It's Not Just A Republican Thing

Kathleen Parker wrote an interesting column on the revelation of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's infidelity.  Here's an excerpt:

A wise man once said that love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

No one who managed to get through the torture of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's news conference admitting to an affair would disagree.

Yes, I know, shocking. Another Republican affair. Next thing you know, we'll learn that a Democrat hasn't paid his taxes. There does seem to be a pattern of failure in those matters about which people purport to care most.

If we were feeling charitable, we might say something about man's fallen nature and his attempt to repair himself through public works. Thus, Republicans touting family values can't seem to stay zipped. Democrats raising taxes can't seem to spare the change come April.  

I'd quibble, though, with the (probably unintentional) inference that infidelity is a GOP-centric failing.  After the misadventures of Kwame Kilpatrick, Eliot Spitzer, Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton himself, you'd sprain your cheekbones trying to make that argument with a straight face.  I think it's truer to say - and this may have been what she meant - that when infidelity shows up in the party of so-called "family values," it brings with it a stench of hypocrisy you don't get when Democrats do the same thing.  The odor is particularly rank in this instance, considering that Sanford famously called for Clinton to resign when the president was found to be a lying scumdog.  That's something Sanford, now revealed as a lying scumdog himself, has declined to do.

That said, I don't either party can really claim the moral high ground on the question of infidelity.  To the contrary, the political boneyard is littered with the careers of Democrats and Republicans who could not keep it zipped.  To which the only proper response is to keep  shaking your head and marveling at the seemingly boundless capacity of great men for stupid and self-destructive behavior. 

Somewhere, I guarantee you, some Republican senator is even now hoisting a glass and whispering, "There but for the grace of God..."  To which the Democratic congressman at his side is saying, "Amen."