Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has made no secret of his admiration for President Obama, adopting his political agenda wholesale, defending his every move and even mimicking Obama’s phraseology in speeches.
So it must have startled the governor when the president couldn’t recall his name Monday.
“Jack O’Malley? Where’s Jack?” Obama asked about four dozen governors gathered in the State Dining Room. Obama looked left, then right, and left again. After a short — and painfully awkward — pause, Obama corrected himself.
“Ah, ah, not — Martin. Where’s Martin? Sorry, I was –” Obama said, stumbling over his words.
The president forgot O’Malley’s name despite having spent the previous evening seated next to O’Malley’s wife, Catherine, at the White House’s 2012 Governor’s Dinner. What’s more embarrassing, however, is that “Martin” slipped Obama’s mind at the peak of O’Malley’s devotion to the president’s re-election campaign.
“I am going to do everything I can to help President Obama get re-elected,” O’Malley, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” during one of his near-weekly television appearances to defend the president.
When Obama began calling for the nation’s top income earners to pay more in taxes, O’Malley asked Maryland’s wealthiest to do the same.
“We need everybody to pay their fair share,” O’Malley said, borrowing directly from the president’s rhetoric.
When Obama challenged the country to “win the future” in his 2011 State of the Union address, O’Malley — in his State of the State address one week later — waxed on about “winning the future” in Maryland.
On illegal immigrants, alternative energy and same-sex marriage, O’Malley’s agenda is indistinguishable from Obama’s.
The Maryland governor has won a half-dozen invitations to Obama’s White House after campaigning for Obama in Florida, launching a petition drive in support of the president’s job bill and headlining a rally for the president’s re-election.
As for Monday’s slight, the governor laughed it off, pretending the president was referring to O’Malley’s son, Jack.
“I thought my son was right here,” O’Malley shot back to laughter.
