Any Marylander who visited the New York Times website on Friday afternoon was immediately greeted with a powerful image. Staring out from among five head shots on the homepage’s main-story space, pictured with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton: the handsome mug of Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
In an online preview piece that will appear in the opinion pages of the print version of the Sunday Times, the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief, David Leonhardt, ponders the possibilities of who will cadge the Democratic Party’s nomination for President in 2016. O’Malley ranks high on the list. As pungent evidence of O’Malley’s not-so-distant White House ambitions, Leonhardt cites our governor’s shock-and-awe cameo during the run-up to the recent South Carolina Republican presidential primary, wherein MOM pointedly lambasted GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney.
With a mixture of stealth and bravado, O’Malley has been erecting the framework for a 2016 presidential bid, using as platforms both his elective office and his chairmanship of the Democratic Governors Association. In addition to the South Carolina foray, O’Malley, in the past several months, has ventured overseas on a trade mission to India; was stationed in a position of conspicuous prominence directly behind First Lady Michelle Obama during President Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress on creating jobs; and is openly championing the initiative to sanction same-sex marriage in Maryland.
No one should commission painting O’Malley’s presidential portrait quite yet, but in Leonhardt’s mind — and the minds of Democratic apparatchiks currently scheming the party’s post-Obama landscape — the governor is ready for his national closeup.
Is this an example of the Peter Principle? Really…President??? I don’t think he could survive that closeup….what are his accomplishments?
I’m from Maryland and the Gov is quite unpopular these days. His only solution to anything is hitting the residents with taxes. Success??? Please tell me of the jobs he has created. We have so many federal jobs in and around our state that you can’t get a true estimate on job creation in maryland that would support efforts made by the Governor. As I see it, we have lost numerous small businesses in maryland. I would say we’d need them to help support our communities. We have a serious debt and when O’malley came into office, he was handed a surplus in budget. How were the funds handled that we are in such debt in a matter of a few years? I would like for you to please share with us the Governor’s success in job creation and budget management. Why he would make a great contender in the presidential race??? I’m sure many of the people of Maryland would love to know as well. His only success if you want to call it a success is figuring out how many different ways the the state can claim tax money from it’s citizens. If our state did not have the Gov’t employees residing in our state to help support our communities & housing market, we would be just like Detroit.