Scandals for Dummies: The Mark Sanford Edition

Are you a politician who has been caught in a scandal with no idea how to handle the disclosure to the public?  Then you need to read Scandals for Dummies: The Mark Sanford Edition.

What You Should Do


Step 1
Read one public statement disclosing all essential details to the press.

Step 2
Retreat into private to try to save your marriage.

Step 3
Completely throw yourself at the mercy of your wife and beg forgiveness.

Step 4
If you are forgiven, do some sort of penance, perhaps manual labor and marriage counseling, and of course agreeing to the mandatory GPS tracking device permanently installed in your foot, just in case you want to try something "exotic" again.

Step 5
Finish your term and never get elected to anything ever again, because, after all, you are a cheating, lying scumbag.

Step 6
Never say the word "soulmate."

What You Shouldn't Do

Step 1
Mistake your midlife crisis induced affair for a tragic love story, where two soulmates fell in love.

Step 2
Go on national TV and ramble incoherently for what seems like eternity.  Tell the country that you've been crying in Argentina for four days, cry some more, and not act ashamed at all.

Step 3
Give a long interview to an AP reporter in which you say this: "I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soulmate."

Step 4
Say this about the affair: "This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, that it's a love story ... a forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."  Humiliate your wife and hurt your four sons and teach them the lesson that your behavior is ok because, after all, you DID meet your soulmate.

Step 5
Suggest that you've messed around with other women by saying, "What I would say is that I've never had sex with another woman. Have I done stupid? I have. You know you meet someone. You dance with them. You go to a place where you probably shouldn't have gone ... If you're a married guy at the end of the day you shouldn't be dancing with somebody else. So anyway without wandering into that field we'll just say that I let my guard down in all senses of the word without ever crossing the line that I crossed with this situation."

Step 6
Keep releasing public statements about the details of your affair, further humliate your wife and kids by legitimizing the other woman.  Make sure everyone has heard what should have been your private rationalization for what you did with your soulmate by saying:
"Everyone of us is going to be at that death bed one day and we're going to look back over the whole of our lives and we're going to ask, you know, was or what we're willing to risk certain things that may be viewed as a stupid trade-off by the rest of the world but that's for each person to determine. And so if you end up 50 years here on earth and you know, alright, maybe I get another 30 and if you come into connection with a soul that touches yours in a way that no one's ever has, even if it's a place you can't go, this notion of knowing that you know, for me, became very important."

Thank you for reading Scandals for Dummies: The Mark Sanford Edition.  If you liked this you might also enjoy Pricey Hookers for Dummies: The Elliot Spitzer Edition and Cheating on Your Sick and Dying Wife While Running For President, Lying about it and then Fathering The Other Woman's Baby For Dummies: The John Edwards Edition.