Offered a chance to sample some humble pie today on the friendly venue of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy opted for the teeniest of helpings, confessing only to “sharp elbows.”
Host Joe Scarborough closed a segment with the governor, who appeared by satellite, by inviting him to confess any mistakes made in his eventful first six months as governor.
“Governor, let me ask you a question we asked Scott Walker earlier this week in Wisconsin and your dear friend Chris Christie in New Jersey, which is looking back at the beginning of the term, have you made any mistakes? Would you do certain things differently?”
“Have you evolved?” added the co-host, Mika Brzezinski.
“Sure, the maturation process takes place throughout one’s life,” Malloy replied. “You garner new experiences, and you take those experiences and you move forward. Listen, I’m 55 years old. I’m learning things every single day. Listen, my elbows may have been sharp from time to time. I know people think that.”
But it was clear the governor is looking for others to evolve, especially when it comes to acknowledging Connecticut’s need for long-term change in its finances and approach to the cost of its state workforce.
“I also know that I move at a pretty quick pace. I know I exhausted the press doing 17 town hall meetings in about a period of four, five weeks. But I was out there trying to have people understand it was not just today’s problem. That these are systemic and long term problems that need to be solved. People don’t really want to change, even when they say they do. I’ve got to bring about change.”
It was the legislature who exhausted the press last night, wrapping up business in the Senate at 2:30 a.m.
I didn’t get home until 3 a.m., so I’ll confess to missing the beginning of his 7:30 a.m. spot and can’t say if he returned the fire that came his way earlier in the week from Christie over the failure, at least for now, of Malloy’s concession deal with state employees.
Update: Video is now available. The spot opens with a clip of Christie digging at Malloy, saying the Connecticut governor lectured him about dealing with state employees, who now have let down Malloy. Brzezinski asks, Was Malloy was lecturing Christie?
“I don’t think so. He started talking about allowing states to go bankrupt. How did that go for him? People say things that sometimes don’t make sense,” Malloy replied, then zinged the rotund Christie. “This is a debate that’s more important than who has the bigger…”
He waited a beat before completing the sentence.
“…belt. It’s policy.”