Cross-posted with permission from The Stiletto, a political blog.  The author presents her own opinions, not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

As Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) and his oft-modified unlimited hangout continue day-after-day, it’s now impossible to ignore his staggering marital and political indiscretions, nicely summed up by Washington Post media analyst-cum-political pundit Howard Kurtz:

a) His “Appalachian Trail” disappearance
b) His choice of an Argentine lover
c) His stream-of-consciousness press conference
d) His wife hanging him out to dry, especially after he asked permission to visit his gal pal
e) His endless apologizing
f) The e-mails

But wait – there’s more! Add Sanford’s admission to The Associated Press that he rounded a few bases with other women, though he went all the way home only with his “soul mate,” Maria Belen Chapur, in what ended up being “a whole lot more than a simple affair; this was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

And still more: Sanford has now reneged on his promise to AP to release personal financial records to prove his trips to see his paramour were not funded by SC taxpayers.

But is Sanford’s behavior contemptible enough to make him King Of The Heels, or does that (dis)honor belong to former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC)?

Let’s compare low-blow by low-blow:

† Edwards paying off happily married campaign flunky – a father of three – Andrew Young to pretend that he was the one who knocked up Rielle Hunter is a far more diabolical deceit than Sanford’s pretending to be on a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail while he was engaged in physical activity of a very different sort in Argentina.

† As far as documentary evidence of marital misdeeds go, the sex tape Edwards and Hunter purportedly made together is an order of magnitude sleazier than the steamy E-mails Sanford and Chapur exchanged (“despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul”).

† And Sanford’s rubbing salt in his aggrieved wife’s wounds by describing his two-timing trollop as his soul mate doesn’t quite rise (fall?) to the vile callousness of Hunter and Edwards discussing what music to play at their wedding, once his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, has shuffled off her mortal coil.

So toting up all the insults and injuries, John Edwards is King Of The Heels.