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For political aficionados, the Fourth of July arrived early this year with plenty of titillating fireworks. It's as though the moral floodgates were opened, with no one feeling any compunction to curb their enthusiasm.

This week, we've been entertained by a disillusioned aide to ex-presidential contender John Edwards who claims Edwards asked him to take the blame for fathering a child with the candidate's mistress. Not only was Edwards two-timing his cancer-stricken wife while sanctimoniously running for president, but he was weaving a web of lies to hide it.

Then there's the continuing melodrama of South Carolina's two-timing governor, Mark Sanford, who keeps adding to his "true confessions" whenever a reporter shows up. Now it turns out Sanford's intercontinental fling ("I cried in Argentina") wasn't his only one and it lasted a lot longer than his earlier version. But then the original story line about the missing governor "hiking the Appalachian Trail," put out by his aides, proved to be 5,000 miles wide of the mark.

Locally, we witnessed a leader of the state Republican Party's "lunatic right" compare Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler in a Rush Limbaugh-style online rant. Character assassination, anyone?

Republicans hastily denounced the morally bankrupt screed by Joyce E. Thomann, but what the heck, she's only president of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County.

Last we heard, Thomann was still in office despite her reprehensible ravings. So, too, is U.S. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, though he admits to two-timing his wife by conducting an eight-month affair with the spouse of a top aide. That spouse also was his campaign treasurer and a close friend (since high school) of Mrs. Ensign.

By the way, both Ensign and Sanford were planning a run for president.

All of the above fall into the "holier than thou" category of political animals. The only problem was that they forgot to abide by their own strict, god-fearing standards of right and wrong.

Of course, there are others who fall into the category of Biggest Political Hypocrites — ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, ex-U.S. Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, ex-House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston of Louisiana and ex-Gov. Jim McGreevy of New Jersey.

Maryland can lay claim to its own marital two-timers, ex-Governors Parris Glendening and Marvin Mandel.

Glendening handled the growing media awareness of his liaison with an aide 24 years his junior by clamming up. His communications director threatened reporters they'd be totally frozen out if they blabbed the story.

The strategy worked, too — until then-Comptroller William Donald Schaefer revealed all at a Board of Public Works meeting.

Eventually, Glendening divorced his First Lady and married his paramour in 2002. Eight months after his divorce, the governor and his new First Lady had a baby girl.

But the joyous event didn't help Glendening's popularity. He left office with the lowest ratings of any governor in the country. Clearly, the public disapproved of his behavior.

Mandel's infidelity only complicated his complex, 10-year tenure as governor.

He came into office on a fluke — incumbent Spiro Agnew left to become Richard Nixon's vice president — and Mandel was elected governor because he had the votes as Speaker of the House of Delegates.

When his final term expired in 1978, he'd been convicted of mail fraud and racketeering — after two headline-grabbing trials — served 19 months in prison but eventually had his convictions overturned on technical legal grounds.

In between, he gave us the biggest fireworks display political Annapolis has seen.

Late on July 3, 1973, Mandel's press secretary strolled into a near-empty press room and announced, "Here's your Fourth of July firecracker!"

It was a statement announcing Mandel's decision to leave his wife because "I am in love with another woman."

For State House veterans, it confirmed what many knew for years: Mandel had been two-timing his wife for the better part of a decade.

Indeed in 1970, Mandel was injured in a serious car crash while returning from a late-night tryst in St. Mary's County, but he concocted a flimsy cover story that somehow kept the lid on what should have been a major political debacle.

The hijinks were just starting. His first wife refused to leave the Governor's Mansion and suggested Mandel see a psychiatrist. For five months, Mandel lived out of a suitcase at a waterfront hotel.

The next year, Mandel's divorce became final and he married his new wife that same day. The rest of his term was consumed by the federal corruption probe, the trials, his conviction and his appeals.

What's often left out is Mandel's spectacular record of reforming Maryland government and putting in place a modern governance system that has stood the test of time. But personal misdeeds have a way of negating the good work of politicians. All the public remembers is their moral weaknesses.

Barry Rascovar is a longtime State House columnist and a communications consultant. His e-mail address is brascovar@hotmail.com.