Topic: Bill Richardson

Is Famine Behind North Korea’s Latest Belligerence?

Bethany Mandel 01.24.2013 - 3:50 PM

Earlier today North Korea released a barrage of unprovoked and unexpected insults toward the United States, declaring that the U.S. is the “archenemy of the Korean people.’’ The LA Times reports on the bellicose language used by the North Korean government meant to strike fear into the hearts of Americans:

“We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States,” North Korea’s National Defense Commission said in a statement released by the official news service.

“Settling accounts with the U.S. needs to be done with force, not with words,” it said.

[Updated 10:46 a.m. Jan. 24: In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney called North Korea’s statement “needlessly provocative,” adding that a test would be a “significant violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.”

Quietly today, another story emerged from North Korea that is in all probability related to these threats. RealClearWorld reported on the latest deadly “man-made” famine gripping the reclusive nation:

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Dangerous Idealism on North Korea

Bethany Mandel 01.07.2013 - 2:40 PM

There’s something about North Korea that gives liberal idealists amnesia. They’re quick to believe that change is afoot, too willing to overlook the evidence that plainly shows that the regime is evil, beyond a shadow of a doubt. In the last week, there have been two instances of this amnesia, and unfortunately for those suffering under the regime, there’s no sign they will be the last.

After North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un gave his New Year’s address a week ago today, Western outlets described his remarks as an “olive branch to the South.” The New York Times said, “The most significant feature of Kim Jong-un’s speech was its marked departure of tone regarding South Korea.” I spoke with the Heritage Foundation’s senior research fellow for Northeast Asia Bruce Klingner on Friday about the address and his response was less than enthusiastic about this supposed “about face.”

A Bad Idea for GOP: Early Presidential Candidate Debates

John Podhoretz 11.11.2010 - 3:17 PM

Today, NBC and Politico announced they would co-host the first Republican presidential debate sometime in the spring of 2011. Presumably they are using the benchmark of April 2007, when the first Democratic debate for 2008 was held in South Carolina. There are so many ways in which this is a terrible idea for Republicans that it’s hard to count them, but here are a few:

1) An incentive for the lunatic fringe: An announcement like this lowers the barrier for entry to the race. Anybody looking for a little attention, or to get a chance to “go viral” with a snappy video-friendly performance highlighting a candidacy with no hope of ultimate success, might be able to get himself-herself into this thing. What if, just to take one bizarre possibility, the evil-crazy pseudo-pastor Fred Phelps of Kansas were to declare himself a candidate for the presidency in the Republican Party a week before the debate so that he could preach his “God hates fags” and “God wants veterans to die” gospel?

2) The panel of pygmies: It could well be, aside from the lunatic possibility, that not a single person who might actually win the nomination would be present on the stage. It would make sense in the new political atmosphere for serious potential candidates not to declare themselves early this cycle. It’s no longer necessary for fundraising; the only thing that speaks to the need for an early declaration is getting the right kind of staff on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. But the operatives in those states would themselves be wise to keep their options open for a while in 2011 rather than commit early. It’s true that the two eventual front-runners in the 2008 Democratic primary were on that stage in April 2007. But so were Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel (remember him? of course you don’t). Was the debate of any value to any Democrat seriously thinking about whom to vote for? Was it even of any use to any of the people on stage other than Kucinich and Gravel, who got a little boost from leftist throw-your-vote-away types?

3) Party mockery: The outlier effect would have a dual purpose for the organizations running it — first, the outliers will surely make some kind of news by being ridiculous in some fashion, and that, in turn, will help cast the Republican effort to make a serious run at Barack Obama in 2012 into something of a joke.

There’s nothing to be done about this. Politico and NBC will extend whatever invitations they extend, and candidates eager for any kind of attention will appear. But very little good can come of this.

Democratic Governors Upset with Obama

Jennifer Rubin 02.22.2010 - 8:55 AM

Reading the headline “Democrats worried about Obama track record,” one is tempted to say, “They should be.” Liz Sidoti and Ron Fournier write:

Democratic governors said Sunday they worry about President Barack Obama’s track record on fighting Republican political attacks and urged him to better connect with anxious voters. Some allies pleaded for a new election-year strategy focused on the economy.

“It’s got to be better thought out,” Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said. “It’s got to be more proactive.” And, he said, Democrats must hit back just as hard as they are hit by Republicans.

