Maryland’s moderate Republican Gov. Larry Hogan was scheduled to give his second inaugural address Wednesday afternoon, but his PR operation was pushing out lengthy excerpts for citation as early as 9 a.m. Those excerpts quite ostentatiously began with a reference too clever by half.
Hogan’s highlighted excerpts begin by citing his father’s experience as a Republican congressman during the Watergate hearings, in which his father “became the first Republican to come out for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.” Hint, hint.
Or, rather, HINT, HINT, HINT!!!!
Why is Hogan bringing up a 1974 presidential impeachment process? If the governor wants to impress on the national media that opposition to his own party’s problematic presidents is part of the Hogan DNA, well, consider it done, with all the subtlety of a sharp elbow delivered to the solar plexus.
Hogan quotes his father stating: “No man, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. For our system of justice and our system of government to survive, we must pledge our highest allegiance to the strength of the law and not to the common frailties of man.”
The sentiment is right on target. But for a state politician to say such things, especially apropos of nothing directly facing his own state right now, takes all the courage of claiming a fondness for hot cocoa and mittens on a frigid day.
Granted, the “principle ahead of party” message is relevant for a Republican serving as governor of an otherwise overwhelmingly Democratic state like Maryland. If Hogan had stuck to Maryland references and Maryland issues, and focused on policy specifics where constructive bipartisanship is helpful, rather than offer series of platitudes, the whole thing could have been a welcome bit of public discourse.
But Hogan is clearly playing for a wider audience. He can’t seem to keep his mind off national politics: “Let’s repudiate the debilitating politics practiced elsewhere — including just down the road in Washington — where insults substitute for debate, recriminations for negotiation, and gridlock for compromise; where the heat, finger-pointing, and rancor suffocates the light, and the only result is divisiveness and dysfunction.”
And, just in case the national media still didn’t understand his message, Hogan’s excerpted text includes this: ““To those who say our political system is too broken and can’t be fixed, I would argue that we have already shown a better path forward. And if we can accomplish that here in Maryland, then there is no place in America where these very same principles cannot succeed.”
Okay, we get it, we get it. Hogan is considering taking his success in Maryland and applying it nationally, which is to say, he might run for president. Maybe even against that Trump guy, who might be impeached, the guy whose rancor suffocates the light.
By almost all accounts, Hogan is a good governor. But if he wants to play in the Big Leagues, he should learn that a politician using political boilerplate to inveigh against ordinary politics sounds … well, just like a typical politician.
