Smash hit

It has been a dramatic month for Mr Sanford. Three weeks ago he lost a court battle to reject President Obama's federal stimulus money for South Carolina.

A few days later his wife kicked him out of the family home they shared with their four sons to begin a trial separation.

Last Friday, he went missing.

On Monday, as journalists and politicians started to query where the governor was, his staff put out a statement saying that Mr Sanford had decided to spend the Fathers' Day weekend hiking the Appalachian Trail as a way of winding down.

Yesterday morning, as Mr Sanford was spotted by a journalist as he got off a flight from Argentina at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, he did not deny that in fact he had spent the previous five days in Buenos Aires.

He called a press conference, arriving 24 minutes late to announce, amid many rambling digressions and reminiscences: "I have been unfaithful to my wife."

It was a far cry from the days when Mr Sanford voted for the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky because of the need for "moral legitimacy".

Mr Sanford's humiliations are unlikely to end with the publication of the emails. Former GOP colleagues are already backing away from him.

The Value Voters Summit announced last night that it was dropping him from its line-up of Republican notables at a meeting in September.

Calls have started for him to resign the governorship now without serving the remaining 18 months of his term. Even if he succeeds in fending off the calls to quit, he faces a lame-duck administration with the main plank of his policy - opposing state increases in spending - thrown out by the courts.

Mr Sanford said that he intended to stay in office but would be concentrating on the basics. "I'm going to devote my energy to building back the trust the people of this state have placed in me," he said.

This may be a tall order. "I was shocked, shocked," said Tom Daly, 42, a magazine editor in Charleston.

"First he is a Republican golden boy and he's a strict, staunch conservative. I'm so shocked. It was something I did not expect."

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president