Dateline: Santa Fe, New Mexico
July 2008
posted on vizshun.com
So I’m shopping around for the next President of the United States. Given the political realities of America, I have two basic criteria. One, be a Democrat. Two, be electable. Other than that, I’m kicking the tires to see who might be the best candidate that meets those criteria. For reasons I’ll explain some other time, I don’t think the two putative front runners for the Democratic nomination, Senators Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, met criteria number two. Neither does the guy most dear to my ideological heart, Dennis Kucinich, god love him and his Department of Peace.
So I turned to a potential candidate I’ve known about and followed since he was first elected to Congress back when I stilled called New Mexico home, the current governor of the Land of Enchantment, Bill Richardson. He spent 13 years in Congress, and a year as Ambassador to the United Nations and three as Energy Secretary under Bill Clinton. Now he’s in his second term as Governor of New Mexico, which is indeed in the United States. (When I first moved there in 1980, some of my friends were confused. And I discovered the San Francisco-native beer Anchor Steam would be stocked in the imported beer section of the grocery store. But that was before the micro beer/good beer revolution, back when my beer of choice was Schlitz, with the cool pewter and burgundy can. But I digress.)
Nice resume, lots of experience. A Latino, despite his Anglo sounding last name, who could appeal to the fastest growing and politically-flexible part of the U.S. population. And I know he’s a tough-minded pragmatist, willing to roll his sleeves up and get things done. But what does he really stand for, what are his politics, his vision for America?
So I went to the library and picked up his autobiography. Penned in 2005 when he was prepping for his gubernatorial re-election campaign, it’s a quick and agreeable read, starting traditionally enough with his boyhood years and dreams (traditional anyway, if you grow up in Mexico City where his father was manger of Citibank). Actually, his bi-racial nature (Mexican mom) fits in with Barack Osama as an interesting way to view who We As Americans are today.
What I learned is that Bill Richardson calls himself a mainly centrist Democrat. And after that, he never really talks about what he stands for, what his positions are on any given issue. He sticks to telling stories about his life, things he did and saw, matters as they pertained to the flow of his life. And it all sounded pretty reasonable, except for his stumping for votes to pass NAFTA (despite that, Richardson is regularly supported by the labor movement in New Mexico).
But border politics in border states doesn’t always follow easily recognizable ideological lines.
Foreign policy has always been a passion of Richardson’s, and as a congressman he quickly became a go-to guy for countries interested in opening back channel dialogue with the United States, under both Bush the First and Clinton. He led congressional delegations on fact finding trips to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. And he became a guy who would go in and negotiate the release of Americans being held as political captives under criminal pretenses. He went toe-to-toe with Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and the North Koreans. Each time he came away with those Americans on his airplane, back to the United States. A hero.
In these tales Richardson is always tough with the opposition, making it clear he is not there to make policy or deals, but to get the release of the captive Americans. But he also makes it clear to them, and is the dominant theme of the biography, that he believes in negotiating, in each side treating the other with respect, of listening to what the other side has to say and understanding their point of view, and talking and talking and talking some more to resolve differences. He always waves the possibility of American military might being used if it is absolutely necessary, but he’d rather not. That decision is really up to the other guy by being too intransient. So let’s talk it out.
I love that. I mean, I never understood the Bush Diplomatic principle of “We’re not going to talk to you at all about anything until you concede to all of our demands. Then we will be willing to sit down with you and discuss how you are going to implement all of our demands”. I mean, duh, no wonder we’re not getting anywhere with anybody.
So Richardson’s sounding pretty good, que no? But I kept finding myself more and more dissatisfied by what I was reading. One, Richardson never really states what he believes in any of the huge policy disputes he’s been in the middle of, with North Korea, with Iraq, with Cuba. And Two, he clearly relished playing the good soldier to the President (especially so with Bill Clinton) and backing official American foreign policy—even while he was willing to talk the night away about the differences between that policy and what the other guy was saying. But Bill Richardson never conceded anything.
And that leads to number three. Richardson seems to be firmly in the American foreign policy establishment, especially as manifested under the Democratic Party, an adherent of American Exceptionalism. That because we are good people and moral and the most powerful nation in the world naturally no matter what we want it is right. Whatever the United States wants or believes is exactly the right thing for everybody. And everything will go better for whoever Richardson or the United States is negotiating with if they will just accept that and start working out the details of how to get around to putting into practice in their country what the United States wants. Which is just a more user-friendly and verbally-oriented version of the Republican’s version of American Exceptionalism diplomacy as practiced by the Bushites (see above).
In short, Richardson is a good soldier for The American Empire. And he’s effective at it because of his personal approach, how he respects people and talks frankly with them. Other countries seek him out; even today as he’s Governor of a small border state (and supposedly about to announce his candidacy for President) he’s off to Darfur to see what he can do about stopping the genocide occurring there, invited by the Sudanese government to see if he can talk to the rebels. And the rebels are listening to him.
But I don’t know what his vision is for the world. Except I guess as America’s playground. In a book written in 2005, he has nothing to say about our current situation in Iraq. Why? He wasn’t in Congress when the war vote was taken, so he’s not on record approving or disapproving. And as Governor of New Mexico, well, it didn’t come up as an issue (although I wonder how he feels about members of New Mexico’s National Guard serving in Iraq?).
And if it doesn’t affect his direct personal narrative, he didn’t write about it. The only things he says about Iraq are his personal impressions of Saddam Hussein (which are negative, surprise, surprise) and his frustration with Iraq’s refusal to cooperate with United Nations inspectors and sanctions while Richardson was at the U.N. And he makes it clear that at that time, he thought Iraq did have a program actively developing weapons of mass destruction. As did almost everybody else. But he never comments in his book written in 2005 on the evidence that points to the conclusion that indeed Iraq did destroy their weapons in the early 90’s and likely didn’t have a large weapons program in the late 90’s (or early 2000’s) at all.
What does suggest itself to me though is Richardson’s willingness to toe the establishment line undercuts even his willingness to negotiate, which I find his best quality. In the book he talks about how he developed solid relations with Iran, and routinely had informal talks with highly placed Iranian diplomats. When he was confirmed as U.N. Ambassador he describes how one of his highly placed Iranian contacts called to congratulate him, and say he hoped this meant the United States and Iran could begin serious dialogue about opening up relations between the two countries.
Richardson reported this to his new boss, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who had preceded him at the United Nations. She responded by telling Richardson that he needed to cut off all of his Iranian contacts because official U.S. policy under Clinton was that we weren’t talking to them. And Richardson did, to the point where he talked about how awkward it was when he saw His Iranian contact at a U.N. event six months later where all he could do was say “Hi!” and move on. Richardson approvingly says this was when he learned the difference between his previous “freelance” version of diplomacy and what is official diplomacy, as should be practiced by the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
I don’t think that’s the kind of guy I want to be President of the United States, even if he is electable. I guess I need another level of criteria.
Dennis Kucinich is looking better again.
