New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson announced the formation of a Presidential Exploratory Committee:
WASHINGTON — Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., said Sunday he is taking the first step toward an expected White House run in 2008, offering extensive experience in Washington and the world stage as he seeks to become the first Hispanic president.
“I am taking this step because we have to repair the damage that’s been done to our country over the last six years,” said Richardson, a former congressman, U.N. ambassador and Energy Department secretary.
“Our reputation in the world is diminished, our economy has languished, and civility and common decency in government has perished,” he said in a statement.
He said he had set up an exploratory committee that will allow him to begin raising money and assembling his campaign organization.
“The governor is in it to run for president,” spokesman Pahl Shipley said. The formal announcement will come in March after the end of New Mexico’s legislative session, he said.
While I doubt Richardson has a chance to get the nomination, he would clearly make an appealing Vice-Presidential running mate for any Democratic nominee.
January 21st, 2007 at 9:36 pm
RICHARDSON RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT: WHAT A BREATH OF FRESH AIR!
What wonderful news! Sorry to say, but Hillary, Obama, John Edwards, Kerry,
et alia, seem like uninspiring recycled hacks (or in Obama’s case: great
person, just inexperienced). To me, Bill Richardson running for President is
far more interesting than any of the other announced candidates put together!
I have been profoundly impressed with William Blaine Richardson III for 29
years. I first met him in 1978 when he worked for Senator George McGovern’s
Foreign Relations Committee; he had a full beard as well as one of the most
endearingly messy desks on Capitol Hill, a place notorious for clean desks.
Take the time to read Richardson’s biography: Between Two Worlds.
At the onset, I must clarify that my concerns are almost entirely
international (for 3 years, I have been developing a UN Resolution for the UN
General Assembly to create a new United Nations Undersecretary General for
Nutrition and Consumer Protection; those who are curious can visit my
groundwork website for United Nations Undersecretary General for Nutrition).
I recently proposed to Richardson that he and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-
Moon should go together to the Sudan to convince President Al-Bashir to end
the genocide, bring a lasting Peace to Darfur, and perhaps accept the
presence of UN troops in Darfur.
No other Presidential candidate even comes close to the level of
international diplomatic experience and abilities evidenced by Bill
Richardson.
His lengthy international resume comprise a real breath of fresh air in USA’s
politics, especially after the inanities and ghastly absurdities evidenced
thus far by Bush/Cheney/Halliburton/Rumsfeld and the reign of corporate-
manipulated klepto-plutocrats.
Most critics would clearly point to the Pentagon’s budget and the Pentagon’s
actions as proof of this systemic erosion of America’s good sense.
However, this is equally evident in the malfunctioning of the Food and Drug
Administration, which finally has a Commissioner, Andrew Von Eschenbach, M.D.
The FDA still rushes through approval for harmful food additive chemicals at
the request of multinational corporations, the health of Americans and the
rest of the world be damned and ignored.
The most egregious of these chemicals is aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial
sweetener that is metabolized as methanol, formaldehyde, and
diketopiperazine, which was forced through the FDA in 1981 by then-CEO of
G.D. Searle, Donald Rumsfeld, even though the Pentagon had already considered
Aspartame as a biochemical weapon, and even though the FDA, to its credit,
had turned down the approval for Aspartame for 16 years, since its discovery
in 1966.
Richardson believes that the states must take back their powers in these
realms, in order to protect the health of the citizens of each state. This is
precisely what is about to occur in the New Mexico Legislature with
legislation in both chambers to ban Aspartame, which Governor Richardson has
quietly encouraged. These bills are sponsored by NM Senator Gerald Ortiz y
Pino, an Albuquerque Democrat, and Representative Irvin Harrison, a Navajo
Democrat from Gallup, New Mexico.
In the larger international scheme of things, the average America, may have
forgotten what diplomacy and non-military interventions in the processes of
governments are all about, but I can assure you that none of the heads of
state and world leaders in other nations have forgotten how Diplomacy
actually works quite well.
The incontrovertible truth is that the USA direly needs an internationalist
Democrat, if there will ever be any hope of rebuilding the USA’s
international image and influence, in which we are rapidly and massively
losing traction to China, especially in Africa and in South America.
How else will we be able to recover from the rampaging klepto-plutocrats
running this Administration and what they are perpetuating domestically and
internationally, by continuing to gouge the USA’s expenditures into more
weapons, more troop deployment, more senseless grudge matches, and another
$160 billion to waste in Iraq and in Afghanistan, regardless of how
squandering more billions in Iraq and Afghanistan inexorably depletes
America’s internal economies, the inner cities, the budgets for education,
Universities, schools, social services, and research; and regardless of the
loss of markets and esteem for the USA in Africa, Europe, Asia, and South
America due to these depravities and depredations?
Not long ago, Lech Walesa visited the Armand Hammer United World College of
the American West in New Mexico. This Nobel Peace Laureate and former
President of Poland observed sadly that despite its uncontested military
powers, the USA has far less real political,economic, and moral power than we
Americans perceived us as having over the past two or three decades. He
unequivocally blamed the present administration for precipitating this loss
of political, economic, and moral power.
However, I don’t really believe that the USA is doomed to suffer an
inevitable descent into a lamentable status as a corporate-militarized police
state/3rd world economy, glutted on more and more wasted expenditures for the
corporate hogs feeding at the public trough; if such a descent were totally
inevitable, it would be a waste of time and effort for anyone to even try to
countermand it.
Bill Richardson will help to bring about such a recovery through the course
of the candidates’ dialogue, if given the chance he will get as a very viable
presidential candidate. Even if he is edged out, strategists and pundits and
the other candidates must recognize that he will also make a great Vice
Presidential candidate. In addition to his abilities, intellect, charismatic
personality, and great resume, one more reason is clearly that he will pull
in a lot of Hispanic voters, and other minority voters, in all 50 states.
New Mexicans have seen him in action as Governor for the past four years, and
he was recently re-elected to a second term with the largest majority in New
Mexico’s history, almost 70%!
I welcome his presence in this ostensibly crowded field of Democratic
candidates, above all because Richardson will never be one to perpetuate the
kind of international idiocy and unavoidable resultant decline, both
internally and internationally, from which we have suffered from during the
past 6 years. We should help him win by talking with our friends, family, and
colleagues in other states, and in other nations….
Podemos todo via esperar, que non? (We can always hope, eh?)
Stephen Fox
Santa Fe New Mexico
stephen@santafefineart.com
217 W. Water St.
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501