Big Bill!

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson is running for President! As a guy raised in New Mexico, during the years when Bill was a congressman and then a Clinton-era appointment as Ambassador to the United Nations and as Secretary of Energy, I'm very interested in this.

My quite positive thoughts:

Bill knows foreign policy and energy policy. Where those two thingsn intersect defines what I'd call "The issue of the day."

He did a lot to raise New Mexico out of obscurity by courting Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Everytime I go back home I observe that the state is "growing up," and that's largely due to him.

My quick negative thoughts:

I've always been annoyed by how he opposed WIPP (a nuclear waste dump in southern New Mexico) when he was a congressman but then opened it as Secretary of Energy. When Richardson took his cabinet post he helped make New Mexico into a dump for the waste of eastern states that use nuclear power, and he did it over the opinions of most New Mexico residents.

Also, Wen Ho Lee. Yes, Janet Reno prosecuted the guy, but Richardson was the Secretary of Energy when this legal immmigrant from China was working at Los Alamos and was falsely accused of spying on behalf of the Chinese government.

My quick conclusion:

He's qualified. He has his blemishes, though. He probably can't raise enough money for a lasting national campaign. But... Vice president? A great choice. In that role, his positives will outweight his negatives and he can win. I kind of think he's really running for veep anyway.