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Feature
O’Malley’s Tin Whistle
The ambitious governor of Maryland stumbles toward 2016.
MARTIN O’MALLEY arrived at this year’s Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, as a potential 2016 presidential candidate. Whether he left it as one is less clear.
His convention speech fell flat. It revolved around a labored routine, complete with corny gesticulations, in which he asked the audience to join him in praising Barack Obama for “moving America forward, not back.” Footage from the address captured many members of the crowd either zoned out or talking among themselves. One sensed that O’Malley’s political career had just moved back, not forward.
As the Washington Post noted, “it was immediately clear that O’Malley’s speech was not generating nearly the same buzz as more-spirited addresses by some of the party’s other rising stars, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who lifted the convention crowd into a frenzy just before O’Malley took the stage shortly before 10 p.m.”
For an intensely image-conscious pol like O’Malley, such reports must have stung. Through his status as the head of the Democratic Governors Association, he had secured a speaking slot in prime time. But he simply couldn’t deliver.
He had even brought his Celtic rock group, O’Malley’s March, with him to the convention. O’Malley is known for wearing sleeveless muscle T-shirts while strumming away at his guitar, and he was looking forward to showing off with a noted celebrity. But the weather conspired against him in an ominous foreshadowing of his lackluster convention appearance, reported the Washington Post: “…O’Malley, who has a side career as a musician, was to appear on stage with a band fronted by actor Jeff Bridges during a street festival here. Shortly before O’Malley was to be called to join the band, a torrential downpour cut the show short.”
Also raining on his parade in Charlotte was the sour response of pundits and party hacks to his pre-convention appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, during which he had fumbled a question from host Bob Schieffer about whether he could “honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago.” “No,” O’Malley replied, setting off a moment of panic in the Obama camp. “But that’s not the question of this election.” O’Malley tried to backtrack the following day, but the damage was already done.
“I think we can all agree Martin O’Malley is not better off today than he was four days ago,” Conn Carroll, an editorial writer for the Washington Examiner, tweeted after he watched the governor’s underwhelming convention address.
O’Malley’s ambitions, however, remain undimmed. By all appearances, he still has his heart set on 2016. Earlier in the year, he had relayed to his supporters his family’s enthusiasm at seeing him listed among potential presidential contenders. “My daughters will e-mail me when they see the honorable mentions with such tremendous leaders as Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, who’s done an outstanding job in New York, and Vice President Biden, who my daughters just adore,” he said at a Democratic gathering. “They’ll e-mail me and say, ‘Boy, Dad, it’s nice to be included.’ So there’s that sort of talk.”
Not long after the convention, O’Malley turned up at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin’s “Annual Steak Fry,” an event that attracts likely presidential hopefuls. O’Malley’s remarks didn’t show much improvement from the convention (he repeated his forward-not-back routine), but the crowd was kinder, laughing dutifully at his notion of sharp anti-Republican humor: “These guys wouldn’t pass gas if they thought it could help our president accelerate the economy.” O’Malley also gushed about Bill Clinton, saying that he “loved” his convention speech and that he went back and watched it “forty times.” But it is Clinton’s rhetorical belly flop at the 1988 convention that should give O’Malley more inspiration, as it shows that such moments do not necessarily sink a career.
O’MALLEY FALLS into the category of a poor man’s Clinton. He is a transparently ambitious pol who calls himself, as Clinton once did, the “education governor.” Though he is far less talented and clever than the former president, O’Malley shares his easy extroversion. “He is not a bad guy to drink a beer with,” says a Maryland assemblyman, who chuckles at the pub performances of O’Malley’s March. “He has an Irish rock band. He likes to wear cut-off sweat shirts and T-shirts. He has a strong degree of narcissism.”
O’Malley doesn’t play the saxophone like
Clinton, but rather the “tin whistle,” as Pat Troy, a veteran pub
owner in Alexandria, Virginia, recalls. “He was a talented young
man,” says Troy, who hired O’Malley to perform at one of his
taverns in the 1980s. “He had a nice personality. He had stage
presence. He has never changed.” One night, however, O’Malley
failed to show up for a performance. “You left me stranded,” Troy
said to him. O’Malley fessed up that he was on a date at the time.
“So I fired him,” says Troy, who remained fond of him nonetheless,
though he now finds the Catholic governor’s support for gay
marriage and abortion rights disappointing. “It just shows that an
awful lot of Catholics don’t give a damn,” says Troy.