Eight months before the first midterm elections of Obama’s presidency, most Americans are frustrated with — even angered by — persistent unemployment and gridlock in Washington. Democrats fear voters will punish the party in power.

Nor do they buy Obama’s doubling-down strategy on health-care reform. (“Several Democratic colleagues agreed, and lamented that voters thought Obama focused too much on overhauling the U.S. health care system. Others fretted that Obama may appear to be out of touch with the concerns of Americans.”) Sidoti and Fournier detail a meeting between Democratic governors and Obama in which the former plead with Obama to get focused on the economy:

Gov. Mike Beebe of Arkansas urged Obama to focus more on the economy and limit his actions on the health care system to changes that would bring down the cost of medical treatment in the United States. … While praising the White House’s communication’s efforts, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered this advice to Obama: “Rapidly decide what we’re doing on health care and then move to jobs and the economy.” “We need a national economic strategy,” he added.

And not even Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, an Obama confidant, thinks much of the Obama communications strategy or the “tit for tat” battle to blame Republicans.

What’s remarkable is not only the widespread dismay with the president but also the willingness of these Democrats to make public their concerns. That tells us that the White House isn’t listening and isn’t receptive to their pleas. Maybe Obama will be more amenable after the November election.

Is Anyone On Message Today?

Jennifer Rubin 05.21.2008 - 2:08 PM

Bill Richardson says don’t talk to Ahmadinejad but to”moderate clerics” and confesses he chatted with Castro (when? with what authority?). Apparently he is just as adept as a surrogate as he was a candidate.

Sidney Blumenthal says John McCain isn’t George W. Bush and don’t try to make him out to be. Whoops! Isn’t this the central argument for Barack Obama? But wait: if the game plan is not 2008 but The New Hillary for 2012, maybe he is on message.

Taking His Sweet Time

Abe Greenwald 05.12.2008 - 11:00 AM

“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” When it comes to following Don Corleone’s sage advice, Barack Obama is a natural. Sure, he’s tight with Ted Kennedy and Bill Richardson, but they didn’t baptize his kids (like Jeremiah Wright), or advise him on foreign policy (like Robert Malley). Obama’s talent for cleaving to his political enemies is definitely a “change” from politics as usual. But is it change we can believe in?

The exit of Malley from Obama’s campaign is yet another instance in which the candidate who speaks of “the fierce urgency of now” addresses an immediate and obvious problem with the galling indifference of whenever. For at least six months, we’ve known that Robert Malley’s associates and his record of anti-Israel revisionism have no place in an American presidential campaign. But Obama, being Obama, could no sooner denounce his Arafat-embracing Middle East advisor than, say, not sell out his grandmother. Instead, the campaign shrugged the issue off by claiming Malley was not a “day-to-day” advisor.

Just as in the case of Jeremiah Wright, Obama tried to wish the whole thing away until the very source of the problem addressed him directly. Rev. Wright picked a fight with Obama, and Robert Malley called Obama up to cut ties. I’m not sure why Malley said that his own dealings with Hamas would be a “distraction,” when it’s doubtful Obama would have noticed.

Setting aside the ideological implications of Obama’s friendly enemies, why is no one alarmed by a Presidential nominee who, to quote another mob movie, has a habit of being late to his own funeral. Is Obama slow in analyzing crises because he’s carefully considering all the angles? Or because he can’t be bothered with any issue that distracts him from his historic destiny? He’ll answer the phone at 3 AM–only it’ll have been ringing since 3 in the afternoon.

Meltdown

Jennifer Rubin 04.27.2008 - 11:48 AM

Barack Obama may have done poorly with working class and rural voters in Pennsylvania but he’s doing even worse these days among liberal pundits. This is from Bob Herbert:

However one views the behavior of Bill and Hillary Clinton – and however large the race issue looms in this election, and it looms large – there can be no denying that an awful lot of Mr. Obama’s troubles have come from his side of the table. The Rev. Wright fiasco undermined the fundamental rationale of the entire Obama campaign – that it would be about healing, about putting partisanship aside, about reaching across ethnic and party divisions to bring people together in a new era of cooperation. It’s hard to continue making that case when the candidate’s spiritual adviser is on television castigating America and scaring the hell out of at least some white people. Senator Obama did his best with his speech on race in Philadelphia, but the Wright story has extremely muscular legs. It has hurt the campaign far more than Mr. Obama’s comments about guns and religion in San Francisco. But more important than the Wright comments – and sundry gaffes by Mr. Obama himself, his wife, Michelle, and campaign aides – has been Senator Obama’s strange reluctance to fight harder in public for the nomination. He may feel he doesn’t need to, that he has the nomination wrapped up. But there is such a thing as being too cool.

