Speechless. Stunned. Incredulous.

And yet, should I be?

Yes, he was missing for six days. Yes, his staff kept giving conflicting stories as to where he was. And yes, such circumstances certainly suggested some kind of tomfoolery was going on.

But when Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina widely seen as a Republican presidential hopeful for 2012, stood before the cameras today in Columbia and confessed to an ongoing affair with a woman in Argentina, we could have fallen off our chairs. He was not, as he apparently told his staff, hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

In a surreal press conference, where for some inexplicable reason his aides allowed him to show up without a prepared text and even take questions from the media (!), Sanford apologized to his wife and family, to his staff and his state and his party, and resigned as chair of the Republican Governors Association.

He is term limited for 2010 and he only has a year and a half left as governor. But it's hard to imagine him staying in office much longer. Members of both parties have fought with him for much of his term, and many will be pushing him to leave.

He said he's known this woman for eight years but it became romantic about a year ago.

Sanford had made national headlines months ago when he refused to take stimulus money for South Carolina out of principle.

When it comes to Mark Sanford, stimulus now has a new meaning.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is holding a news conference today at 2 p.m. ET at his office in Columbia.

The two-term Republican has been in the news and the tabloids in the past week over his unknown whereabouts. He surfaced this morning at an Atlanta airport, telling a reporter that he had spent the past week unwinding in Argentina -- and not, as his staff had said, hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

Should be fun.

We may turn our nose up at Reality TV, but we can't get enough of Mark Sanford.

And, to be fair, the South Carolina governor continues to cooperate.

Last night the Palmetto Scoop Web site breathlessly reported that Sanford, a Republican who has been widely mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2012, may not have been hiking along the Appalachian Trail during his six-day disappearance, as his staff had claimed -- as "new evidence cast further doubt onto the governor's 'hiking' alibi":

CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby tracked down Sanford's state-issued black Chevy Suburban at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

That information would seem to further contradict Sanford's spokesman's claim that the governor spent the weekend hiking along the Appalachian Trail -- which is roughly a two hour drive north of Atlanta. ...

Something just doesn't add up here. Anyone who has taken high school philosophy knows the "Occam's razor" principle and understands that, more often than not, the simplest explanation is often the correct explanation; and folks, the "hiking" explanation is about the farthest from that.

At last, the truth has come out!

Continue reading "Jon + Kate + 8 + Mark Sanford" >

There are some politicians who can go missing for days and no one will notice.

That's not the case with Mark Sanford. The South Carolina governor, a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate, has apparently been missing for four days, since Thursday. First lady Jenny Sanford told the Associated Press that she had no idea where he was.

Continue reading "Lost And (Apparently) Found: The Strange Case Of Mark Sanford" >

Time for a day ender. And what better way to do it than with campaign memorabilia.

There was a wonderful moment, during the 1992 vice presidential debate, when Adm. James Stockdale, Ross Perot's running mate, opened his remarks with, "Who am I? Why am I here?"

It wasn't, of course, that Stockdale was clueless about himself. He was a decorated fighter pilot who spent years as a POW in Vietnam. He used the line as a rhetorical opening, to begin to explain who he was and how he arrived at that moment. Sadly, it made Stockdale a punch line, and the quote was widely repeated the rest of his life.

 

But here's where the "who am I?" question becomes relevant. As you may have noticed in the week-plus of the new incarnation of Political Junkie, I've been using old campaign buttons to illustrate aspects of the blog. And while I have a lot of them to choose from, I do have many from candidates I have absolutely no knowledge about.

If I may assume, for a minute, that many of you who are reading this are fellow political junkies who follow this stuff, maybe you might recognize some of the items pictured here? And maybe you'll help identify them?

Personally, I think America needs to know the connection between Judge Sutton and rice pudding.

Thanks!