also said is how long his wife has known about his affair. Where did his AWOL trip to Argentina fit into the forgiveness and healing process? Last hurrah? Did he mislead his staff into saying he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail? Was his wife covering for him when she said he was off by himself writing? Or is writing the latest euphemism for having a fling with a South American chiquita?

Photograph of Mark Sanford by Davis Turner/Getty Images.

Tags: affair, argentina, mark sanford, south carolina

Emily, I suspect S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s wife, Jenny, was hinting at her husband’s infidelity during her interactions with the press while her husband was AWOL. If she were really putting up with his affair and trying to cover for him, wouldn’t she have said that she knew where he was but that he was trying to lay low? Laughed off the inquiries with a harmless quip about a slow news day? The “Where in the World Is Mark Sanford?” game was stoked in large part by the fact that even his wife couldn’t pinpoint his location on a map. Yesterday, she told CNN, “I am being a mom today. I have not heard from my husband. I am taking care of my children.” That sounds like a woman who knew exactly where her husband was and who he was with—and was tired of grinning and bearing it. And if that’s true, good for her—she didn’t expose their troubles, but she didn’t try to gloss over them, either.

Tags: Jenny Sanford, mark sanford, mark sanford affair

Perhaps South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was moved by the remarks of Sonia Sotomayor ("I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life"), and decided to study deeply the wisdom of a Latina woman. We now know from Sanford's press conference, at which he confessed to an affair with a woman in Argentina, that sometimes the only conclusion to reach about a white man is that he's nuts. Another lesson is that an affair that starts as an innocent exchange of e-mails—as Sanford says his did—should end with an e-mail exchange, and not a secret trip to Buenos Aires that is described as "hiking the Appalachian Trail," which will join "taking a wide stance" in the naughty politician's lexicon.

Tags: sanford affair press conference

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Hanna and Meghan, I guess that’s your answer to your debate about the pitfalls of the boring old “companionate marriage.” To hear Mark Sanford tell it, one day you’re home digging holes in the yard, the next you’re talking to some woman “about how she should get back with her husband for her two boys,” and then you’re swapping emails with her, and then, well ... “that whole sparking thing.”

This was truly one of the weirdest orations ever delivered, a sort of free-range ramble about everything from the breathtaking beauty of the Appalachian Trial (where he wasn’t) to his “fiduciary responsibilities” to his (apparently companionate) family. Hanna’s quite right that everything about the beloved mistress in Buenos Aires screams Passion! Love! Real thing! Yet when he talked about his wife, Jenny, Sanford mainly described her as a faithful workhorse and dutiful former campaign manager. Anyone wondering why Jenny wasn’t standing by her man today should probably consider that if he talks about her like she’s a sweat sock in public, things can’t be all that "sparky" back home.

Photograph of Mark Sanford by Davis Turner/Getty Images.

Tags: Mark Sanford Affair; press conference

Actually, what's odd to me about the Sanford train wreck is how long it took the national media to decide something was truly amiss in the increasingly bizarre explanations coming out of Sanford's office for the governor's disappearance. For a while, it seemed the press just wanted to chalk the whole incident up to Southern eccentricity. This is unfair to Southern eccentrics. Or maybe the press just didn't want to appear to pile on after the Ensign debacle; there's only so much family-values hypocrisy a country can take. But as a friend of mine joked yesterday, it was if Sanford had woken up in a hotel room with a tiger and a baby and was still trying to piece together a story of what happened for his staff.

To give credit where credit is due: Talking Points Memo has been trying to tell anyone who'd listen for the last two days that there was more to this saga than a guy just wanting some R&R. The site has repeatedly noted the oddity of any politician (especially one with presidential aspirations) wanting to spend more time "away" from his family (especially over Father's Day weekend) and predicting that "hiking the Appalachian trail" was about to become a famous euphemism for misbehavior. But this was all speculation. The truth still might not have outed were it not for Gina Smith, the enterprising, Nancy-Drew-style, sleuth reporter from The State newspaper, who decided on a hunch to go to the Atlanta airport and caught Sanford getting off a plane in the international terminal—thus forcing him to admit he'd been abroad. Up until then, Sanford's office had been sticking to the Appalachian alibi.

