What O'Malley Believes He Can Do that Clinton Can't [View all]

April 17, 2015 DES MOINES, Iowa—Martin O'Malley wants to slip the Democratic presidential nomination from Hillary Clinton's grip. That will come in time, he says, but for now O'Malley's hands are full. His fingers splay across three bottles at a busy diner, where he's using mustard, ketchup, and hot sauce to show me how the silos of 20th-century government must be transformed into a flatter, more transparent system.

"You've got the police department, housing department, health department, sanitation. You could spend a lifetime trying to connect up and down these silos of human endeavor," says the former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor. "But if the executive insists … that the database of each of these silos lands on the same map, then the layers become pretty visible to everyone."

O'Malley is pitching himself as a get-it-done, data-driven chief executive who helped enact liberal programs in Maryland, including same-sex marriage, a higher minimum wage, in-state tuition and driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, and an end to the death penalty.

By inference, Clinton represents the stale status quo in O'Malley's world—a Democratic icon and trailblazer, of course, but also a centrist and traditional manager, a candidate more likely to be a caretaker president than a transformational leader.

"I mean," he says, drawing a clear but unspoken contrast with Clinton, "it's great to have progressive values and have progressive goals, but it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans if you can't get things done."

O'Malley says he got things done in Baltimore and Annapolis by adopting modern government and leadership techniques (read more here and here). We chatted at length about how those experiences might translate into an O'Malley presidency. This is an edited transcript.

RF: We're in this huge big pivot in our nation. A huge economic transition that is leaving people behind. Huge technological revolution that is making our lives simpler but much more complicated. Huge social change in how we connect with one another and communicate. And huge institutional decline both in the public's trust in all institutions, except maybe the military, and their ability to adapt. Certainly government and even charities and nonprofits, churches …

O'MALLEY: Anything that looks like an institution ….........................................

more of the interview.............................


http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/martin-omalley-2016-hillary-clinton-fournier-20150417