July 2 (Bloomberg) -- Has there ever been a more vivid example than Bernard Madoff that English tailoring, a lifetime of ease and untold riches can’t save a man?

Standing before the judge on Monday, face gray, swagger gone, in a suit that hung off him as if it were still on the hanger, Madoff told the court, “I live in a tormented state now knowing all the pain and suffering that I have created.” Turning to face his victims, who came to hear him sentenced, he said: “I am sorry. I know that doesn’t help you.”

Madoff made his dramatic appearance the day I arrived for the Aspen Ideas Festival to speak about politics and listen to others talk about more important subjects like how to be happy by doing good, not simply doing well.

The Masters of the Universe, political and financial, don’t have time for such reflection, which is too bad. What drives them to live so close to the edge that having to say they’re sorry is a foreseeable event? They have no idea what will lead to a happy life, the prize we are all after.

The Ideas Festival opened with a speech on that subject by David Bradley, whose magazine, the Atlantic, got exclusive access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history on happiness. Researchers at Harvard followed 268 men who entered the university in the late- 1930s (it was an all-male school back then) into their 70s and 80s to find out what was going on in their lives that made some of them “happy-well” into old age.

Just Hard Data

The study didn’t take anyone’s word on whether they were happy. One of the marks of the rich and powerful is boasting about how happy they are (and how little sleep they need). The study relied on intense yearly interviews, medical and psychiatric exams, and hard data. It found that the best predictor of a happy life isn’t power, riches and fame, or intellectual brilliance, the social class you were born into, a loving childhood or popularity at school.

The most reliable predictor turned out to be having warm relationships by at least age 47. A good marriage is important (even if some didn’t get it right until their second or third), but strong relationships based on trust and respect and continuity can also be with relatives, friends or mentors.

Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful: 93 percent of the men who were thriving at age 65 were close to a brother or sister. Also predictive were starting a sport or physical activity while young, and adaptability. Resilience and optimism saw the happy-well through the loss of jobs, fortunes, spouses, children and health.

Dining Alone

In an audience of achievers, you could see the calculations going on. No problem if you weren’t prom queen or voted most likely to succeed, and no need to obsess over your teenager eating alone in the cafeteria. Shy, anxious kids are just as likely as outgoing ones to be happy later. I’m worried: Will my daughter, an only child, compensate for a lack of a sister or brother with high amounts of resilience and a good backhand?

This study is as much evidence as we are likely to get that power, fame and fortune aren’t the way to go. Madoff’s tragedy isn’t the loss of his money but of his two sons who turned him in. The man is much worse than penniless.

And the other titans of finance? We need another study for them to find out if having multiple houses from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam makes up for being reviled for the harm they brought to hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens.

Now, the Politicians

After those who want to be rich at any cost come the politicians, unhappy in their own special way. For fame and power (and for some of them the privilege to serve), they endure the constant insecurity of losing their jobs while always begging for money. They lead an outside life at the expense of an inside one. It’s why so many have affairs, from Bill Clinton to John Edwards to too many members of Congress to enumerate.

That gets us to Governor Mark Sanford. I wrote a column sympathetic to him last week that I’d like to take back. I got hundreds of e-mails telling me how wrong I was to give Sanford a break because he unwillingly fell in love -- a form of temporary insanity whenever it happens but potentially tragic when it strikes the married.

‘Anatomy of Love’

I asked Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of “Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray,” what she made of Sanford. She cited the delirium set off by dopamine, the chemical overproduced in the first throes of love, to explain his behavior. You’ve been living a life of quiet desperation in office and think you deserve happiness. You can’t see the consequences, or you think they can be fixed.

I wonder if capital punishment is called for. Just imagine if the same standard of fidelity were applied to other professions. Journalism, for one, would be decimated.

It looked like Sanford would survive until he followed up a genuine if meandering press conference with a rambling Associated Press interview in which he spoke of “forbidden” love for his “soul mate.” He must know his four boys can read the papers. It’s clear Sanford doesn’t want to be forgiven; he wants to be understood, if not admired, for following his heart. What the man needs is his head back.

Readers are as fed up with politicians who think the rules don’t apply while they pursue a warped idea of happiness as they are with bankers. What the public wants from its leaders is also what could ultimately make them happy: honoring and fostering their relationships with their loved ones and voters, with some impulse control thrown in. Our mothers already knew that without the benefit of Harvard.

(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 2, 2009 00:01 EDT