Maureen Dowd (who has been on a tear lately, openly castigating Obama’s masculinity) now sees him limping away: “It used to be that he was incandescent and she [Hillary Clinton] was merely inveterate. Now she’s bristling with life force, and he looks like he wants to run away somewhere for three months by himself and smoke.” Eleanor Clift sees the handwriting on the wall- and fears some Clintonian retribution for the media which had been Obama’s stalwart cheering section:

I’m beginning to think Hillary Clinton might pull this off and wrestle the nomination away from Barack Obama. If she does, a lot of folks—including a huge chunk of the media—will join Bill Richardson (a.k.a. Judas) in the Deep Freeze. If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in “The Godfather,” where the watchword is, “It’s business, not personal.”

These bear the tell-tale signs of scorned lovers’ rants. Their once beloved candidate is now reviled, mocked and tossed overboard while they prepare for the possible return of their “ex” with all the unpleasantness that entails. And who is joining them?

Well, none other than Howard Dean, who until recently seemed to pursue strategies designed to either end the race early (Obama liked that) or to encourage delegates to respect the pledged delegate count (Obama really liked that). Yet Friday, for the first time, Dean uttered this: “I think the race is going to come down to the perception in the last six or eight races of who the best opponent for McCain will be. I do not think in the long run it will come down to the popular vote or anything else.”

So it may be that these people have something in common: none of them really wants to be on the wrong side when the Democratic race ends. Pundits hate to have guessed wrong–so far better to excoriate the candidate who they will insist was wonderful, but but messed up–and party leaders never want to be on the winner’s wrong side. So better to shuffle over to the Clinton cheering section, however distasteful that might seem. She, at least from listening to all these voices, now appears to be the odds on favorite.

Bill’s Blowing Hillary’s Superdelegate Chances

Abe Greenwald 04.02.2008 - 11:06 AM

A piece on sfgate offers a telling glimpse of Clinton rage. Last weekend, Bill Clinton flew in from Chicago to California and schmoozed with superdelegates at a state convention. Mingling with the party elite, he was all grins and eye-bags until someone mentioned Hillary defector Bill Richardson:

Rachel Binah, a former Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how “sorry” she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a “Judas” for backing Obama.

It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.

“Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that,” a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.

The former president then went on a tirade that ran from the media’s unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out.

Let’s be honest: if Obama was conclusively behind delegate-wise and in the popular vote (as Hillary is) the only question the media would be asking him is, “to what do you attribute your loss?” Yes, Obama has received a big fat pass from the press and they softball him at every turn. But the ongoing assumption that Hillary has some legitimate claim to her continued fight is sustained by little more than the Clinton phenomenon itself. And Bill and Hillary are only called out when their antics go so far beyond the pale as to slip into tabloid-land. Speaking of, here’s more from Bill’s blow-up.

It was very, very intense,” said one attendee. “Not at all like the Bill of earlier campaigns.”

When he finally wound down, Bill was asked what message he wanted the delegates to take away from the meeting.

At that point, a much calmer Clinton outlined his message of party unity.

“It was kind of strange later when he took the stage and told everyone to ‘chill out,’ ” one delegate told us.

“We couldn’t help but think he was also talking to himself.”

Isn’t he always. It’s called solipsism. The Clintons function in a world of their own. It’s what enables Bill to explode and then urge people to “chill out.” It’s what allows Hillary to recall a routine helicopter landing as a scene from Rambo. It’s what drives them to treat the desperately-needed superdelegates with the same contempt to which they subjected the regular Democratic electorate. With trademark class, Bill had someone else call Ms. Binah later in the day and apologize for him.

Carville on Carville

Abe Greenwald 03.29.2008 - 1:58 PM

Today’s Washington Post has a piece by James Carville, who defends his “Judas” comment about Gov. Bill Richardson. When Gov. Richardson, a longtime Clintonite, endorsed Barack Obama last week, Carville said:

Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic[.]

