What a Putz

Ruth Marcus has a great column today on the unforgivable Mark Sanford (though, man, would I like an interview with that guy, because pure-bred, hi-test, four-square narcissists always make for the best interviews). Ruth argues cogently that it is not Jenny Sanford who has been humiliated here:

I admire, too, her practical vision of real love and what it takes to make a marriage work. "It wasn't exactly love at first sight," Sanford recalled about meeting her future husband at a beach party in the Hamptons. "It was more like friendship at first sight."

Now she still has her feet on the ground even as her husband is head over heels -- with another woman. "I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will, and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal," Jenny Sanford said in her statement.

And I admire her investment-banker steel. "He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her," she said in an interview with the Associated Press last week about her husband's pleas for permission to visit his mistress. And, on his decision to defy her: "You would think that a father who didn't have contact with his children, if he wanted those children, he would toe the line a little bit."