As many people have observed by now, the statement issued by Governor Sanford’s wife was pitch-perfect and reflection of the fact she’s a strong, proud woman. One liberal blogger has even declared “Jenny Sanford should be the Republican Party’s candidate for president in 2012.”

I was further impressed that, unlike the wives of Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer, and Jim McGreevey, she had the dignity to remain home when Sanford made his embarassing admission at today’s press conference. In fact, I previously wrote about this bizarre phenomenon of political wives publicly standing beside their unfaithful husbands during the Spitzer affair:

Frankly, it’s hard to feel sorry for Eliot Spitzer. He was, as Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) described him, “The most unforgiving man in New York politics.” We’re a Christian and forgiving nation, but it can take some time to wrap your head around “He who has never procured a woman over the Internet, reserved a room under an assumed name, and given a hooker an exorbitant amount of money for sex acts deemed ‘unsafe,’ let him cast the first stone.”
But schadenfreude is a capricious sprite. Somewhere between the time the news broke and the eleventy-millionth time that cable news mentioned his wife and three teenage daughters, I began to feel bad about the whole sordid affair.
His two press conferences were almost painful to watch, but not because Spitzer didn’t need to stand up and take responsibility for his crimes. They were painful because, yet again, a politician was admitting to a shameful sexual indiscretion and, yet again, his wife was standing next to him (while apparently, behind the scenes, urging him not to resign). It was an all too familiar scene. Why do we expect to see women “standing by their man,” even in circumstances when the husband doesn’t deserve his wife’s support? I doubt I’m alone in thinking that the next scorned woman would do herself and everyone else a favor by staying home when her husband holds a press conference to confess his depravity to the world.