Sanford told The Associated Press that he and his wife were working to repair their marriage. He added, “If there wasn’t healing going on, I wouldn’t be here.” That doesn’t show personal involvement and responsibility for the eventual outcome; it is hardly a declaration of intent to repent, beg forgiveness, and begin courting his wife for reconciliation.

Among all the troubling revelations in the e-mails between Sanford and Chapur is the attitude that what happened between the couple “just happened.” Chapur wrote, “Sometimes you don’t choose things, they just happen. … I can’t redirect my feelings and I am very happy with mine towards you.” He wrote that “this lightning strike snuck up on us,” and he talked about a love that just “sparked.”

No. They spent months — years — developing an illicit relationship; the feelings and the love affair were entirely predictable given the path that they foolishly followed. To pretend otherwise is not fair to young people who might look to public figures as role models.

Does it matter that a public servant has an affair that reveals that he is untrustworthy, not credible, and treats those closest to him with disdain? Does it matter that he is willing to humiliate his wife and children in order to satisfy emotional cravings that he deliberately cultivated with countless hours of assiduous attention while he, during those same long years, neglected his wife and sons with the pretext of public service? Somebody should compare the number of e-mails he sent to his lover with the number of his boys’ ballgames he attended or the number of times he took his wife to dinner in New York.

Surely we care when such actions reveal a lack of trustworthiness and credibility. Is it not significant that such behavior — and the subsequent and inevitable lying about it — calls into question both character and integrity? When a politician won’t keep his commitments to his family (the philanderers are generally men), how can we trust him to keep his commitments to the public he represents? If his wife and children can’t trust his word and depend upon his character, how can we?

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