Sen. Ben Cardin got a head start on retirement the other day when delivering his final speech from the U.S. Senate floor and ending a 58-year career in politics that was notable for his intelligence, civility and honesty, even when it hurt.
He’ll make his exit on Jan. 16, 2025, at the same time Donald Trump reenters the White House. The voice of reason departs; the voice of bombast returns.
In this contentious time in Washington, Cardin’s voice was one of the calmest. Like Maryland senators Paul Sarbanes and Barbara Mikulski before him, Cardin was never one to race breathlessly for the nearest TV camera. The job was about hard work, not showing off.
Cardin is 81, which is reason enough to bow out. But he’s leaving behind the odor of grotesque Trumpian nominations to run the country, and this is enough to drive anybody to get the hell out of Washington.
As Cardin goes, he takes with him a big part of a family legacy in government, politics and the law, beginning with his father, Meyer Cardin, a judge on Baltimore’s old Supreme Bench.
Meyer Cardin was allied with Theodore McKeldin, a Republican who would have had a stroke over today’s GOP. In his day, McKeldin, a former governor and mayor of Baltimore, was known to always appear at Jewish-related affairs with a yarmulke at hand. On one Shabbat, McKeldin delighted everyone at the old Beth Tfiloh, back when the synagogue was located on Garrison Boulevard, when he rushed in, making a small commotion.
He didn’t want to be late for Ben Cardin’s bar mitzvah.
From the time he became vice president of his 1961 graduating class at Baltimore City College, Ben Cardin has served politically. He was 22 when first elected to Maryland’s House of Delegates. He was still finishing law school and graduated first in his class.
It took him about 10 minutes to become known as the legislature’s top tax expert.
It took him only a little longer to become Speaker of the House, making it seem inevitable he’d be governor one day. But he was smart enough to see that no one was going to beat William Donald Schaefer whenever Schaefer had his fill of City Hall. So Cardin went to the nation’s capital while Schaefer went to the State House.
But it’s a specific night in Annapolis that always comes to mind out of all those years Cardin served as House Speaker. In 1985, we had a massive savings and loan scandal in Maryland, and a lot of families saw their life savings endangered. There were questions about who was really behind the complicated mess.
It was pretty late one night, but this little room behind the House chambers was packed with cameras and microphones, and reporters asking questions. Almost everyone gathered around Cardin.
He admitted, “We’re in a crisis in Maryland.”
He said the words calmly, to keep some sense of perspective in the room. He didn’t want people panicking all over the state. He seemed the adult figure in the room, holding things together as he translated the arcane business of banking and finance into something resembling the English language.
As he sat there surrounded by reporters, you might have noticed another man nearby, joking with a couple of pals and looking as if he didn’t know what to do with himself.
This was Harry Hughes, who was governor of Maryland.
But it was Cardin who was the smartest guy in the room, as always, and Cardin who would tell the truth, wherever it led.
Sometimes, it led to tough moments. The Cardins have a distinguished family legacy in public service.
But there was a cousin, Jerome S. Cardin, who was a partner at Old Court Savings and Loan.
In the midst of the financial scandal, a woman told Ben Cardin, “You have to back off this issue. It’s gonna be hell on the family name.”
Cardin responded, “The hell with the family name. How about the name of the state of Maryland?”
That’s the kind of integrity he brought to nearly six decades of government service. It’s the kind the whole country will miss as the voice of reason departs, and the voice of bombast returns.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home.”
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