Thursday Must-Reads: Digging for Angles

This week’s unraveling of Mark Sanford’s career may not be the most substantive of stories, but it sure is fascinating. Ever since the South Carolina’s governors announcement yesterday afternoon that he’s been having an affair with an Argentinian woman, writers have been digging up fresh angles—it’s about the only political news anyone’s writing about. But hey, at least that gives me an excuse to write about it, too. The most lurid (though not that lurid, really) and least relevant item to come to light are these emails that Sanford and the woman have sent back and forth. Then there are the stories about who won and who lost. And pretty much every major news outlet has some version of this story about how every GOP presidential hopeful has hit road bumps. More instructive for the campaign types are the round-ups of previous painful media moments (take notes on what not to do!). Notably, Sanford—just like Sen. John Ensign last week—appeared without his wife, a big change from previous confessions of political infidelity. It turns out in many ways Jenny Sanford has been one of her husband’s top political advisers, but she’s showing strong independence now, issuing her own press statement. In the background of this spectacle, people are still fascinated by the president, who Republicans are now trying to portray as too political. Or maybe it’s too virtuous. Whichever.