Impressions of Ned Lamont

Since I've blogged recently about bad political choices, I'll admit that in the first election in which I was eligible to vote, I supported Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont for U.S. Senate. I disagreed strongly with Lieberman over foreign policy, but I respected what he'd accomplished in the Senate and I believed him when he said he'd work to support Democratic candidates in 2008. On the other hand, Ned Lamont seemed to be to be completely out of touch. Yes, he said the right things, but he's an heir to the JP Morgan fortune who attended Exeter, Harvard [Sucks], and Yale, lived in Greenwich, etc. I regret my vote for Lieberman, but Lamont simply wasn't a compelling candidate at the time.

Tonight, I saw Lamont in person for the the first time. The Democratic committee for the town next to us brought him in to talk about the economy. Honestly, the most exciting part of the evening was trying to find this damn building. Woodbury is one of those Connecticut towns in which its entire town center was constructed before 1850, and zoning laws require that all signs be just small enough so that you can't read them as you drive past.

Anyway, it wasn't a big deal, because Lamont started speaking 20 minutes after the event was supposed to start. As you'd expect, he gives a good speech, but he's a little lacking on the personal side. When Lamont speaks about policy, he gets the same look in his eyes as Cornell students do in class discussions when they seem to be a little too interested in the material. You know, like when you're having a class discussion about some event which happened hundreds of years ago and you can't help but think that no one can feel this strongly about the topic. With Lamont, this is especially odd when he stumbles with some difficulty through details about health care policy, yet conveys the idea that it's a life or death issue for him.

When Lamont was asked what he thought the Obama administration could have done better so far, he answered that he thought Paulson and Congress rushed too much in designing the first bank bailout. He then qualified this statement by saying that he understands why they worked so quickly and that he doesn't hold it against them. What he didn't mention in his (non-)answer was that Bush was still in office at this point.

In another odd statement, he labeled universities as places of excess which could do more to reduce costs (and therefore tuition). He made a snide remark about "professors who live like Queen Elizabeth, with two houses, three cars, and four research associates." This was perhaps the most hypocritical comment he made all night, given his elite education and his daughter's recent graduation from Harvard. After the speech, I told him that Cornell has a very positive relationship with the state of New York, in which much of its research goes towards improving the upstate economy. I said that with Yale in New Haven, and UConn, that the state could do more to cultivate economic development from these academic centers. Lamont mentioned something about the Route 128 corridor near Cambridge and asked what my name was.

If Lamont decides to run for governor against Rell, I will obviously support him. But being a strong candidate is about more than simply holding the right positions. Policy stances are what earns a candidate support from other parts of the country, but the ability to speak sincerely and say the right things are qualities which earn respect among voters.