Born in 1963 to Catholic parents in Potomac, Maryland, O’Malley has used his education from the Church in the Washington, D.C., area—he went to Our Lady of Lourdes School, Jesuit Gonzaga High School, and Catholic University—to subvert her on moral issues, thereby raising his national profile in the eyes of progressives. In 2011, O’Malley openly defied his bishop on gay marriage. To the dismay of conservative Maryland Democrats, he announced that passage of gay marriage would be one of his top legislative priorities, and he admitted envy of checkered Catholic Andrew Cuomo’s success in slam- dunking secularism over the bishops of New York State. “There are times in Annapolis when a governor’s support can move an issue over the goal line,” he said. “I think we can learn from what they did.”
Far from afraid of the Church’s reaction to his stance, O’Malley publicized it. In August of 2011, he proudly released to the press letters that he had exchanged with then Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien about gay marriage. “Maryland is not New York,” Archbishop O’Brien had written to him. “We urge you not to allow your role as the leader of our state to be used in allowing the debate surrounding the definition of marriage to be determined by mere political expediency. The people of Maryland deserve no less.”
O’Malley replied disingenously, “I do not presume, nor would I ever presume as governor, to question or infringe upon your freedom to define, to preach about, and to administer the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church,” (in reality, he objects to the withholding of Communion from pro-abortion politicians). “But on the public issue of granting equal civil marital rights to same-sex couples, you and I disagree….I look forward to working with you on other issues of mutual agreement. And I respect your freedom to disagree with me as a citizen and as a religious leader without questioning your motives.”
“He has an Irish temper,” says Mark Newgent, an editor for the blog Red Maryland. “He has never had to face a lot of opposition. He is very sanctimonious. He is very preachy. He has never found a straw man he doesn’t like to burn down.”
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (21) | Leave a comment
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Joellen| 12.28.12 @ 8:08AM
This individual EXEMPLIFIES my comment to Schells "We are all Mayans Now". Here's a CINO (Catholic in name only) who adores Bubba Clinton who raped Juanita Broadwick, Hillary who has the blood of four Americans on her hands, Cuomo, another CINO, who pushed gay marriage on New Yorkers without a vote and, no one ever seems to remember this one, was in charge of HUD where millions of dollars are still not accounted for today; and the same with Cory, what happened to the monies donated for Newark Schools, Booker. This is your DEMOCRAT PARTY of today folks. And yet we'll get the deceivers who will come and try and re-write the history and scorn good people like President Reagan, Governors Walker and Sarah Palin, or Allan West, or the late Judge Bork, etc., etc.
Again, its all about relativity and boy do people like O'Malley wash in it. I just wish the American Catholic Bishops would finally call this hypocrisy out once and for all and start promoting the absolutes of Black & White by denouncing O'Malley, Cuomo, Pelosi, Biden and any other CINO in office who mocks and openly betrays their faith.
WRTolkas| 12.28.12 @ 8:46AM
Dear Joellen:
It will never happen. The Catholic Bishops are in bed, so to speak, with the Democratic Party.
As for O'Malley, the freebe and moral challenged electorate on both coasts are certain to vote him into the presidency. And as for me, I've just about given up. I'm hunkering down and stock-piling, awaiting when the whole experiment in freedom collapses.
Quartermaster| 12.28.12 @ 11:08AM
Because the Bishops won't formally excommunicate men like O'Malley, they just get more defiance and the RCC sinks more deeply into apostasy. But, you are right about the Bishops being in bed with the Dimocrats, and that's why they sink more deeply into apostasy with every passing day.
Brubaker| 12.28.12 @ 5:56PM
While I agree that excommunication of men like O'Malley is extremely unlikely, I'm not certain that it really matters much. There was a time, not so long ago, when the threat of excommunication carried real weight. I suspect that time has passed.
holmegm| 12.28.12 @ 9:31AM
Tin whistle doesn't need scare quotes. Fine Irish (and Scotch, and English) instrument.
Listen to one of the greats like Mary Bergin play it.
Don't blame the whistle for this guy :)
Derek Leaberry| 12.28.12 @ 9:39AM
As a resident of the hostage state of Maryland's Eastern Shore, I can attest that O'Malley thinks himself presidential material. He's moving even farther left for the 2016 Democratic primaries to keep pace with Andrew Cuomo. He's done well to push all the Left's pleasure buttons. O'Malley was instrumental in the passing of queer marriage in Maryland. He's raised taxes and spent heavily. He passed the toilet flush tax to please environmentalists. Now he is after the rarely used death penalty.
As with most modern Democrats, if something is degenerate or dishonorable or both, he is all for it, very intensely in his case. Martin O'Malley is a very bad man.
