Sunday, January 21, 2007

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.

1 Comments:

At 10:14 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Up until the case was settled out of court last year, Richardson was an unindicted co-conspirator in the wen ho lee case. He is widely believed to be the leaker that started the witch hunt that landed Lee in solitary confinement, incommunicado and shackled to the floor for nearly a year until he agreed to cop a plea to a charge of having his work files on his laptop. Richarson has some major skeletons that may not have legs now, but in the light of a campaign he will have radioactive skeletons. I commend you for your honest reflection in your post.

 

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