Well time certainly has not been kind to Governor Sanford. The liver spots, eye bags, weak chin, and receding hairline are hardly eye candy. Sanford looks like he is at least 10 years older than he is on a good day, more than that on a bad one. Take away his wife's money, his position and power and he'd have a hard time getting laid without paying for it.

The Democrats have a pretty good record on their view of sexual hypocrisy in leaders. It seems to me that Democrats dumped Spitzer immediately because of his hypocrisy. He prosecuted prostitution while patronizing it. So he was a special case among Democrats--someone who had set himself up in the matter of sex for anyone with an ounce of moral sensibility to say, Out of the question. OTOH, Clinton acknowledged his flaws. What he did was way dumb and even unethical behavior with a young person, but not hypocritical. Re Edwards, his own inner circle has turned on him, because they find his conduct so egregious--they have realized he is a gold plated phony, and they don't like it. So I think the Democrats are reasonably even handed in their abhorrence of sexual phoniness and hypocrisy (recall that Edwards ran on his great marriage, in part, and cited religion as a reason not to support gay marriage). I'm sure there are those who will send examples of claimed exceptions, but I see here considerable consistency in the way Democrats approach sexual hypocrisy.

I seem to recall that the Democratic party nominated the candidate about whom there is no suggestion of scandal and who appears to be happily married to his wife and a pretty good father to his daughters, and that that's the guy the country elected president. Not the other guy, who divorced his first wife to marry a richer model and who most likely played the field during his second marriage.

And when the reason Republicans seem to get criticized for these personal failings more than Democrats do is not because of their views or "expressions of Biblical homilies" but because they continue to enact state and federal law reflecting those views. Thus most women in this country have no access to safe and legal abortion anywhere near where they live, most states and the entire federal government permits and encourages discrimination against gays and lesbians and their families, and the federal government has interfered with states' rights to an unprecedented degree to keep my marriage different from and subordinate to yours.

I don't care what a person believes and how far that person's actions stray from his beliefs. But I do care when those beliefs are made into laws that hurt others -- but not the person who has sponsored and supports the law, no matter how far he strays. No matter what Gov. Sanford does, the people in his state aren't about to vote to revoke his marriage license and the federal government isn't going to start withholding all the benefits that flow to him, his estranged wife, and his children, because of his very public adultery. That's the rub.