In defending his statement Carville claims it was silly that everyone called his words offensive and ugly (Bill O’Reilly was “appalled”.) I agree with Carville. There’s nothing “appalling” about speaking in extreme metaphors. All things considered, a dig with a learned biblical reference can hardly be said to have lowered the tone of this Democratic primary.

However, what is frightening, and what Carville fails to address, is the sentiment behind the comparison. Carville actually believes that Bill Richardson’s obligation to the Clintons should have trumped any policy considerations or party consequences. Being on board with the Clintons means you go down with the boat. Period.

What’s always been amusing is the juxtaposition between the intensity of those who adopt this code and the revulsion of those who do jump ship. Carville is a throwback – a Clinton true believer. And in a year when so many of the Clintons’ sullied Washington supporters have decided to take an “Obama shower,” in Dennis Miller’s coinage, Carville finds himself in a deep crisis.

There is no language strong enough to convey the outrage that comes when prophecy fails. But in this piece Carville did manage to strike that uniquely Clintonian note of hypocritical victimization:

Politics is a messy business, but campaigning prepares you for governing. It prepares you to get hit, stand strong and, if necessary, hit back. I’ve worked on enough campaigns to know that the most aggrieved candidate rarely emerges victorious. And for all of the hypersensitivity we’re seeing this cycle, this campaign has not been particularly negative or nasty compared with previous elections.

Well, it wasn’t Barack Obama who broke down crying during a spiel about the rigors of campaigning.

And if James Carville says the Clintons have not run a “particularly negative” campaign against Obama, we can only imagine what’s coming in the last futile lap.

What Is Left To Say?

Jennifer Rubin 03.22.2008 - 8:49 PM

Bill Clinton is Joseph McCarthy and Bill Richardson is Judas. That’s what Democrats are saying about each other. If this goes on for a few more months there will be little more for John McCain and the RNC to add that hasn’t been said already about either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton ( or their spouses, supporters or potential advisors).

Indeed, McCain is trying hard not to add too much, even going so far as to suspend an aide for a rather innocuous video replaying the already familiar Reverend Wright vitriol. While this may seem overly cautious or even odd, there is a rationale for his insistence on a high-road approach.

In the wake of the Wright controversy, McCain may have gone a long way toward solving his residual problem in unifying the Republican base. (After getting an earful of Wright’s hate speech and Obama’s excuse mongering, the GOP base will be plenty energized on McCain’s behalf if Obama is the nominee.) So McCain’s pitch on both syle and substance can be focused increasingly on independent voters who will determine the election’s outcome. It is these voters McCain is hoping to secure, in large part on the basis of his record of bipartisanship, but also with his insistence on a gentlemanly tone. He is banking that these voters cringe when they hear the ever more hostile rhetoric and over-the-top accusations flying between Democrats. He intends to look and sound presidential, and in particular sell independents on the notion that the entire Democratic primary is just the latest example of the rancor and animosity which these voters have come to dread. For now, it seems to be working as an ever larger segment of independents, according to polls, lean toward McCain. With some help from the Democrats’ continued hysterical accusations, McCain hopes to cement that relationship.

False Equivalence

Jennifer Rubin 03.22.2008 - 1:40 PM

Only a media outlet devoted to soothing its liberal audience and rooting for Barack Obama could reach the conclusion that this past week was “a bad week for everyone.” Yeah, right. That conclusion may be more reassuring to people fretting over Obama’s recent travails, but it’s silly to declare that everyone had an equally tough time. (Ask John McCain whether that spike in his head-to-head poll numbers with both potential Democratic opponents left him despondent.)

Between Obama’s speech (which opened up more questions than answers and which, according to one poll, had a shockingly negative impact on voters, especially independents), the dig at his “typical white” grandmother, and his nose dive in general election and key state polls, it would be hard for an objective observer to conclude that this was anything but a really, really rotten week for Obama. But he got that Bill Richardson endorsement, you say. That would have been a 2 on the political Richter scale several weeks ago. Now it rates an announcement on Good Friday. Enough said.

The key issue is whether there are now a significant number of voters who simply will never vote for Obama. They may be Democratic primary voters, who could send the delegate balance sliding in Hillary Clinton’s favor. But they might be independent, Republican, or non-primary voting Democrats. Voters, that is, who might be less than forthcoming with pollsters, but won’t–after hearing Reverend Wright’s venom and Obama’s ineffective excuses–ever vote for Obama. Stunning as it may seem, the Democrats may have found a way to fritter away their 2008 election advantages.