Otis, my man!| 12.28.12 @ 9:43AM
Yes, and even though he's just another left-wing jerk-off, if the MSM decides he's their man, his future is golden. He will have just as much chance at making President as the current anointed one. I think O'Malley is counting on this.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 12.28.12 @ 9:51AM
“Though he is far less talented and clever than the former president, O’Malley shares his easy extroversion. ‘He is not a bad guy to drink a beer with,’says a Maryland assemblyman, who chuckles at the pub performances of O’Malley’s March. ‘He has an Irish rock band. He likes to wear cut-off sweat shirts and T-shirts. He has a strong degree of narcissism.’”
A strong degree of narcissism is a characteristic O’Malley shares with the current POTUS. As O’Malley succeeded the historic first black mayor of Baltimore whose tenure was marred with numerous controversies and failures (Baltimore’ violent crime rate increased as the local economy tanked), perhaps he believes he can repeat his previous pattern of electoral success. It would be ironic if, in order to do so, he would first have to defeat Hillary (supposedly the more talented spouse of the more talented and clever former president) or Biden (who lacks O'Malley's musical talent and good looks, but is otherwise difficult to distinguish).
Moe Blotz| 12.28.12 @ 8:23PM
Too bad the band leader does not have the muscles to flaunt the "muscle T-shirt". Scrawny.
Drunken Sailor| 12.28.12 @ 10:18AM
Is it just me or does the Democrats future roster look vunerable, with a weak bench? To bad the GOP roster is in such shambles as the competition so far doesn't look very tough.
Quartermaster| 12.28.12 @ 11:12AM
Alas, both parties are deeply corrupt and represent only themselves.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 12.28.12 @ 11:14AM
There are many differences between the the Democrat bench and the Republican bench, and how they are treated (and not just by the media).
One would be how failure is regarded in the respective camps. Mark Sanford's adultery when revealed disqualified him from future Presidential ambition. If he was a Democrat, he would hve received a featured speech at the convention, like Bubba.
Larry Craig's wide stance in the Men's Room led to calls for his resignation, and his departure from office. If he was a Democrat, he would have been the Senate Pro Tem President.
I could go on with more examples or more differences, but I will defer to the limitations of space and time.
Drunken Sailor| 12.28.12 @ 11:40AM
No arguments here on how the parties are treated differnet by the media. I just think the Democrat roster for future races look weaker than the Republican side. Then again, the Republicans do not have their act together yet, are busy alienating a large portion of their base (conservatives) and have no strategy yet to address the low information voter problem to improve their odds of winning in the future.
rightasrain| 12.28.12 @ 12:00PM
O'Malley sounds like a thinner version of our side's overly-ambitious, overrated, overweight narcissist, Chris Christie.
Occam's Tool| 12.28.12 @ 7:17PM
Another Scumbag Libtard Light In The Brainpan Lawyer.
Nothing to see here, folks.
sdfhlk | 12.28.12 @ 8:37PM
Merry Christmas,NBA ,NFL 2012
oldeham| 12.29.12 @ 2:53AM
The current Governor of Maryland has a natural talent for messing up everything he touches. The citizens of Baltimore were happy to send him to the Annapolis because of the way he screwed up Maryland's major city, financially.
Since he has been Governor there has been a steady loss of good paying jobs. Sites for heavy industry are empty, sites for light industry are empty, store fronts in malls are empty. This the economic vision he has for Maryland. He is truly a hack of the same cloth as Barack the 1st. Tax, tax, tax, spend, spend spend. He would be a very good second act for what we now have in Washington, DC
air max en france | 12.29.12 @ 3:55AM
Through his status as the head of the Democratic Governors Association, he had secured a speaking slot in prime time. But he simply couldn’t deliver.
Pecos Pete| 12.29.12 @ 8:50AM
BBT!
Occam's Tool| 12.29.12 @ 8:59PM
Support BBT (Bring Back TLP) by telling the editor at the American Spectator WHERE TO GET OFF. Tim, I look forward to seeing you at Weasel Zippers, where I also comment.
G-d Bless, and Happy New Year, gang.
libertychick| 12.29.12 @ 6:30PM
Mr. Neumayr has covered all that is wrong with Martin O'Malley very neatly. (Can you tell I'm a life-longer Marylander?) I find it hard to believe O'Malley could win the presidential nomination in 2016 with his platform as governor of higher taxes, bad business climate, dependence on gambling revenues, enthusiasm for wind farms, gay marriage, and making MD one of the most attractive santuary states in the US. But, hey, who would have thought Obama would get re-elected with the economy in the toilet and no good ideas how to fix it? Great article, I've already sent the link to another MD resident who shares my lack of enthusiasm for the King of Hubris.