It's Sandersman!

In his national television debut, Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders doesn't look half-bad.

Sanders doesn't exactly have a movie-star face, but on this March episode of Dr. Phil, his normally limp hair has a nice lift — especially compared with his bald host.

Dr. Phil — psychologist Phil McGraw — is trying to help track down the missing children of Independence woman Tina Porter, whose husband sits in jail, claiming to have taken them but refusing to reveal where they are.

As the video montages have summarized, Sam and Lindsey Porter were last seen leaving Tina Porter's Independence home with their father, Daniel Porter, who was estranged from his wife but had always been good to the children. Or had been until June 6, 2004, when he kept them beyond his weekend visitation and left a cryptic note for Tina in a tree near Missouri highways 291 and 210. The note indicated that the children were with another person or family.

Within the week, police caught up with Daniel Porter alone in rural Missouri and arrested him. Since then, he has told multiple stories about what happened to the children, but he has apparently never told the truth.

After Porter's arrest, he pleaded guilty to a firearms charge; he is now serving a ten-year sentence. He also faces kidnapping charges — charges that Sanders says will go away if Porter just tells him where the children are.

"What we've always said is, Dan Porter has the keys to his jail cell," Sanders tells Dr. Phil, who has been doing his best to aggravate — and moderate — the conflict between his two main guests.

Tina Porter has spent the two-show series veering between apparent numbness and rage. Her face is like a mask, even as she confronts a friend of Daniel Porter's identified only as Lisa.

As Dr. Phil reveals, Lisa (whose last name is Atkins) has been exchanging letters and phone calls with the jail-bound Porter. After the first episode, Lisa failed a polygraph test. This prompted Dr. Phil's last-minute invitation for Sanders and Independence Police Sgt. Dennis Green to appear on the second show. Lisa says she agreed to appear on Dr. Phil in hopes of helping find the children. Now she's been accused of facilitating their disappearance and withholding key information from investigators. Her demeanor alternates, too, swinging from angry and confrontational to simpering and messy.

Eventually, Sanders takes over and interrogates Atkins on the air.

"How many times did you try to talk about the kids?" Sanders asks (to a drum-beat accompaniment that the show's producers have dubbed in).

"Anytime I try to bring up the kids, he [Daniel] just shuts me off," Atkins says. "I'm afraid if I just keep at it that he will just quit trusting me and won't tell me anything at all."

"Do you know him to be a fairly violent guy and have a temper?"

"Never."

Soon, the screen shows Sanders in another room, reassuring Tina Porter and telling her that Daniel Porter and Lisa Atkins had a relationship "that weighs on her current husband."

"I think she wants to minimize the amount of contact she's had with Dan in front of her husband, for obvious reasons," Sanders says.

Tina Porter tells Sanders that her husband plans to plead guilty and say nothing.

"He's rolling some pretty big dice here, and I think he's looking at quite a bit of time in the Missouri Department of Corrections," Sanders responds.

"So we might not ever find them, huh?"

"We're going to be there for you, and we're going to bring them home together," he says.

Cut to their hug.

Dr. Phil shows Sanders' best side: intelligent and authoritative yet caring and compassionate.

But his appearance on the show is unprecedented. The Jackson County Prosecutor's Office has produced at least one big-name politician in Claire McCaskill (who moved from that office to become Missouri auditor before running last year for governor; she recently launched a bid for the U.S. Senate). Despite the visibility of the office, it's hard to imagine McCaskill or her successor, Bob Beaird, racing off to join the circus of daytime television.

In doing so, Sanders draws some criticism at home. A story in The Kansas City Star quotes two university professors who wonder whether the show damaged the case against Daniel Porter; interviews that might become part of a criminal case should take place in private, they argue.

But Sanders tells the Pitch that, by and large, his ratings were high.

"When I talked to real people, when I talked to her, the mother, when I talked to law enforcement, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive." He says he'd do it again.

The media exposure generated leads on the case, he says.

"We got tips from all across the country. I'll leave it at that, about the potential whereabouts for the kids," he says.

Tina Porter's children are still missing, though. Sanders' national TV debut proved only one thing: how fast his own star has risen over a very short time.

By most accounts, Sanders is ready to run for Jackson County executive, an office that's long been a stronghold of the Democratic Party in Missouri but seems increasingly vulnerable as the FBI continues to investigate the awarding of contracts by current executive Katheryn Shields.