A Bearded Bill Richardson

Eric Trager 02.05.2008 - 9:03 PM

If you’ve been following the elections returns on MSNBC, you probably just saw a newly bearded Bill Richardson. Richardson’s beard brings to mind one previously sported by Al Gore shortly after he lost the 2000 presidential elections. Is this Richardson’s latest attempt to signal his desire to be Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential candidate?

Ok, probably not.

How Long Before Gore Endorses Obama?

Daniel Casse 01.28.2008 - 6:03 AM

After Ted Kennedy’s endorsement, the only question is when Al Gore will throw his support behind Barack Obama.

Don’t think for a moment that Gore isn’t considering it. What happened this weekend was the most dramatic change of tenor we have seen since Iowa caucus night. A new front opened up in the Democratic primary race. Hillary Clinton is no longer just battling Obama. She is defending the legitimacy of the Clinton era against all those who know it and are sick of it. A Gore endorsement of the rival to the wife of the man who made him vice president would be an unprecedented blow.

South Carolina was supposed to be insignificant win for Obama – even a part of the Hillary strategy. Dick Morris and others audaciously suggested that the Clintons wanted Obama to have a huge showing among black voters, sending a signal to white voters in other southern states that the contest was shaping up along racial lines. As Obama has emerged as a shrewd campaigner and rhetorical powerhouse, the transparent Clinton maneuvers to insert race into the campaign has simply forced even one-time cheerleaders to admit that Lady Macbeth and her husband must be stopped. Pete Wehner has a terrific piece on National Review Online describing how liberal stalwarts E.J. Dionne and Bill Greider have turned on the Clintons.

Suddenly the blood lust among Democrats to put a stake through the heart of the Clinton regime is palpable. John Kerry was uncharacteristically ahead of curve. So was Robert Reich, who was not only Clinton’s Secretary of Labor but a friend dating back to their Oxford days in the late 1960s. The Ted Kennedy endorsement can only be read as a message to the Democratic establishment that it is safe to come outside and declare your disgust with the Clintons.

So who will be next? John Edwards, some time later this week, will drop out of the race and endorse Obama, if only to create the illusion that he is a king maker. But what about Bill Richardson? Or Jimmy Carter? Geraldine Ferraro? Michael Bloomberg? For Gore, this opportunity to crown the next Democratic leader and simultaneously stab the Clintons in the back is simply too much to resist. Surely he is considering Macduff’s words from Act V: “Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,/ Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.”

IOWA: The Vanity Primary

Daniel Casse 01.03.2008 - 9:17 PM

Presumably, sometime in the next 48 hours, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd will take a deep drink of reality and drop out. They have not just failed to be competitive in any part of the race. They have failed to bring no influence to the debate within their party. No one felt a need to respond to them or counter their arguments. Despite the buzz on some blogs, these candidates don’t have supporters of any decisive weight. For months Biden, Dodd, and others have sucked up air time on debates in what amount to a massive act of vanity and self-importance. Shouldn’t someone have had the decency to get out of the race last September?

It’s Official: Bill Clinton’s Lost His Touch

Abe Greenwald 12.15.2007 - 3:30 PM

The widening gyre that is the Hillary Clinton campaign is spinning into near-chaos, and once again, the Senator’s supposed ace-in-the-hole is lending his name to the cause.

Last night, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Bill Clinton grew red-faced and tense as he grasped to defend his wife. He complained that Senator Barack Obama has garnered media support, as if to suggest good press is the Clinton clan’s exclusive entitlement.

Clinton tried to be elusive about trashing Obama for his lack of experience, but the bitterness was front and center. A Youtube clip of the interview has Clinton saying: “It’s less predictable, isn’t it? I mean when is the last time we elected a President based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?”

He added that he gets “tickled” watching Obama on the stump. The urge to knock Obama led Clinton into strange territory for someone who’s been charged with campaigning for the New York Senator.

Charlie Rose: Is Joe Biden ready to be President?

Bill Clinton: Absolutely.

Senator Chris Dodd and Governor Bill Richardson also earned his endorsement. In discussing the merits of John Edwards, Marc Ambinder reports Clinton as saying, “He is great, Edwards is really good . . .” and “It’s a miracle she’s got a chance to win [in Iowa].” Bill Clinton seems to have adopted “Anyone but Obama” as his slogan.

