With O'Malley, Flip-Flops and Twisting Tongues

Mayor Martin O'Malley had a principled position on slots. Legalized gambling might work to buck up Maryland's ailing horse industry, but slots, he said in 2005, are "a pretty morally bankrupt way" to fund education.

Now, Gov. Martin O'Malley proposes to open slots palaces across the state to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for, um, education.

A change of heart? Not really, the governor tells me: "I just don't see how I can ask the legislators to compromise if I'm not willing to do so myself."

As mayor of Baltimore, O'Malley had a principled position on gay marriage. It's "something I strongly believe in," he wrote to a constituent in 2004. In a TV interview that year, he said: "Churches will certainly have different views. And that certainly is their right, and no one should infringe on that. But . . . I'm not opposed to civil marriages."

Now, as governor, O'Malley opposes gay marriage and instead supports civil unions. After last week's state Court of Appeals ruling rejecting gay marriage, O'Malley said that "as we move forward, those of us with the responsibility of passing and enforcing laws have an obligation to protect the rights of all individuals equally, without telling any faith how to define its sacraments."

Another flip-flop? No, O'Malley tells me. "There are people who prefer that people in public life use the word 'marriage,' but I do try to use the term 'civil unions.' "

But those are not synonyms, I reply. Doesn't the fact that you used to favor civil marriage and now speak only of civil unions represent a new position? "That might be some evolution," the governor allows.

Okay, so a politician flip-flops on two sensitive issues. Wake me when you have some real news, right?

Except that O'Malley, more than almost any other politician these days, rose to power on his soaring rhetoric about government's obligations to the poor and others who have been left out. In an age when pols speak mostly in pre-masticated, focus-grouped slogans, O'Malley delivers elegant paragraphs laced with poetry and Scripture. He is, almost uniquely in elective politics, a man of the word.

So when those words turn out to be slippery, it matters more than with the other guys. Yes, O'Malley is held to a higher standard, unfair as that might be.

It matters that candidate O'Malley ripped then-Gov. Bob Ehrlich over the same slots prescription that Gov. O'Malley now endorses: Ehrlich, he said on the campaign trail, "wants a slot in every pot and a slot in every garage. I think slot machines should be used only to pay workers with jobs involved with racing."

Now, O'Malley says slots should prop up the failing horse industry, balance the budget and pay for schools and colleges.