The late, great Baltimore radio-talk-show host Ron Smith used to call him Father O’Malley and play religious music on air by way of introduction.

It is an apt description of Maryland governor and former Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley, who moonlights as the buff frontman for the rock band O’Malley’s March, who speaks and writes in reverent tones about everything from septic systems to slot machines, from reducing crime in Baltimore to gay marriage.

Take a recent opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun that O’Malley wrote to honor a sharp reduction in murders in Baltimore City:

Thinking back, it is hard to explain to young, new homeowners in growing neighborhoods . . . just how badly we had allowed white apathy and black acceptance to destroy our belief in one another; how badly we had allowed our collective culture of cynicism to keep us from even trying. All the “smart” people knew, “It’s just Baltimore — there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He concludes his sermon with, “So that our work together might be worthy of [the police’s] sacrifice, Baltimore, I ask it once again. Believe.”

Never mind that the murder rate’s falling in Baltimore City has everything to do with the current police chief’s changing the strategy that O’Malley had employed as mayor — which involved countless arrests for nuisance crimes — to one that targets violent criminals.

It would be amusing to listen to him take credit for things he didn’t do if he weren’t also quickly transforming Maryland into the business- and people-shedding California of the East Coast — and trying to do the same to the country as head of the Democratic Governors Association and potentially as president. Rumor has it he is plotting a run in 2016.

O’Malley is right that people want to believe in their politicians. He won two terms as mayor of Baltimore by promising the impossible: that he could add jobs and people with the same failed Great Society policies of his predecessors (he didn’t). And then he won two terms as governor promising more jobs through higher government spending (that hasn’t worked either). But there is nothing good left to believe about Mr. O’Malley’s by-the-book liberal agenda or that of his co-religionists throughout the state.

Maryland ranks near the bottom for job growth in the nation. There are 100,000 more people unemployed in the state than when the recession began at the end of 2007. (O’Malley took office in January of 2007.) Unemployment — at 6.9 percent — is lower than in the rest of the nation, but only because of the massive presence of the federal government, which employs many Maryland residents and spent $80 billion in the state in fiscal 2009.  

Some other startling facts about this liberal paradise on the Potomac:

● IRS data show that thousands more people choose to leave Maryland each year than move here. They head for more tax-friendly locations including Florida, North Carolina, and the state’s main rival for federal jobs, Virginia. The Tax Foundation estimates the state lost $5.6 billion from 1999 to 2009 as a result of outmigration — one of the worst losses in the country. And it is not just the wealthy driven out by the state’s now-expired “millionaire’s tax” signed by Mr. O’Malley, but people across the income spectrum.

● Dying in Maryland is a really bad idea. The state is one of only two in the country — New Jersey is the other — that imposes both an estate and an inheritance tax. They kick in on assets above $1 million (federal estate taxes start just above $5 million), which has forced many farming families to lose their livelihood in order to pay taxes on land that has already been taxed throughout the life of the deceased family member.

● The tax burden in Maryland is higher than in any of the surrounding states, and Mr. O’Malley is pushing it higher each year. He backed laws hiking corporate, sales, and income taxes passed in 2007, and supports more “investments” this year to ameliorate chronic budget deficits topping $1 billion. Proposals floated this session include raising taxes on gasoline, water usage, and sales. Mr. O’Malley recently quipped that the state can’t build a “$100 million bridge for $10 million” to explain why the government needs more money. But bridges are not the cause of Maryland’s ever-rising spending. In fact, Mr. O’Malley has raided the Transportation Trust Fund and other dedicated funds of hundreds of millions of dollars to balance the general-fund budget. Maryland’s fiscal-year 2013 budget is almost 20 percent higher than the first one Mr. O’Malley submitted, contrary to his claims to have balanced the budget solely by cuts.

● Perhaps taking a cue from President Obama, Mr. O’Malley has wielded his executive authority to great effect. One egregious example is an order that creates sweeping new land-use regulations restricting growth in rural areas, which happen to be largely Republican and growing, in favor of heavily Democratic urban areas, from which people are fleeing. Mr. O’Malley said last year that the state will no longer subsidize “stupid land-use decisions.”

● Education Week recently ranked Maryland first in the nation, for the fourth year in a row, for its public schools, based in large part on how much it spends per pupil ($13,449) and the training opportunities afforded to teachers. Remediation rates at the state’s institutions of higher learning show a public-high-school diploma in Maryland is almost worthless, however. Over 60 percent of students need some type of remediation in basic math and English, and many community-college students run out of financial aid before they take their first class for credit.

None of these problems can be blamed on Pres. George W. Bush, O’Malley’s favorite villain on the talk-show circuit. Democrats have occupied the governor’s mansion since 1969, with one brief interregnum when Republican Robert Ehrlich won a term as governor in 2002. Democrats have also dominated the general assembly for decades, where Thomas V. Mike Miller, president of the senate, and Michael Busch, the speaker of the house of delegates, have assisted the state’s financial collapse as the longest-serving pair of presiding officers in the country. Not one Republican represents Montgomery County, home to some of the richest people in the country, including many federal employees, contractors, and other feeders at the government trough.

So the next time the telegenic, empathic Mr. O’Malley presents Maryland as an example of progressive politics’ success in producing jobs, growth, and environmental nirvana, don’t believe him. Marylanders did, and they will be paying for his folly for decades after he leaves the governor’s mansion.