Don't worry Google, they found him.
Let me just say it before a commentator on Fox does:
This whole Mark Sanford mess is a Barack Obama conspiracy.
The sad spectacle of Mr. Sanford's teary confessional is designed, at least in some part, to make the president look even better by comparison than he already does. You think it was a coincidence that as the Governor was into the meat of his dishonor, the CNN scroll noted that President Obama was going to the Vatican to meet with the Pope?
I have my own views about the Obama press machinery and resultant seduction quotient. But this latest stroke of behind-the-scenes genius never would have occurred to me if I hadn't read just last night Michael Wolff's shocking revelations in the latest Vanity Fair about just how this administration is the most successfully manipulative of the press -- maybe ever. And Vanity Fair knows a thing or two about celebrity and the media.
Really, who among us who's read even the partial clip library of Obamabilia the last few months would think for a minute that the president and his wife have anything but a damn good, and very likely faithful, relationship? Even Rush hasn't suggested otherwise.
CNN anchor Kyra Phillips, despite reporter Candy Crowley's spirited attempt to say that we're all flawed humans in some way, admitted after the press conference that she was "feeling a little biased about this." And she didn't mean biased sympathy for the tanned-but-cornered Mr. Sanford. (Did that five days of crying involve some Buenos Aires beach time?) "We all want our leaders to have a moral compass," Ms. Phillips said, barely containing her angry disappointment.
And who would that be, that moral compass leader?
So how did the Obama machine get their hands on the levers of an illicit relationship that started eight years ago? In the shadow of the Governor's long wind-up and pitch, let me concede right away on this: I don't know. But lack of knowledge rarely impedes opinion. It's also true that, if you're looking for a fall guy who also happens to be a big Republican, finding adultery in Congress is like bobbing for apples in a drained tub.
On a day when yet another in the endless round of stunning recordings comes out about Richard Nixon -- a man about whom anything was possible -- don't dismiss immediately the possibility of the Barack Obama secret Tweets some day showing a sly hand in the Mark Sanford, uh, affair.
Frankly, before the Governor spoke, I was leaning toward insanity as the answer to the mystery of his disappearance. Then we could have called up the epic derangement of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, as an argument that craziness in politics, as in the art world, can be a plus. Maybe even a necessity. After all, hiking by yourself on a trail is probably viewed these days as far crazier than cheating on your spouse
As Ms. Crowley pointed out so accurately, however, this was just another "microcosm of society," a tawdry friends-with-benefits family scandal to add to the Clinton, Edwards, Spizter, McGreevey, et al, ad nauseam roster.
There's a lesson in there, I'm quite sure. And as the Governor started talking about how his Argentinian relationship took wing on the internet, here is that lesson: THE INTERNET IS AN EVIL TEMPTRESS!