Ehrlich on the attack

Our view: The Republican hits some of Gov. O'Malley's legitimate weaknesses, but the criticism focuses on bad politics, not bad policy

The latest twist in the saga is that the Ehrlich campaign used a Public Information Act request to obtain the e-mail correspondence at DLLR and the governor's press office about the affair. It contains the revelations that the order to pull the unflattering report "came from the top" (which O'Malley officials say means the agency's secretary, not the governor) and that Mr. O'Malley's press secretary was involved in the scramble to post a revised report.

That's unseemly and clumsy, but does it symbolize, as Mr. Ehrlich contended, an administration's failure to foster job growth? Not really. The governor's efforts to play up positive economic news and downplay the negative surely has much less to do with job growth than his policies, and in the current environment a governor's policies probably don't have much impact either, at least not on the month-to-month job growth figures. Maryland has the 13th best unemployment rate in the nation, far better than states whose business tax climates are supposedly superior to ours ( Nevada: fourth in business tax climate, according to the Tax Foundation, last in unemployment) and better than states whose regulations are supposedly more business friendly ( Michigan: sixth in regulations, according to Chief Executive Magazine, next-to-last in unemployment).

Mr. O'Malley can claim his administration is creating jobs, and Mr. Ehrlich can promise that he would do better, but what's really making the difference are macroeconomic factors and the state's long-term policies on education, infrastructure and taxes — not to mention our proximity to Washington, D.C. After all, no state policies changed between this spring, when Maryland was gaining tens of thousands of jobs a month, and this summer, when job growth ground to a halt.

Mr. Ehrlich's attacks are perfectly valid, but they amount to questions of style more than substance. Voters should consider them in context.