D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
February
2008
Why Barack, Not Bill?
As Obama stirred echoes of JFK, Richardson may have reminded voters of Dukakis.
With Gov. Bill Richardson's presidential campaign having slipped quietly into history — his withdrawal from the race meriting an inside-page item, at best, in most US newspapers — one can ponder the question: Why did Sen. Barack Obama succeed in becoming the leading challenger to Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, rather than that mantle falling to New Mexico's governor?
Both men represented an ethnic group important to the future of the Democratic Party. Both argued that they could move the nation beyond partisanship — Richardson pointing to his record working with the GOP in New Mexico. Both opposed the war in Iraq (albeit belatedly in Richardson's case). Both grew up outside the US, gaining valuable perspective for a world increasingly transcending national borders. Both had authored books laying out how their life story prepared them for the presidency.
Why, then, is Obama still in the race as we approach the mammoth Feb. 5 vote — in which New Mexico's Democratic delegates, surprisingly, are now up for grabs — while Bill Richardson has returned to Santa Fe?
You can blame the money chase, which allowed Obama to far outspend Richardson in the crucial early states. But that's partly a chicken-and-egg argument: Why did Obama succeed in raising more money than Richardson? What about Obama's campaign, his personality, his promise appealed to so many donors in the formative months of the presidential race? Besides, Richardson actually did remarkably well in funding his White House run, amassing cash almost enough to catch the "top tier" candidates and far outstripping such well-connected competitors as Sen. Chris Dodd and Sen. Joe Biden.
It's true that, especially in the early debates, Richardson was often shunted aside with Dodd, Biden, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Sen. Mike Gravel as wannabes not worth the screen time given Clinton, Obama and former Sen. John Edwards. The cameras lingered on any signs of a spat between these three headliners, who got far more than their share of questions.
But Richardson also squandered the TV opportunities he did get. His appearance on "Meet the Press" was a disaster, and in many of the debates he appeared unprepared and ill at ease. Not until the final pre-New Hampshire debate did Richardson really shine, and by that point it was too late to derail the top three.
Obama, though, had his own stiff moments in front of the cameras. Only at the Jefferson-Jackson Day event in Iowa did the Illinois senator seem to find his voice — which had catapulted him into the national limelight at the 2004 Democratic convention.
And Richardson made a point of emphasizing how he had exactly what many worry Obama lacks — experience. The governor's humorous Iowa ads depicted him as a job-seeker with a stellar resume, bafflingly (and, as it turned out, presciently) unable to get his foot in the door. We've previously bemoaned in this space the lack of respect paid to experience in the Democratic race — not just Richardson's, but also Dodd's, Biden's and even Kucinich's.
But a friend of ours — who's actually supporting Edwards, last we heard — makes the argument that he doesn't know of any job that truly prepares a person to be president of the United States. Is it like running a big company, as ex-Gov. Mitt Romney insists? Do years in the US Senate really make a difference when you get to the White House? (Recent experience suggests that a long Senate tenure mostly gives a candidate plenty of votes to defend — often against distortion and out-of-context negative TV ads — in a campaign for the presidency. It's no coincidence that John F. Kennedy was the last president elected straight from the Senate.) Does governing a state get a person ready to govern the nation?
No one, our friend suggests, is truly "qualified" to be president unless that person has previously held the job. (Or, one supposes, in an analogy to how sports coaches or CEOs get hired, a candidate might have been president of some minor-league, Third World country. Since we require our presidents to be US citizens, that route is probably out.) Ever since FDR, the US Constitution has limited presidents to two terms, so the only "qualified" candidates would be those defeated in a bid for re-election; the first President Bush seems unlikely to seek another go.
We're not entirely persuaded on the "experience" argument, but at least in weighing Richardson versus Obama it's clear the American people were willing to "roll the dice" (as Bill Clinton put it). Experience proved not to be the trump card our governor hoped it would be.
Neither did the issue Richardson pinned his hopes on, the Iraq war. The governor staked out a position at the extreme of the antiwar spectrum, vowing to bring US troops home faster and more completely than any of the top-tier candidates. The arguable success of the so-called "surge" (which may soon allow the US to reduce troop levels to, well, about where they were before the surge) took some of the wind out of Richardson's sails, as Iraq dropped a notch or two among voters' chief concerns. But for hard-core Democratic activists most likely to turn out in a caucus or primary, the Iraq folly remained a burning issue. Why didn't Richardson benefit from his strong antiwar stance?
We're just guessing here, but perhaps his position lacked authenticity. It's not entirely clear when Richardson first spoke out against the war, but we don't remember him as governor — and as a Democratic foreign-policy spokesman, the former UN ambassador — taking a stand. Not until he was preparing to run for president. Indeed, Richardson — like most of the 2008 Democratic hopefuls — originally supported the Iraq invasion.
"When we invaded I said I supported the invasion in order to support the troops," he explained in his Playboy magazine interview. "At the time, I felt it was the best thing. As I look back, it was a mistake. At the time, however, I was making public statements and wasn't participating in the decision to invade. The president should have gone to the UN and used diplomacy, but I didn't push hard enough. I should have pushed harder for diplomacy. But remember, we were also operating on limited information. At the time, I thought, I don't have all the intelligence; Bush says Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. However, I never bought the Al Qaeda link. So it was a mistake. And what happened afterward was massive incompetence and massive deception."
Obama, of course, alone among the "top-tier" Democrats, opposed the Iraq war from the start. Did Richardson's rush to be even more opposed to the war smack of expediency?
Contrast Richardson's stumbling explanation of his Iraq position to the speech Obama gave in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002 — five months before the invasion:
"I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. . . . I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars."