Thursday, March 08, 2007
Bill Richardson for President?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
William Richardson, Governor of New Mexico, has declared himself in the Democratic race for 2008, forming an exploratory committee. The first Hispanic candidate may be of considerable interest for the Democrats of the 74th AD, particularly the CODA club.
One wonders if he still has the lucky Brooks Brothers blue blazer that he would wear in what then Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos called his “Red Adair missions” to free American and Red Cross captives in North Korea, Sudan and Iraq. The jovial Richardson, whose first government job was with the State Department, would refer to himself as a sometime “Assistant Secretary for thugs,” as he crossed oceans to make friends for the US in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Peru, India, North Korea, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and such, first as the Congressman from New Mexico (1982-96), and President Clinton’s emissary, then as Ambassador to the United Nations (1997-98) and Secretary of Energy (1999-2000), as well as the Governor of New Mexico (2002 to present) and back-door negotiator for Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and, indirectly, for President George Bush.
He will need the coat when he announces his intent to run for the big job, the least heralded and best prepared of the not-Hillary candidates. He is one of the three serious firsts in the 2008 Democratic Presidential campaign, featuring the first woman, first African-American, and first Hispanic nominees. Despite his Back Bay name and Boston background, William Blaine Richardson is three-quarters Hispanic, son of a south-posted Boston banker and a Mexican mother, and grandson of a Bostonian naturalist and a Nicaraguan mother, He was brought up in Mexico City, until at 13 he entered a Boston high school, where he had high hopes as a baseball pitcher. Admitted to Tufts for a BA in (1970) and its Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy for an MA (1971), he took his first government job with State Department, transferring to the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1978. Moving to Santa Fe, he ran for Congress in 1980, and was elected in 1982, staying for 14 years, representing US internationally as member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and looking out for the rights of Native Americans and energy issues domestically. His trouble-shooting exposures earned him four Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
He took over a much troubled Energy Department as the Wen Ho Lee scandal broke (the subsequently exonerated foreign born scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory was accused of passing nuclear attack recovery secrets to the Chinese), and when in 2000 Richardson, claiming that another investigation was incomplete, that of two missing hard drives, did not respond a the Senate Armed Services Committee request to testify, the empty chair drew severe criticisms from both sides.
After January 2001, Richardson was invited to teach at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, also joining the Kissinger-McLarty Associates as a senior managing director, and teaching at a private school for foreign students.
He ran for Governor of New Mexico on November 2002, winning 56-39. Richardson’s early reforms pressed in many directions, succeeding with tax cuts to promote growth and industry, a commuter line between Albuquerque and its suburb, Bonalillo, and infrastructure improvements. He has high marks from such conservative groups as the CATO Institute, for economy, and Forbes Magazine, naming Albuquerque the best city in the US in 2006.
Visiting New Mexico in 2006, the writer was particularly interested in local opinions about Richardson and his political chances. The bus drivers and cabbies and policemen liked the Governor in general, but found him limited as a national candidate, an unexciting speaker, with high marks for being education-minded. That is how he has been coming across on TV and radio, simple, people-minded, message-oriented and repetitive, great assets in negotiating with the leaders of the world, less so with the short-memory public. But we may be surprised. Richardson’s recipe for negotiating success is also simple: make friends, define your goal, shrug off insults, close the deal, and always show respect. That presupposes traveling wherever and whenever required, never rubbing the backs of lady chancellors, not showing the soles of your shoes to Arab potentates (an insult) and cracking safe jokes only when the deal is done.
As to Richardson’s announced positions, he is pro-choice, pro death penalty, three-stroke legislation, education (formerly pro-voucher, now for non-voucher alternatives, such as charter schools, also favoring parental responsibility legislation), energy alternatives, concerned about war on Iran, pro-gun and NAFTA.
Richardson has remarkably little political baggage, except that he did offer Monica Lewinsky a UN job, which she declined. Fault-finders see the folksy Governor, fast-acting trouble-shooter, as a hot-tempered, showboat, courting the media, sometimes light-weight, a cigar-smoking whiskey-drinking politician who may use intemperate language in private barroom conversations. He is a shrewd and skillful politician, a consensus-builder, recognized as such when chosen as chairman of the 2004 Democratic Convention, and as the leader of national and local Governors’ organizations.
Although in 2004 Richardson withdrew as a potential Kerry vice-presidential candidate, for 2008 may have to look at himself as “Vice President for the thugs.” God bless, we may all be better off for it.
William Richardson, Governor of New Mexico, has declared himself in the Democratic race for 2008, forming an exploratory committee. The first Hispanic candidate may be of considerable interest for the Democrats of the 74th AD, particularly the CODA club.
One wonders if he still has the lucky Brooks Brothers blue blazer that he would wear in what then Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos called his “Red Adair missions” to free American and Red Cross captives in North Korea, Sudan and Iraq. The jovial Richardson, whose first government job was with the State Department, would refer to himself as a sometime “Assistant Secretary for thugs,” as he crossed oceans to make friends for the US in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Peru, India, North Korea, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and such, first as the Congressman from New Mexico (1982-96), and President Clinton’s emissary, then as Ambassador to the United Nations (1997-98) and Secretary of Energy (1999-2000), as well as the Governor of New Mexico (2002 to present) and back-door negotiator for Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and, indirectly, for President George Bush.
He will need the coat when he announces his intent to run for the big job, the least heralded and best prepared of the not-Hillary candidates. He is one of the three serious firsts in the 2008 Democratic Presidential campaign, featuring the first woman, first African-American, and first Hispanic nominees. Despite his Back Bay name and Boston background, William Blaine Richardson is three-quarters Hispanic, son of a south-posted Boston banker and a Mexican mother, and grandson of a Bostonian naturalist and a Nicaraguan mother, He was brought up in Mexico City, until at 13 he entered a Boston high school, where he had high hopes as a baseball pitcher. Admitted to Tufts for a BA in (1970) and its Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy for an MA (1971), he took his first government job with State Department, transferring to the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1978. Moving to Santa Fe, he ran for Congress in 1980, and was elected in 1982, staying for 14 years, representing US internationally as member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and looking out for the rights of Native Americans and energy issues domestically. His trouble-shooting exposures earned him four Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
He took over a much troubled Energy Department as the Wen Ho Lee scandal broke (the subsequently exonerated foreign born scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory was accused of passing nuclear attack recovery secrets to the Chinese), and when in 2000 Richardson, claiming that another investigation was incomplete, that of two missing hard drives, did not respond a the Senate Armed Services Committee request to testify, the empty chair drew severe criticisms from both sides.
After January 2001, Richardson was invited to teach at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, also joining the Kissinger-McLarty Associates as a senior managing director, and teaching at a private school for foreign students.
He ran for Governor of New Mexico on November 2002, winning 56-39. Richardson’s early reforms pressed in many directions, succeeding with tax cuts to promote growth and industry, a commuter line between Albuquerque and its suburb, Bonalillo, and infrastructure improvements. He has high marks from such conservative groups as the CATO Institute, for economy, and Forbes Magazine, naming Albuquerque the best city in the US in 2006.
Visiting New Mexico in 2006, the writer was particularly interested in local opinions about Richardson and his political chances. The bus drivers and cabbies and policemen liked the Governor in general, but found him limited as a national candidate, an unexciting speaker, with high marks for being education-minded. That is how he has been coming across on TV and radio, simple, people-minded, message-oriented and repetitive, great assets in negotiating with the leaders of the world, less so with the short-memory public. But we may be surprised. Richardson’s recipe for negotiating success is also simple: make friends, define your goal, shrug off insults, close the deal, and always show respect. That presupposes traveling wherever and whenever required, never rubbing the backs of lady chancellors, not showing the soles of your shoes to Arab potentates (an insult) and cracking safe jokes only when the deal is done.
As to Richardson’s announced positions, he is pro-choice, pro death penalty, three-stroke legislation, education (formerly pro-voucher, now for non-voucher alternatives, such as charter schools, also favoring parental responsibility legislation), energy alternatives, concerned about war on Iran, pro-gun and NAFTA.
Richardson has remarkably little political baggage, except that he did offer Monica Lewinsky a UN job, which she declined. Fault-finders see the folksy Governor, fast-acting trouble-shooter, as a hot-tempered, showboat, courting the media, sometimes light-weight, a cigar-smoking whiskey-drinking politician who may use intemperate language in private barroom conversations. He is a shrewd and skillful politician, a consensus-builder, recognized as such when chosen as chairman of the 2004 Democratic Convention, and as the leader of national and local Governors’ organizations.
Although in 2004 Richardson withdrew as a potential Kerry vice-presidential candidate, for 2008 may have to look at himself as “Vice President for the thugs.” God bless, we may all be better off for it.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:24 AM 