While I'm usually inclined to let politicians have a private life (even a messy one), it's obviously not okay for a governor to leave the country and be incommunicado for nearly a week without telling anyone where he was going or how to reach him, and with no contingency plan should a state emergency arise. Yet, the full extent of Sanford's irresponsibility might never have come to light were it not for Smith. It's a reminder of how much we count on local newspapers to keep politicians honest at the state and city level—and how much we're going to miss those reporters if and when their newspapers are gone.

Tags: argentina, Gina Smith, Hiking the Appalachian Trail, mark sanford, political affairs

A guest post from Double X intern Meredith Simons:

Sara, I agree that the way the truth about Sanford's whereabouts unfolded underscores the importance of local newspapers. But said local newspaper's release of e-mails between Sanford and Maria, the mysterious Argentinian, complicates things a little bit. The State's reporter didn't go to the Atlanta airport on a hunch. The paper had known since December that Sanford was having a transcontinental affair. And they had a McClatchy reporter on the ground in Argentina Wednesday, knocking on Maria's door just as the news broke in the States.

This raises all sorts of questions: Why did The State wait so long? Would they have released the e-mails (and sent someone to Argentina) if Sanford hadn't attracted attention to himself by disappearing? It's counterintuitive to suggest that a news organization would cover up such a huge story, but it's very strange that they let things go on as long as they did. After all, they've known about Maria for more than six months, and they had no way of knowing that the press corps was about to get caught up in a game of "Where in the World is Mark Sanford?" So what were they waiting for?

Tags: mark sanford, the state

How about a poll, XXers. Which worse: Your husband turns out to be Client Number 9, Eliot Spitzer's code name in the prostitution scandal; or your husband, Governor Mark Sanford, writes erotic e-mails to his dear Argentinian friend, Maria, such as this:

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light—but hey, that would be going into sexual details.

As Stephen Sondheim wrote so many years ago, "Maria. I just kissed a girl named Maria."

Place your vote in the comments section below.

Tags: Eliot Spitzer, mark sanford

Mark Sanford's shocking presser from this afternoon is all anyone can talk about. Salon's Gary Kamiya admires Sanford for going off-script, and describes the Governor's confession as "so intimate it was almost unwatchable." Politico is reporting that Sanford went to Argentina on South Carolina's nickel back in 2002, but it's unclear if his relationship with "Maria" had already begun at that point. Gawker's Alex Pareene described it as a "bravura live political meltdown," and semi-congratulated Sanford for not blaming others for his philandering.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out the video of Sanford's confession below and let us know what you think.

Also, check out Double X's photo gallery putting Sanford's apology in the context of the recent spate of philandering pols' statements.

Tags: argentina, embarrassment, mark sanford, mark sanford affair, press conference

“We careened… from not having enough information about the governor to having too much. Way too much,” says Ruth Marcus at the Washington Post. “There was Sanford talking about ‘that whole sparking thing’ and ‘serious overdrive.’ Really, if Sanford’s sparking, I don’t want to know about it, whatever drive he’s in.”

Well, neither do I. But you can’t blame Sanford for the fact that Americans demand their married, male politicians report any deviation from a “normal” sex life. He gave us an epic, fall-from-grace religious narrative because the governor of South Carolina, for whatever reason, is held to a particular standard of sexual conduct—one that does not allow for meaningless dalliances. The remarkable thing about Sanford is how fervently he seems to buy into the justness of this demand; unlike, say Bill Clinton, or Larry Craig, he never seemed bitter at some perceived violation of privacy. If it seemed more like a therapy session than a press conference, perhaps its because Sanford gave so willingly what his audience was demanding.

Looking over the Double X gallery of post-coital apologies, it occurs to me that we don’t really have a model for unfaithful politicians of the other sex. Would a woman in Sanford’s place, with four boys and a saintly husband at home, have had to confess on national television? Would we be comfortable with the press policing the sexual behavior of a young and powerful female politico?

Tags: mark sanford