According to Ambinder: “Towards the end of the interview, Rose indicated that Clinton’s staff was asking producers in his show’s control room to get them to have Rose end the interview.” With all the Bill Clinton-Barack Obama comparisons floating around, perhaps the former President is getting a fresh look into his own past, and not liking what he sees.

Hillary’s “No”

Fred Siegel 11.16.2007 - 10:00 AM

The Washington Post and the New York Times may have missed it, but the New York Sun got it. The key moment for the Democrats as a party during last night’s debate came when Barack Obama stumbled on the same question about driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants that had tripped up Hillary Clinton two weeks earlier.

For two weeks Obama and Edwards had attacked Clinton for her flip-flopping “politics of parsing” because she seemed both to support and oppose the licenses. (Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Clinton had taken “two weeks and six different positions to answer one question.”) But last night Clinton, having pushed New York Governor Eliot Spitzer into entirely abandoning his plan to issue driver’s licenses, responded with a crisp “no” when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the moderator, asked for a straight up-or-down answer on whether the candidates supported licenses for undocumented workers. Last night it was Obama who wanted it both ways. Asked the question, Obama launched into a discussion of how “When I was a state senator in Illinois, I voted to require that illegal aliens get trained, get a license, get insurance to protect public safety. That was my intention.” But when Blitzer pressed him for a yes-or-no answer, the usually exquisitely articulate Obama froze. Visibly off-balance, he replied that “I am not proposing that that’s what we do.” He then went on to say, “I have already said I support the notion that we have to deal with public safety.” A frustrated Blizter responded, “This is the sort of question available to a yes or no answer.”

The Politics of the Playground

James Kirchick 10.23.2007 - 9:53 AM

Last month, in response to the overwhelming passage of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist group, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson had this to say:

Calling them names, labeling them terrorists, drawing up military options is just making the situation worse and inflaming the Muslim world.

That this utterance received so little attention might be due to the fact that it is only the latest in a string of Richardson gaffes, from a professed belief that homosexuality is a “choice” to calling Al Sharpton “governor” (woe betide the day Sharpton earns that title). Or perhaps the press largely ignored this statement because Richardson is a second-tier candidate. Either way, that a former Democratic Congressman, governor, potential Senator, and, most importantly, United Nations ambassador thinks that “calling [terrorists] names” is “making the situation [with Iran] worse” indicates that playground politics hold sway over an influential portion of the Democratic Party.

Bill Richardson’s Remarkable Plan to Disarm Iran

Gabriel Schoenfeld 10.02.2007 - 11:27 AM

Bill Richardson is not among the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates. But he is notable for having more foreign-policy experience than the leading three: John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. He served as UN ambassador from 1997 to 1998 and then went on to head the Department of Energy, where he dealt not only with the problems posed by OPEC and our dependence on imported oil, but also with the dependability and security of America’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.

With a two-theater war under way, and the menace of Iran’s nuclear program looming over the horizon, is Richardson worth a second look? Is he made of presidential timber, or perhaps vice-presidential timber?

We got a glimpse of him this past weekend on Face the Nation, where Bob Schieffer questioned him on what to do about Iran.

Richardson was adamant that he would not have invited the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University and is “glad we didn’t let him go to Ground Zero.” He expressed determination to stop Iranian interference with the American war effort in Iraq: “We cannot have them, obviously, continue helping the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards in Iraq.” And he is also determined to prevent the ayatollahs from acquiring the most fearsome weapon known to man: “we cannot have Iran have nuclear weapons.”

This is tough talk. What are Richardson’s means for realizing these laudable objectives? The way to accomplish them, he told Schieffer, “perhaps is a carrot-and-stick policy.”

Condoms in Peoria

Gabriel Schoenfeld 08.13.2007 - 12:43 PM

On the television program, the Gong Show, any of the three judges could sound a large gong if one of the acts being rehearsed by amateur performers was particularly poor. At this past Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate, sponsored by the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson was asked a simple question: “Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?” His answer: “It’s a choice!”

Wrong answer! No one sounded a gong, but given the ensuing raised eyebrows, the ensuing criticism, the ensuing Richardson campaign “clarification,” and the ensuing Richardson excuse—“jet lag”—one should have been.

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