Remember when Mark Sanford was a serious possibility for the Republican vice presidential nomination? “I think [John McCain‘s] veep candidate should be, has to be and probably will be either Jim DeMint or Mark Sanford, and Mark’s my guy,” Ohio’s Ken Blackwell told the Washington Post in February 2008. That’s no embarrassment to Blackwell; a lot of people agreed with him back then.

When McCain went down to defeat, some placed Sanford, then the governor of South Carolina, in the upper tier of the 2012 presidential field. Then, of course, came the 2009 “hiking the Appalachian Trail” matter, revelations of Sanford’s affair with Maria Belen Chapur, and a very messy divorce from wife Jenny.