Ronnie Polaneczky: Just a tiny prick of pity for puppy-lovesick guv

AS OF YESTERDAY, at least 12 of 27 Republican South Carolina state senators were calling for their lovesick Republican governor, Mark Sanford, to resign.

Sanford oughta grant their wish. Not just because he's unfit to govern - which he so totally is, by the way. If the guy who's empowered to mobilize the National Guard is too cavalier to let on when his passport's getting stamped, it's time to move his coffee cups out of the governor's mansion.

But the other reason I hope he quits is that, maybe, he'll just shut up already.

Ever since this foolish man admitted to a Buenos Aires tryst with his Argentine squeeze, he has blathered on like a moon-eyed 14-year-old with a gigantic crush - the biggest crush, the bestest crush, the world's first-ever crush! Typically, the only males who ooze on like this 49-year-old has are the ones who don't yet shave.

Sanford told the Associated Press that, when he dies (does he know something we don't know?), he will do so "knowing that [he] had met [his] soulmate" in Maria Belen Chapur.

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair; this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

He stopped short of saying that his tummy hurt from all the pining.

But he sounded more like a jerk than a child when he told the AP that he is "trying" to fall back in love with his sister - er, I mean, his wife - Jenny.

"I owe it too much to my boys and to the last 20 years with Jenny to not try this larger walk of faith," he said, perhaps alluding to an earlier statement that he hoped to "follow the example set by David in the Bible - who after his fall from grace humbly refocused on the work at hand."

Can you imagine this self-important cad's bedtime prayers?

"Dear God, it's such darn work to love my wife anymore! You know, the one who left her Wall Street career for me? Who birthed our sons? And let me travel to New York to break up with my lover? I brought a spiritual adviser with me, so I could end things with Maria in a godly manner, but, well, we both know that didn't work. Thanks for nothing, Lord.

"So this time, if you would, please let me feel something below the waist, anything, for old what's-her-name. Amen."

I don't know Jenny Sanford. Maybe she's a handful. But I do know that no wife - especially a wealthy (and fertile) one who so believed in her man that she bankrolled his political aspirations - deserves to have her husband publicly reduce their marriage to a scene from "He's Just Not That Into You."

She should dump his ever-cheatin' patoot. Because, if what Sanford said is true - that he has had prior indiscretions with women where he "let [his] guard down in all senses of the word" when he would leave the USA to "blow off steam" with the guys - she doesn't want him that "into" her anymore, anyway.

I mean, antibiotics can only do so much.

Having said all that - and, my goodness, there was so much to say! - I confess to feeling a tiny prick of pity for Sanford (yes, a tiny prick). In interviews, he comes off
 
as such an emotional adolescent, it makes me wonder:

Did this guy just not "date" much (if ya know what I'm saying) before he married? Had he sown more wild oats, when he was free to, might he not have behaved so stupidly when he vowed to bag the oats for good?

Granted, Bill Clinton sleazed around, a lot, before marrying Hillary. And that didn't keep him from acting like a devil with that blue dress once he got into the Oval Office.

But at least everyone knew that he was an oily player.

With Sanford, you get the sense that he's both thrilled and bewildered by his liaison with Chapur, and devastated at the prospect of its end. Maybe he never knew that marriage could be a tender conversation between two hearts, instead of a strategic business arrangement between two partners who sometimes sleep together.

If so, then his anguish must be painful, indeed. I just wish he'd start processing it with a therapist, in private, instead of with a megaphone, onstage.

Jenny deserves better. *

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly.com/ronnieblog.