HE'S BACK!!!

Martin O'Malley is back.  And this time, he's coming back for a job he doesn't have to get elected to.

President Biden just appointed O'Malley to be the commissioner of the Social Security Administration.  If the Senate confirms him, O'Malley would be in charge of the most popular social program in the country and face the task of how to pay not only the 70 million citizens who rely on it today but also ensure its survival beyond 2034, when the system would be able to pay benefits for only four out of five dependents.

"Governor O'Malley is a lifelong public servant who has spent his career making government more accessible and transparent, while keeping the American people at the heart of his work," President Biden said in a statement. "As Governor [of Maryland], he made government work more effectively across his administration and enhanced the way millions of people accessed critical services."

Too bad Vice President Biden couldn't say the same thing about O'Malley in 2015, when the former Maryland governor announced his presidential candidacy.

O'Malley is known to be a policy wonk and a numerically centered technocrat, which is probably why he wouldn't have gotten the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination even if Debbie Wasserman Schultz hadn't put roadblocks in his way.  For a presidential candidate, such qualities  - which happen to be helpful traits for an actual President in office - are a non-starter, but for leading a bureaucracy, its a positive boon! 

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, endorsed O'Malley, calling him "a longtime Social Security champion who "supports expanding Social Security's modest benefits, not cutting them."  That should be enough to enable his confirmation, but who knows, Bernie Sanders may still have some resentment over something O'Malley said about him during the presidential campaign - not the 2016 campaign, the 2020 campaign.  (Remember this?) Or maybe Kirsten Gillibrand will block him for opposing Hillary Clinton for the Presidency in 2016. Or maybe Elizabeth Warren will block him because she thinks he's a schmuck. 

If O'Malley gets the job, though, he has an excellent chance of rescuing Social Security and be the hero he's obviously always wanted to be.  And though he's emphatically ruled out another run for the Presidency, whatever success he has running the Social Security Administration might make him reconsider that decision. 😊