I'd like to preface this by saying that I view myself as a 'realistic' Richardson supporter: I think he'd make one of the best presidents but probably one of the worst presidential candidates out of the field we have left.
Thus, I've been wrestling with this quandary: how do you rationalize your candidates elect-ability with their politics? Can you separate the two?
I'm having trouble. I respect the DailyKos viewpoints, but most of them regarding Richardson tend to be overwhelmingly negative.
Now, I know he's not very electable (that being said, I think he'd be elected).
He's unable to deliver the usual presidential sound-bites, is awkward, makes silly Bush-like flubs, and whenever he speaks in a debate, I cringe (his sentence structure is like a 5th grader's essay: topic sentence, body paragraph, conclusion), but he's not the villain he's made out to be here, and I thought I'd respond to some of the main criticisms.
- "He's a shill for the Clinton campaign/Just wants to be her VP
- I'm not sure how this got started, besides us projecting our belief that Clinton would pick him as the VP and using that to analyze anything he says. During the debate, he did defend Clinton when Edwards and Obama were being aggressive, but he's been 'Mr-Positive-Campaign' from the beginning when he, perhaps, foolishly, was on his 'positive-campaign-pledge' kick. When Clinton voted for the resolution to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, Richardson criticized it.
- "He uses Republican talking points"
- Now, I don't really know what this means, besides "he criticized my candidate". Sure, he said that Edwards and others would raise taxes, but that, in no small part, was because Edwards and others said that they might raise taxes. Now, the validity of this notwithstanding (I happen to agree with Edwards on this issue), Richardson has the right to outline the differences between him and the other Democratic candidates.
- "He touts his resume too much"
-This is the most ridiculous criticism of all. He touts his resume because he has the strongest resume of any of the Democratic candidates (save, arguably, Biden and Dodd). It's not like he's neglected coming up with policies for the future, he's done that in conjunction with explaining that he has the skills and the experience necessary to implement them. Sure, he doesn't talk about 'hope' or the 'American dream' or 'changing Washington' (every candidate for the past umpteen years has claimed they were going to 'change Washington' or tried to run as an 'outsider') as much as Obama or Edwards, but that kind of stuff is the fluff that usually gets in the way of a substantive debate.
The fact is that Richardson is a diplomat by trade, and I think that he's the candidate most primed to do two things:
1.
He's the candidate who's most primed to change the way we think of the War on Terror. Now, earlier this year, John Edwards was the only one who said he doesn't believe in the 'War on Terror'. I agree with him, however, simply saying that the 'War on Terror' doesn't exist, doesn't make it go away. The sad fact is that we have been barraged with the term, the philosophy and everything else for 8 years, and the 'War on Terror' now exists simply because everyone says is exists.
The way you counter-act something like this is by re-defining what the 'War on Terror' means. If you re-define the 'War on Terror' as a not only a military conflict, but a social, educational, economic and political one, then all of a sudden you can paint the Republicans as looking at the whole thing through a pinhole.
The sad fact is that most Americans (still, believe it or not) think the Republicans 'tougher' on foreign policy.
The way you prevent everyone from running back to the right (God forbid) if there's another terrorist attack (God forbid, again), is by changing the way people fundamentally think about foreign policy (not being primarily a military conflict, et al.)
I'd argue that Richardson's background and his experience and his persona (as someone relatively weathered, relatively tough) make him the one most able to articulate this idea.
2.
I think Richardson is the one best able to change the fundamental Jean-Claude-Van-Damm-esque philosophy that governs our foreign policy: 'We don't negotiate with terrorists'. The "Terrorists" should be the people with negotiate and talk to the most, not to 'give in' to demands or anything, but to open a dialog to, perhaps, come to some sort of understanding.
Once again, I think Richardson, a diplomat, is the most able to do this.
-I think Edwards looks weak on foreign policy (and I say that really liking John Edwards). He originally voted for the war, and although he atoned, it still dogs him. Although I don't agree with this perception, he's the one most likely to be characterized as 'giving in'.
-Barack Obama is a wildcard. He has so little foreign policy experience, that I don't know how he'll be (or how he'll be characterized).
So, this diary has become way more long-winded than I wanted it to be. Once again, I'd like to stress that I like almost all of the Democratic nominees (especially Obama and Edwards) and look forward to supporting any of them in 2008.
But mostly, I wanted to gauge the reasons people dislike Richardson. I know he has shortcomings domestically, but I think that he is the most apt foreign policy candidate we have.