Sanford affair renews questions about politicians and infidelity

"Do they think they're invisible?" mused Dick Harpootlian, former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman and a longtime Sanford adversary.

Experts have all kinds of theories about why otherwise intelligent men -- and it's almost always men -- behave so recklessly. Sex and power are inextricably intertwined, as Henry Kissinger famously noted, and some politicians have a hard time reining in the urge for either.

"If you're one of these Master of the Universe kind of guys, you get to a place where you feel that the rules don't apply to you," said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist who specializes in relationships.

Frank Farley, a Temple University psychologist, even coined a term -- the "Type T personality" -- to describe politicians' predilection for philandering. The "T" stands for thrill-seeker, which describes the kind of person drawn to a career that, by its nature, requires a willingness to step out of ordinary life and take risks.

"It's not a 9-to-5 job," said Farley, a former president of the American Psychological Assn. who has extensively studied politicians' behavior. "It has very high levels of uncertainty, variety, novelty, challenge, unpredictability -- and therefore it attracts a certain kind of person."

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