Can Sandy help Dan?
Before the latest storm struck, the approval rating of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy had crept up to 45 percent, vs. 41 percent who disapprove of his job performance.
That was an Oct. 24 Quinnipiac poll, and it was an epic head-above-water moment for Malloy, who has known far bleaker numbers.
By contrast, Joe Lieberman's approval ratings in the same poll were 53-33, despite the fact that he is a ruthless megalomaniac, and Dick Blumenthal's are 66-19, which Blumenthal probably interprets as a crushing rejection. In 2009, he was at 79 percent, but now he's part of Congress. Let's face it, the U.S. Senate is dragging Blumenthal's numbers down.
Malloy has to work heart-wrenchingly hard for his paltry rating. During this storm he was, as usual, everywhere. Also as usual, he was eager to tell everyone he'd been everywhere and pretty insistent that the basic measure of a citizen's worth is the degree to which that citizen listens to him because he is so often right. Implicit in his every statement is his belief that his approval numbers do not fairly reflect his performance in office — which is one the reasons his approval ratings do not fairly reflect his performance in office.
I'm still, on balance, a believer. I have low expectations for Connecticut governors. Work hard. Don't steal. These meager goals have not been met since about 1993.
Malloy meets them. And by the normal calculus of Connecticut political history, his diligence during storms should put him in Ribicoff-Grasso Valhalla. Why doesn't it?
He has tough time talking personally or viscerally. He and his own humanity seem to be a 10-foot-pole length away from one another. He is deeply in touch with the emotion called "irritation." The others, not so much.
On Monday night, while briefing the press, Malloy was actually wearing a different affective hue: a strangled apprehension with splashes of muted dismay.
I asked him the next day whether that look represented his stricken sense that, more than any time in his governorship, lives of citizens flickered precariously in the darkness as high tides closed in around stranded homeowners.
All he needed to say was, "Yes. I was really scared for those people."
Instead, he walked me and the listeners through an extraordinarily tedious explanation of the information stream leading up to his state of mind. He sounded like Mr. Spock's cranky, boring cousin from Delta Vega. Dude, the love you take is equal to the love you make. Just tell us what's in your heart.
Malloy is also that rare Irish-American born without a storytelling gene. He tried twice on Tuesday to tell an anecdote about a woman in Greenwich who complimented him lavishly on the way he urged people to evacuate … and then stayed put in her house while her cars filled with water. On each occasion, he lapsed into a kind of narrative Cubism in which the story components were slightly disarranged.
He also relied heavily on notes at his briefings, glancing down like Obama in Denver at moments when he could not possibly have been checking a fact or a detail. (Malloy is a prodigious memorizer because of his dyslexia. He should need fewer notes, not more.)
Now comes the painful moment of comparison. Chris Christie, who is Magic to Malloy's Bird, is better at this stuff. I would much rather live in a state governed by Malloy. I think Christie is an ill-tempered, picnic-raiding bully, but he achieves an emotional, straight-to-camera wholeness that eludes Dan Malloy.
And Bird reads Magic's box scores. Christie is big on logos. In Israel, he wore a "Chris Christie — Governor" yarmulke, and he went through the storm in a sheep-sized navy fleece with the same emblem. By Tuesday morning, Malloy was wearing a navy "Malloy/Wyman" windbreaker.
None of this should matter, but it does. Everybody knows Bill Clinton said "I feel your pain" in his 1992 town hall debate, but that never happened. We remember it because Clinton so vividly appeared to feel another's pain.
We need to meet Malloy halfway. We are like spoiled Veronicas, dribbling out chilly 45 ratings when he brings us flowers, candy and MREs. Can't we be Betty? Give this man a 53.
Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5) and blogs at http://courantblogs.com/colin-mcenroe/. He can be reached at Colin@wnpr.org.
