If U.S. Sen. John Ensign has allowed any deep reflection to elbow through his mind these past two weeks, it must surely include something approaching the following: Thank you, God, for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his globetrotting penis.

A mere eight days after Nevada's family-values champion admitted nailing a former campaign staffer (and family friend) for the better part of a year, the mainstream media was -- suddenly, amazingly -- focusing on yet another conservative leader's admissions of renegade romance. In the course of less than a full national news cycle Ensign was, unbelievably, off the hook.

Politically speaking, Sanford's crestfallen mea culpa was the best thing to ever happen to Nevada's favorite über-coifed Promise Keeper.

Still, as other news outlets continue to focus on the alleged cash and favors Ensign funneled to his paramour and her husband or on Sanford's budding career as an author of e-mail erotica, CityLife is obsessed with the deeper questions that remain. Questions about whether private immorality has any bearing on how effective someone can be in office, about whether these concerns are even valid in an age of online personals and a rising number of Americans who cheat ... but chiefly about what could have possessed these two rising GOP stars to risk it all on a piece of ass.

"Is the problem that these men have conservative hearts but liberal penises?" asks Elissa Denels, a counselor, teacher and host of a new talk show on KNUU-AM 970 about cheating. "I'm not sure, but with these types of powerful men, whether they're politicians or public figures or celebrities, there's an ability to compartmentalize that makes cheating so much easier. Typically, these are big risk takers. Most of them are very ego-driven and more than a little narcissistic."

Narcissism in a politician comes as little surprise to anyone in Sin City, but Denels sees stark differences in the Ensign and Sanford scandals -- differences, she says, that show Sanford to be almost a bumbling cheater while revealing Ensign's colder, more calculating behavior. What these two GOP'ers do have in common, however, is that neither one is good at keeping secrets, she says.

"They're both very self-serving, although their styles are very different. Obviously, their personalities are quite different, as well. While you saw the South Carolina governor give this long, very bizarre interview, Ensign came across as more calculating. The money going to this woman, for example. This guy probably thinks about taking bigger risks than Sanford and is probably even more narcissistic. Sanford, on the other hand, is a down-home kind of guy who, clearly, didn't think everything through," she says.

The power of power

Regardless of their respective degrees of infidelity planning, UNLV marriage and family therapy professor and researcher Kat Hertlein says adding power to a person's supposed proclivity to stray from the marriage bed can also amplify a tendency toward recklessness.

"For people who have that sense of power or higher position, they can get this sense of false security. They have people who can help cover their moves or help with some of the things they want to do so it's a lot easier to hide that behavior," she says.

Throw in the realization that the powerful are typically freer than others to indulge their every whim and you're looking at a recipe for political disaster.

"There's also this concept called 'active sanction,' which means that if there are more sanctions on your behavior you're less likely to cheat. For those in power those consequences don't necessarily exist for them. If you're in power there are fewer checks on your behavior," says Hertlein.

Fewer checks, that is, until the media come calling, demanding to know if public confessions of marital infidelity will lead to resignation. In the cold light of public scrutiny any betrayal -- and its possible consequences -- become instantly magnified.

Which is what strikes Denels the most. If Ensign was willing to betray his wife and his constituents, fine. That sort of behavior has been par for the course for a number of politicians of both parties. But what about the larger betrayal of one's self?

"In life, the person you're really trying to connect with is yourself. These men have clearly betrayed all the values and goals they both worked for, for years. It's yourself and your belief system, that's who -- and what -- you've really betrayed," says Denels.

What happens in Nevada ...

Of course, part of the problem, at least in Ensign's case, is the culture of the state itself: historically freewheeling and seldom concerned with what happens behind a closed bedroom door.

"Part of it might be the spell of Nevada itself. Infidelity is everywhere here, and it's hard enough to keep marriages together in Vegas. You become omnipotent, or so you think. You say it won't happen to me, yet when it's out then the affair takes on a different tone. Ensign will survive far better than Sanford, but he's done great damage to himself and his belief system," says Denels.

Speaking of belief, what about all those Nevadans who believed enough in Ensign to keep sending him back to Capitol Hill? Haven't these voters been victimized, as well?

"The people who have looked up to him and who have voted for him because they see themselves in him, yes. For people who didn't vote for him or who don't see him as connected to them, no," says Hertlein.

But in his years of moral grandstanding on everything from out-of-wedlock births to homosexuality, Ensign never made those kinds of distinctions. Isn't there some psychological insight to be gleaned from all of Ensign's Promise Keeper, born-again rhetoric? Why do people who tout their Christian faith such as Ensign always seem to fall from grace the hardest?

Hertlein sees this a lot. "That's actually called 'reaction formation.' In other words, the ones who are beating these dead horses are often the ones who are doing it. For those people, they obviously don't like the behavior so the only way to convince themselves [they're not actually partaking in it] is to convince themselves to rail against it. Its cousin is cognitive dissonance," says Hertlein.

They will survive?

Luckily for Nevada Republicans and Ensign himself, voters will see these two GOP sex scandals play out quite differently, says UNLV political scientist Ken Fernandez.

"I think in many cases we read too much into these personal indiscretions," he says. "Ensign and Sanford are very different other than that they are both Republicans. Still, with the story that the GOP is falling apart or is lacking direction when you have figures such as these making stupid mistakes it does show that even the potential pool of Republican leadership may be weaker than first suspected. But again, if you look at past indiscretions of past politicians you see people can survive this. For Ensign, people will be sympathetic although the facts are not clear ... for Sanford there's not gonna be any sympathy. His political career is probably over," he says.

What about a larger conclusion to be drawn from these two nearly simultaneous scandals? Did these two GOP poster boys unknowingly pound a couple of extra nails into their party's coffin? Funny, but both Ensign and his good friend U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could end up the chief beneficiaries of all this latest press -- again, thanks in large part to a certain philandering Southerner.

"The Republican party doesn't like these things occurring before the 2010 mid-term elections where everyone [in the party] is praying Republicans do well," Fernandez says. "Historically, mid-term elections hurt the president's party, but with the GOP doing such stupid things ... If you look at news reports before the Ensign [scandal] his numbers were so high, and Reid was so vulnerable. Now, no one is mentioning how no one liked Harry Reid anymore. I'm sure Ensign is also very relieved that some people have stopped talking about how vulnerable he is, too."