The Two Martin O'Malley's

Naturally, we watched the Ehrlich/O'Malley debate tonight, which had all of the finesse of a steel cage match. The debate was a clear win for the Governor, as he stuck to the factual points and actually attempted to answer the questions. O'Malley was as petulant as he has been recently. As David Wissing notes:

Wow. What you have are two very aggressive candidates and two people who clearly do not like each other. Now I do have a dog in this fight, so you can take this whatever way you want, but I do try to be objective when I analyze these things and I have to says Governor Ehrlich came off pretty well when compared to O’Malley. O’Malley almost seemed angry during the entire debate, constantly interrupting Ehrlich time after time forcing Ehrlich to pause and smile at O’Malley’s behavior. Ehrlich was much more upbeat and positive with his answers while O’Malley kept reverting to stock Democratic talking points (Big Oil, Enron, Bush) and spent most of his time attacking Ehrlich.

The debate, however, got me thinking to old times. The old Martin O'Malley. The one who we saw before November 5, 2002. That Martin O'Malley was not the typical, run of the mill left-winger that you see these days. Back then, he was able to portray himself as a moderate and actually mean it. He ran in 1999 as a moderate choice between the more liberal Baltimore City Councilman Lawrence Bell and Carl Stokes. These were the days that O'Malley, while sometimes still a hot head, at least cared about things and actually took controversial stances to try and stand up to the Democratic establishment, such as when he took on Patricia Jessamy's unwillingness to prosecute police corruption in 2001.

I remember attending an event at Western Maryland College in April 2002 where O'Malley spoke. With the Townsend campaign going down in flames, there was talk that O'Malley might jump into the Democratic gubernatorial primary against her. Since he was a potential opponent for our side, I wanted to see in person what the hype was all about. And I will never forget the answer that Martin O'Malley circa 2002 gave to the following:

Student Question: What kind of programs do you supported for convicted drug users?

O'Malley: We already have a program; it's called jail.

That was an O'Malley that moderates and Republicans could, while not necessarily vote for, give a begrudging amount of respect for. As we all know, O'Malley did not run for Governor in 2002. The Democratic establishment talked him out of it. Probably told him that "it wasn't his time," promised him help for a future election, and strong-armed him out of the race. Had Martin O'Malley run in 2002, he would be Governor right now. And he knows it. And since that election, Martin O'Malley has never been the same.

The Martin O'Malley we know now is a completely different animal. Gone is the O'Malley that was willing to challenge the Democratic leadership, replaced by an obsequious O'Malley that is subservient to the Democratic talking points. A breathy O'Malley that waxes poetic about nothing on the biggest stage of his life, yet still finds the time to completely fail as a Mayor. The O'Malley that, much like the Pat Jessamy he criticized five years ago, takes responsibility for nothing and blames everything on everybody else. An O'Malley that had the courage to try new things as Mayor of Baltimore is gone, replaced by an O'Malley wants to bring to the Governor's office the same old staid left-wing policies that failed the state of Maryland in the Glendening administration. Now we get an O'Malley that is, if you watched his debate performance, nothing more than a poor man's Bill Clinton.

Instead of a guy who tells it like it is, O'Malley is now merely the voice that provides audio for the Sun's anti-Ehrlich editorials.

That is what makes O'Malley's insistence that there are "two Bob Ehrlich's" (which he repeated as naseum during tonight's debate) so comical. There are two Martin O'Malley's, something that both he and the Democratic establishment refuse to discuss. The old O'Malley, the one who challenged the Democratic establishment prior to 2002, and the O'Malley post 2002, molded into the shape and form that Maryland's Democratic, left-wing establishment always wanted. And I think that the voters of Maryland can see what today's O'Malley is, and a majority of them will not reward that kind of failure with a promotion.