Perhaps one day a glassy-eyed man will stand at the podium beside his politician wife, holding it together for the cameras while she apologizes to the public and her family for having had sex with the young gardener, office assistant or a prostitute named "Lance."

Unimaginable on so many levels, it's hard to sort them all out, right? But let's try. As an exercise, it beats thinking about the delegate count.

Just as men hardly ever ask their wives if these pants make them look fat, women hardly ever think that dragging a betrayed husband into further public humiliation would be the best play for sympathy or forgiveness. It's one of those sex-linked traits -- chromosomal or cultural, take your pick -- like asking for directions.

There's also very little societal tolerance for unfaithful wives. Cheating husbands may be seen as cads or creeps, but there may be an element of boys-will-be-boys admiration, too -- Heh heh, that son of a gun, didn't know he had it in him.

The English language has no female equivalent for "cad," "philanderer" or the higher-class "Casanova." There are, however, lots of other words for women who have illicit sex, most of them unprintable. Suffice it to say that if everything else in our society were equal, this would be the last double standard standing.

It bears noting here that Tammy Wynette had five husbands. Maybe, when she exhorted women in 1968 to stand by their men, it was because she knew all too well they might do something that required being stood by. The anthems regarding women who transgress are less forgiving. John Lennon's 1965 song "Run For Your Life" comes to mind.

Leaving all that aside, however, there's a more practical reason why we haven't seen any shell-shocked husbands at the podium. Women simply don't have the same opportunity to get themselves into this particular predicament.

True, the suffragists and their successors didn't exactly march for the right to screw up in public life as hopelessly as the recent spate of adulterous husbands have done. Reaching that point would demonstrate a perverse kind of parity, but in any case, it's likely a long way off.

To begin with, there would have to be many, many more women in public office. The larger and deeper the pool, the more chances of it containing someone weak or reckless enough to indulge these urges, and stupid or power-drunk enough to expect to get away with it in the post-privacy era. Call me crazy, but if that's the price of electing more women to important positions, I'm willing to risk it.

Men have had thousands of years in authority to develop the mutant strain of entitlement that occasionally grabs hold of one. No one really knows what Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey, David Vitter and Bill Clinton were thinking when they went off the marital reservation, but any concern for their wives and children must have been muted at best. It takes a real sense of invulnerability to get to that place -- a sense that probably worked for them in other circumstances, but one that women generally do not share.

Then, too, there's the basic difference in the way the sexes go about infidelity. The experts tell us women are more likely to cheat in the context of a relationship, whereas men are more likely to do it for recreation. That's why male hookers aren't trolling the streets for suburban janes and the feds aren't making headlines busting up high-priced male "escort" rings.

Some say that relationships are more dangerous to a marriage because they involve actual feelings. "It didn't mean anything!" is a common defense; nobody ever tried to soothe a spouse with "We were in love!"

Feelings, however, aren't the only thing at stake these days. "Meaningless" sex -- paid for or free of charge -- brings a heightened threat of communicable, and incurable, disease. That's a heck of a way to treat the person one is supposed to care about most in the world.

What goes on inside a marriage is only known to the people in it, but once a politician makes his sex life a public issue, it's open season on his wife, too. I heard radio talk show callers excoriating Eliot Spitzer's wife for standing with him on that stage. Apparently they had no problem victimizing her again. And there are plenty of people out there who still haven't forgiven Hillary Clinton for sticking with Bill, as if her desire to preserve her family were a personal affront to them.

If we were keeping score, it would take about a half-dozen cuckolded men standing by their wives at mea culpa ceremonies to balance the ledger. But the country is now officially sick of these gut-wrenching tableaux and nobody wants to see them repeated in any iteration -- although maybe we could tolerate one role-reserved apology, just for novelty's sake.

In the meantime, let's abide by one simple rule. Mess up on your own, fess up on your own. It's short and it rhymes, so even a politician can remember it.