Romance in a governor's life

Reading Gov. Mark Sanford's emails to his Argentine affairee, I couldn't help but feel a sense of tragedy for the Governor. I quote the e-mails, from The State

Gov. Sanford
I also don’t want you walking20away (sic) from some guy (I take it the younger guy you mentioned a t dinner) because of me — and what we both have to see as an impossible situation. I better stop now least this really sound like the Thornbirds — wherein I was always upset with Richard Chamberlain for not dropping his ambitions and running into Maggie’s arms. The bottom line is two fold, my heart wants me to get on a plane tonight and to be in your loving arms — my head is saying how do we put the Genie back in the bottle because I sure don’t want to be encumbering you, or your options or your life. Put differently, given I love you, I don’t want to be part of the reason you are having less than an ideal week in what sounds like a cool spot.

Lastly I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never certainly never covered before — so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know ... In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul. I love you ... sleep tight. M


Not sure what to make of it all.. but it does make one wonder about:

a. The False Romance of Infidelity: The most frightening movie I have seen in recent times in Unfaithful. The spiral of tragedy when someone crosses a line they should not have.... something is broken irreparably, and the world is a sadder place.

b. Infidelity is Rife. One commonly cited paper is Atwood & Schwarz (2002) which suggests that 50-60% of men and 45-55% of married women have an extra marital affair at some point in their life. In many of these cases, the driver is the need to feel emotionally connected to another person.

c. The Inevitability of It All. It seems a standard recipe. Person A establishes a position of moral superiority, Person A is caught in a damaging moral situation. US politics seems especially prone to this cycle. Clearly, expectations of behavior are not in sync with the reality of human weakness. What happens next? It's absurd that one appears doomed to repeat this cycle over and over again.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Gov. David Paterson, Sen. John Ensign and now this.


Let me point out that this type of expose never, never happens in India. I am under no illusions that politicians from India are cut from a cleaner cloth. It's just that either the quality of public expectations or the quality of public debate preclude this from being an item of public discussion. All you hear are dark rumours of how somebody is with young women, and now and then the ocassional mysterious reopening of a criminal case.

It's all a mystery to me.