Let O'Malley Be O'Malley

In the past seven years, I've been vexed by the same old question.  We all know why Martin O'Malley didn't click as a presidential candidate with the media; they flat-out hated him.  But why, why didn't he connect with the voters?  Lis Smith seems to have the answer.

Lis Smith is a Democratic operative who was the deputy campaign director for Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign, and she recounts her experiences with various political campaigns as well as O'Malley's presidential campaign in her memoir "Any Given Tuesday."  Regarding O'Malley, she suggests in her book that O'Malley, running as a more liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton and as a Washington outsider, was caught up in his own Democratic insider status as a one-time mayor of Baltimore, governor of Maryland, and chair of the Democratic Governors Association and that his voters and donors overlapped with hers. "Minus a few policy differences," Smith writes, "there wasn't that much daylight between them." And so, Smith explains, this only made it easy for Bernie Sanders, who was more of an outsider than O'Malley, to become the anti-Hillary at O'Malley's expense, as there was only room for one anti-Hillary.

I agree with that assessment up to a point.  Stylistically, O'Malley resembled Hillary, and he did have notable political connections like she did (particularly in his home state), but he seemed to have more in common with Sanders on the issues, while Sanders was more direct and more flamboyant about his own differences with Hillary. But it was what Smith wrote about O'Malley's own style that raised my eyebrows.

"There was the O'Malley behind the scenes and off the record - warm, genuine, funny, and smart," Smith wrote.  "Then there was the O'Malley who appeared the second a TV camera or recorder turned on.  Guarded and stilted in his presentation, oddly formal in his language, he was like a mid-2010s candidate doing an impression of a 1990s-era B-list actor doing an impersonation of 1960s-era Kennedy - he just couldn't quite connect. He was branded with the I-word, the death knell for any politician - inauthentic."

Here Smith cuts to the crux of the onion ring.  I never paid much attention to O'Malley's ability to connect - I was more tuned in to what he said than how he said it - but looking back at his TV appearances, I see Smith's point.   O'Malley usually gave the same stump speech every time he made a campaign appearance and gave the same pat answers to questions every time he granted an interview.  The only thing different in each case was his audience - different audience, different state, same presentation.  I didn't see anything wrong with that; because he was speaking to different audiences at different times, people only heard the same O'Malley spiel once, not a dozen times like I did, as I followed every appearance he made.  And I, being a true believer in his campaign, never got tired of his spiel.  Heck, I loved it.  But unless you delve into a candidate's policy positions, like I did with O'Malley, you're inevitably going to look for warmth, spontaneity, and charm - the sort of things Barack Obama has in spades.  Or as one reporter told Smith while covering O'Malley, "I guess I just wanted or expected him to be more."

This is in stark contrast to Bernie Sanders.  Sanders is as warm and cuddly as a porcupine, but his worn-down suits, his unkempt hair, and his railings against corporate America satisfied those who wanted more.  He's authentic.  In the end, it was a bitter pill for O'Malley to swallow.  "What looks perfect on paper," Smith said of O'Malley, "doesn't always translate in real life."  

So all right, the Democrats are probably going to go down in flames on Tuesday, and we could be only two years away from Donald Trump becoming der Amerikanischer Führer if President Biden either loses his bid for a second term or doesn't run for re-election, with no obvious alternative Democratic presidential nominee.  O'Malley has the issues, he has the resumé, he has the chops, and he has the experience. Also, he has Katie.  But he needs the charm, the warm, the spontaneity, the charisma, the gosh darn authenticity to compete with Donald Trump in 2024 if Biden steps aside - and Trump is as authentic as hell (the same hell he'll put America through if he is President again).  But wait: O'Malley does have all that - the charm, the charisma and all that rot.  So if O'Malley runs again in 2024 - or in 2028, for that matter, assuming we still have presidential elections with more than one candidate by then - what should his handlers do?

Simple: Let O'Malley be O'Malley.

Let him be that guy Lis Smith knew personally.  Let him be the warm, smart funny guy you'd have a beer with.  Let him connect.  Let him let his hair down, as it were.  Let the real Martin Joseph O'Malley shine through.

And when he's President, then we get to eat our Pop-Tarts.

So what's my gambit to spur O'Malley to run again in 2024 if President Biden does not?  Never you mind! You'll find out soon enough.