In our time of national anxiety, Larry Hogan shows it’spossible to be a mentsch as well as apolitician.
The Republican governor of Maryland has transcended politicsat a time when we need someone calming us instead of injecting politicalslander, misinformation and lies into every public appearance.
He shows us he knows the difference between politics andpeople’s lives.
The coronavirus numbers continue to rise in America andaround the world, but so far Hogan’s been ahead of the curve. He listened tothe medical professionals, the scientists and the brainy people at the placeslike the Johns Hopkins institutions.
They told him when it was time to close the schools and thenon-essential businesses, and the malls and the restaurants and the bars. Hedid it, and then he didn’t offer us any nonsense about reopening anything aheadof time because it might make political sense for him.
We’re all watching him from a distance now, from theenforced isolation of our homes, but we have the sense there’s someoneoperating with genuine empathy instead of political guile.
Hogan is only the fourth Republican governor of Maryland inthe last 60 years, and arguably the only one most Marylanders can point to withpride since Theodore McKeldin.
(Spiro Agnew left Annapolis to serve as Richard Nixon’s vicepresident, and then had to resign from office for taking bribes. RobertEhrlich, divisive and do-nothing for four years, was the only sitting governor inAmerica who failed to get reelected in 2007.)
Hogan, now in his second term, has been a healer from thestart. Partly, this is because he knew he was in a traditionally Democraticstate, and partly because it’s his nature.
In either case, it’s why his poll numbers have consistentlytopped 70 percent, while President Trump’s have never reached 50 percent.
From the start of the Trump era, Hogan has been one of thefew Republican leaders anywhere in America unafraid to disagree in public withthis president who bristles at any disagreement and then finds avenues ofretribution.
Trump, who took so long to acknowledge the dangers facingthe country and then attempted to cover up his late start, now can’t seem tohold a news conference without tossing in some snide political slander or snipeat reporters or bend the very messages medical experts and scientists have beenpreaching.
In a time for transcending politics and pulling people fromall persuasions together, we’ve been lucky in Maryland to have a grown-up incharge.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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