The Girl From Ipanema

Dozens of people have been killed by suicide car-bombers in Iraq over the last several days in an ominous upswing of violence that gives lie to the recent veneer of stability in that nation. The streets of Iran run with the blood of protesters seeking a fair election and the end of their country's oppressive fundamentalist regime. North Korea has threatened to fire long-range missiles at Hawaii over the Fourth of July if anyone so much as looks funny at one of their weapons-laden cargo ships on the high seas.

Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes ... ah

Ah, indeed.

There are other things in life besides mayhem, madness and butchery, a fact South Carolina's Republican Gov. Mark Sanford was kind enough to remind us of this week. There is irony of the purest ray serene; there is hypocrisy like a house on fire, and there is perfect comedy, and when a man like Governor Sanford takes the time and energy to combine all three, the magnificent absurdity of it all reminds us of the joy that still exists in this cruel and crazy world.

So, yeah, Governor Sanford fell off the planet last week, disappearing entirely from the grid over this past Father's Day weekend. Neither his wife nor his staff would say for sure where he was beyond some blurry allusions to writing a book on the Appalachian Trail - and, by the by, it should be noted that the person who initiated the "Where Is Sanford?" press frenzy is a Republican enemy of the South Carolina governor, because this story wasn't weird enough already - until his car was discovered in a parking lot at the Atlanta airport. Except it wasn't his car, really, but a state-owned vehicle Sanford had apparently borrowed from one of his security guards.

When she walks, she's like a samba
That swings so cool and sways so gentle
That when she passes, each one she passes goes ... ooh

Flash forward to Wednesday, when Governor Sanford got up on his hind legs and delivered one of the single most preposterous press conference performances in the history of the universe. He said he was sorry, very sorry, sorry to you, to me, to the people of South Carolina, his wife, his sons, Jesus, all the saints and your little dog, too, because he had not, in fact, spent the weekend writing a book in Appalachia. No, Governor Sanford had been an entire hemisphere away, crying for five days with a girlfriend in Argentina.

The conservative Washington Times was kind enough to explain the crystalline hypocrisy buried within what could be dismissed as another instance of a politician having a problem with his fly. "Republicans' family-values platform often invites charges of hypocrisy," explained Times writer S.A. Miller on Thursday. "It happened when conservative pundit and former drug czar William Bennett was discovered in 2003 to be a gambler. In the late 1990s, during and after their pursuit of President Clinton on impeachment charges for a sexual liaison with an intern, several Republican luminaries acknowledged they, too, had indulged in affairs, including pro-life leader Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and former Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana, who resigned just before assuming the speaker's chair. Mr. Sanford voted in favor of three of four articles of impeachment against Mr. Clinton."

Wait, what? Governor Sanford, that jet-setting Lothario, whose passionate taste for marital infidelity was strong enough to hurl him thousands of miles across the planet for a date with his mistress, was in favor of impeaching President Clinton for lying about sex? "I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign)," Sanford said of Clinton in September of 1998. "I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he'd be gone."

When Republican Congressman and impeachment champion Bob Livingston was exposed for cheating on his own wife later in 1998, Sanford said, "The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it's got to be taken very, very seriously."

Three weeks before Wednesday's epic press conference debacle, Governor Sanford gave an interview to Fox News, during which he was asked about the Clinton impeachment directly. "It was blown into a huge constitutional issue which if a president's lying, it's a big deal. It is a constitutional issue," said Sanford. "But it missed the larger point of human nature. You ask any guy, particularly one in office, you've been screwing around on your wife - maybe there's 1 percent or maybe there's 2 percent or maybe there's 5 percent. But 95 percent of the time, whoever it is, is gonna say 'no.' And so, I think the public said no matter what Clinton did, whether he did or he didn't do whatever it was that happened with Monica Lewinsky, is that guy gonna stand up and admit it. They said no, he's not."

Eloquence? Perhaps not, but at least Governor Sanford sounded as if the strength of his convictions and integrity regarding marital fidelity was genuine. If you want true Sanfordian eloquence, however, you must peruse the recently-released emails Sanford wrote to his lady friend. In one, for example, he implores her to "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." Or, you can read the other Sanford email to his lady friend that says, "I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ..."

But I watch her so sadly
How can I tell her I love her
Yes I would give my heart gladly
But each day, when she walks to the sea
She looks straight ahead, not at me

Thank you, Governor Sanford, for reminding us that life can be good, that life can be saccharine sweet, but above all else, that life can be really, really, really, really funny.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

ENDS

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