Let’s call 2013 the Year of the Comeback Goofballs.

The main player certainly has to be former Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who’s now running for a congressional seat after leaving his prior office in disgrace. You remember ol’ Mark: He vanished on Mother’s Day 2009 and put the word out he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail when, in fact, he was messing around many thousands of miles away in Argentina with a woman – who wasn’t his wife.

Shame on you, governor.

Now, though, comes someone from the other party, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York, who’s beginning to make noises about running for something in the Empire State, possibly mayor of New York City. Weiner’s escapade might be even more bizarre than Sanford’s, although Sanford committed a pretty egregious transgression by duping the public the way he did about his whereabouts.

Weiner got caught sending sexually provocative tweets and pictures of himself through cyberspace to women. He denied it at first, telling a curious public that the pictures weren’t of his body. But then the lying couldn’t continue. The pressure mounted. The curiosity intensified. Finally, Weiner – according to an interview to be published this Sunday in the New York Times – fessed up to his wife. Yep, honey, it was me all along, he said – or something like it. Weiner quit his U.S. House seat  and disappeared from public view until just recently.

Both of these goofballs have something in common. The women they betrayed are paragons of strength and dignity.

Jenny Sanford divorced Mark and came out of that scandal looking like the far better person than her husband. She’s conducted herself with dignity and class. Her former husband, on the other hand, did something that borders on the ridiculous the night he won the GOP primary runoff for the congressional seat he’s trying to claim: He thanked the very woman with whom he was having an affair at the time of his scandal, reminding South Carolinians of precisely why so many of them consider him to be such a slug.

Huma Abedin is still married to Weiner. Abedin has conducted herself with equal amounts of dignity since her husband decided to show off his body to other women. Abedin worked as a trusted aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And let’s not forget that Weiner was sharing lurid pictures of himself with his Twitter mistresses while his lovely wife was pregnant with their child, a son who was born in December 2011.

Now both of these clowns – Mark Sanford and Anthony Weiner – want to get back into the political arena. Call me old-fashioned, but I am one of those who expects elected public officials to be free of the kind of humiliation that will dog these two guys for the rest of their lives.