Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, a rumored 2016 presidential candidate, spoke to an audience in Shriver Hall on Wednesday evening as the first speaker of the 2014 Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS). The speech was followed by both a question and answer session and a reception in the Clipper Room hosted by the Hopkins College Democrats.
This year’s symposium is being dedicated to Anne Smedinghoff ’09, who died last year in a suicide bombing attack in southern Afghanistan while trying to deliver books to underserved school children. She served as a co-chair of the symposium in 2008.
In his talk on Wednesday night, the governor emphasized the government’s responsibility to grow the economy in the wake of the recession by spending on human capital.
“The primary will of our world today is the importance of making better balanced and more mindful choices if we are to create an economy with a human purpose. A stronger middle class is not only a domestic policy imperative, but it is a vital goal for the future security of our nation,” O’Malley said.
In the question and answer session after the speech one student asked the governor about his ambitions for the 2016 presidential election. O’Malley’s response did not address the question directly, but he did outline the personality traits he believes the next president must have.
“I’ve been giving a number of talks over the last year on where our country needs to go after President Obama’s honorable service comes to an end. People with the potential to lead our country forward have the responsibility to engage in the conversation with open hearts and open minds,” O’Malley said.
Much of the talk focused on health care, particularly President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. O’Malley is a vehement supporter of the plan.
“One of the great shortcomings of our economy over the last 10–20 years has been the ever escalating inflationary spiral of health care costs. We were the last industrial advanced nation of the planet to say we need a universal healthcare system for all,” O’Malley said.
Despite his careful response during the event, O’Malley is known for having made little secret of his ambition to run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2016.
“This is not the year for rolling out yard signs or bumper stickers,” O’Malley said to The Washington Post. “I’m meeting with people in ways that never really make the paper and shouldn’t — people that have experience in foreign affairs and foreign policy and national security, all of which is part of a continuing education and refinement of my beliefs and thoughts about how to govern ourselves as a people.”
While more than two years remain before the next presidential election, the results of early Maryland polls do not favor O’Malley. OpinionWorks, a full service research and strategy firm in Annapolis, recently conducted a poll that showed that 59 percent of Maryland Democrats favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as their presidential nominee. Only six percent said they would vote for O’Malley.
Unfavorable poll results are not new to O’Malley. During the event, he spoke about his particularly low approval ratings during the recession just before his reelection as governor.
“I went down to George Bush-level lows. I went down to 32 percent [approval] during the recession. But we ended up winning the re-election by twice the margin. I believe it is because people, upon sober and considered reflection, made a choice based upon what was best for their children’s future,” he said.
O’Malley’s poll numbers have since rebounded, and he received an enthusiastic response from both the crowd and from the FAS staff.
“Regardless of what polls are coming out, our purpose is not to bring the most popular person to campus, the goal is to educate and provide a forum for discourse,” Rosellen Grant, co-executive director of FAS, said.
“Creating dialogue on campus is very important, and bringing in someone like O’Malley is going to create that dialogue. He’s had a real impact on everyone around here. He’s had a very real impact on the people of Maryland, in Baltimore especially,” William Szymanski, co-executive director of FAS, said.
The FAS co-chairs stress that they believe a successful symposium is one that not necessarily pleases the audience, but one that stirs discussion.
“You never really know what the audience is going to take away. That’s the whole idea behind the symposium is that everyone will learn a new perspective. This year our theme is confronting global dissonance. We’re exploring how to balance the idealistic goals of individuals with realistic expectations,” Nikhil Gupta, co-executive director of FAS, said.
Born in Washington D.C., O’Malley attended college at the Catholic University of America. He earned his law degree at the University of Maryland School of Law.
He served as a Baltimore city councilor from 1991 to 1999. At the end of his time as a councilor, O’Malley ran a successful campaign to become the city’s mayor. His tenure in the mayor’s office is best known for reducing Baltimore crime and slashing the city’s spending, creating the first surplus Baltimore had seen in years. Both of these achievements were aided by O’Malley’s implementation of CitiStat, a statistics-based tracking program that helps monitor crime as well as other public health and safety factors in Baltimore. The program won Harvard University’s Innovations in American Government Award in 2004.
O’Malley took office as Maryland’s governor in 2007 and has remained there for two terms. As governor, he has continued to tackle crime and poverty by implementing StateStat, a larger-scale version of CitiStat for the same monitoring purposes. He ameliorated the state’s deficit by raising total state taxes by 14 percent. In 2012, O’Malley signed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland; his support was surprising to many, considering O’Malley’s Roman Catholic beliefs. He also signed into law a bill repealing Maryland’s death penalty in 2013.
While spending cuts have been thematically dominant in O’Malley’s political career, he emphasized in his State of the State address on Jan. 23 that he believes cutting spending alone is not the key to the success of Maryland or any state.
“Knowing that we could not cut our way to prosperity, we balanced record budget cuts with modern investments. Investments in the very priorities that create jobs and expand opportunity: educating, innovating and rebuilding for a better economic future,” O’Malley said in his State of the State address.
In his talk on Wednesday night, O’Malley reiterated that point.
“The challenges that are unfolding all around us are not happening to us. They are happening for us. What we stand for is what we stand on, and the future is most definitely watching,” O’Malley said.
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