Strangers on a Train
A Martin O’Malley sighting in the wild.
I took a 7:00 a.m. train this morning from Washington to New York and about an hour into my trip, I made my way to the café car for a cup of coffee. Standing at the little bar/work area was Martin O’Malley. He was just hanging out.
So far as I could tell, O’Malley had only one or two staffers with him. He was having coffee, too, and doing a little light office work. For the first few minutes, he was basically anonymous.
But after a spell, that changed. People came and went in the café car and more than a few people recognized him. They stopped to say hello and introduce themselves. O’Malley took them into conversation—not gripping and grinning, but sitting down with them and talking for several minutes at a stretch. He was totally at ease, neither ostentatiously gregarious nor robotically plastic. During the time I observed him interacting with Everyday Americans, it seemed to me that he genuinely enjoyed their company and that each of the people who stopped to talk with him went away filled with bonhomie.
This shouldn’t be earth-shattering news, this is exactly the kind of magic that all good retail politicians possess. It’s an extreme form of extroversion and one of the things—along with an incapacity for embarrassment—that makes them different from normal people.
And it’s also a reminder that you don’t get to be mayor of a large city without being good—very good—at retail politics.
Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/strangers-train_965421.html
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