COLUMBIA - Although S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford has been on active military duty since last Sunday -- the only one of the nation's 50 governors currently serving during this time of war -- the state's government so far hasn't missed a beat.

"The staff talks to him every day," said Sanford's press secretary, Will Folks.

Actually, that's not so difficult. The governor is at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., a 51/2-hour drive from Columbia.

Sanford, 42, who had not served previously in the military, last year was granted a direct commission as a first lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve. So now he's a student in a two-week training course for new medical service officers like himself.

Last week, following training days that began with P.T. (physical training) at 5:25 a.m. and didn't end until 7 p.m., the governor talked state business in nightly conference calls with senior members of his staff back in Columbia.

During Thursday night's call, for instance, he agreed to lower the state's security readiness level from third-highest to fourth-highest. State Law Enforcement Division chief Robert Stewart had advised the change, which really means only a lower staffing level in the state's Emergency Operations Center.

Before leaving eight days ago for the Air Force base, just outside Alabama's capital city of Montgomery, Sanford promised to rush back to South Carolina if he were really, really needed.

"If al-Qaida blew up the Wando Terminal" at Charleston's seaport, he said, "I'd be back here in an hour and a half."

Otherwise, Sanford plans to head up Interstate 85 and I-20 back to Columbia following the course graduation ceremony Friday. He'll be driven by SLED agent Carl Alston, a fellow Air Force reservist who arranged to take his annual two weeks of active duty at Maxwell while Sanford is there. They're going their own ways these two weeks, but if someone needs to talk to Sanford on the telephone, Alston is the person who takes the call and hunts down the governor.

Meanwhile, the governor's office is being run day to day by Fred Carter, a government veteran who was formerly director of the State Budget and Control Board. Carter, a former political science professor, left the presidency of Francis Marion College to be Sanford's chief of staff.

First lady Jenny Sanford, meanwhile, is standing in for her husband at public events: the Governor's School of Science and Mathematics dinner Tuesday night and the State Prayer Wednesday morning, both in Columbia, and the S.C. Children and Weight Summit Breakfast in Greenville on Thursday.

Winthrop University political science professor Scott Huffman said that while Sanford's military training may be unique among serving governors, it's hardly unusual for governors to be absent for all sorts of other reasons, from European and Asian trade missions to African safaris.

"It's a reflection of the structure of our government," Huffman said. Because the U.S. Constitution guarantees a republican form of government in every state, "we have all our representatives up there speaking for us, and we have three separate branches of government. So government isn't going to fall apart with one person missing."

That's even more true in South Carolina, where the governor has direct authority over only one-third of state agencies that administer government services. The rest are headed either by semi-independent boards or by elected officials.

So the main job of an S.C. governor is to cajole lawmakers to get his agenda passed. The critical time for that is nearer the end of the legislative session in May.

To that end, Huffman said, the timing of the Air Force officer course worked out well for Sanford. "Helping his agenda along at this time can be done by the staff without him personally needing to be there. ... He wouldn't want to be gone at a time when he needed to go press the flesh and bend some ears and make some deals."

Sanford said he joined the Air Force Reserve because he felt he ought to set an example for his four young sons. But shortly after his Jan. 15 inauguration this year, he said he was thinking of resigning his commission if he were faced with going on an extended tour of active duty. He reversed himself, however, and said he'd serve if called up.

So far, 55 of the 132 members of Sanford's reserve unit, the 315th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron based in Charleston, have been ordered to one-year active duty tours, according to Lt. Col. Chris King, an Air Force Reserve spokesman. While most will serve in the United States, King said, some have orders to go overseas in support of action in Iraq.

It appears unlikely, however, that Sanford would be ordered to active duty unless the squadron were called up en masse, as he hasn't begun a required 11-week training course for his Air Force job as a medical administrator.

Were Sanford ordered to active duty for an extended period, he has said he would turn over his gubernatorial duties to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, a 34-year-old former lawmaker whose current job is mostly ceremonial.