This week’s episode of “South Carolina Politics” is brought to you by the letter “A.” It seems that Governor Mark Sanford (rumored in some circles as a potential GOP nominee for president in 2012) decided to try and improve US-Argentinean relations this weekend, and would’ve gotten away with it too if not for a chance meeting with a reporter at the Atlanta airport. You see, he’d told his staff that he was going to hike the Appalachian Trail, but somehow ended up in Buenos Aires. He went there apparently to commit adultery, and that has a lot of people (supporters and detractors) referring to him with another word that starts with “A.”

But I’m not one of them, at least not yet. I may not like what the guy did in Argentina, but I have more issues with him playing politics with the stimulus money that we were supposed to get a while back.

Longtime readers of this blog (all two of you) know that I don’t hitch a ride on the GOP bandwagon, mostly because guys like Rush and O’Reilly and Count Chocula keep pushing me off. No, I’m a card-carrying member of the baby-killing, war-avoiding, black-president-electing opposition party, and a Scientologist to boot (I’m just being glib on that last one). I didn’t like Mark Sanford the first time I set eyes on him, but I sure prefer him to our lieutenant governor (refresh my memory, wasn’t he the one caught trying to re-enact “The Fast and the Furious” on state highways?), so for that reason at least (for now) I don’t necessarily think he should resign. He should think long and hard before speaking out about family values, however.

What is it about politicians that make them feel like gods amongst mere mortals, able to get away with things that most of us can only dream about (like just going to Argentina on a whim and taxpayer’s money)? Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, you have to agree that the ones who talk the loudest when one politician runs afoul of moral or legal precedents are usually the same ones who get caught doing the same thing years later. Fox News played a clip of then-Senator Sanford talking about how President Clinton needed to step down for having an affair. I thought to myself, “Since when does Fox News actually hold a GOP member accountable?” That was when I truly knew that hell had frozen over.

The mystery of Mark Sanford’s midnight flight to exotic locales has brought national attention to the state, something that we haven’t managed since we decided to divorce the rest of the nation in the 1860s. For days, speculation ran rampant about where Mark was, in a version of “Where’s Waldo?” where the protagonist was easily identifiable for his bland, memory-erasing speaking style. When emails between Sanford and his Latin lover surfaced, we found out that he has the heart of a poet hidden under that shell of bland vanilla envelope. Sure, it’s cringe-inducing and adulterous poetry, but now we can confirm that Sanford (for all his robotic mannerisms) is indeed a human. There has been much doubt about that since he took office.

The guy screwed up and got caught, and for that I understand the rush to send him out of town on the first train out. The real issue for me is whether he used money from us taxpayers to fund his debauchery. That should be the impeachable offense, more so than the adultery. Let’s face it, all politicians lie, cheat, steal, or run meth labs. Sometimes we forgive them (because we as a nation love second acts), sometimes we don’t. Right now, I can say that I don’t necessarily want the guy’s head on a plate, but I don’t want to find out that while I was struggling to pay my taxes he was planning to use a chunk of that to see his girlfriend. The morality police will have a field day with the sexual innuendo of the emails, even as they decry the filthiness of it (sex sells, and even Boy Scouts like Bill O’Reilly can’t resist showing blurry sex tapes as they complain that this means the end of western civilization). Just keep an eye out for the most vocal of those who call for Sanford to step down, because chances are they’ve got a thousand-dollar coke habit or tranny mistress that they’re not telling you about.

In a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes, Governor Sanford got more exposure for himself than he’d managed before this weekend. Of course, it may not be the kind that he was hoping for.