Richardson in Stoddard: 9 Comments

by: elwood

Thu Jul 05, 2007 at 22:26:29 PM EDT

I'm going to give my reactions to the Richardson speech and Q&A, with a caveat. This is a stump speech, not a book of position papers. (And it was the eighth time he had spoken today.) Where I say that he was a bit vague on some topic, that may simply be because the stump speech is designed as a first introduction, not a detailed thesis for policy wonks.

1. Richardson is charming, warm, and funny. He knows how to use humor to make a point and is comfortable with, and good at, self-deprecating humor.
   
2. Much of the speech itself, and the answers to audience questions, would have been very similar in substance to remarks from any of the Democratic candidates - and that's a good thing. As he talked about upholding the Constitution, restoring habeas corpus, rejecting torture,  and outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation, I was struck by how all of our candidates have endorsed all those positions - while none of the Republican candidates has.
   
3. He particularly emphasized the need for America to "re-join the world community" and to embrace diplomacy. He said that when Bill Clinton heard of a dispute with North Korea, Cuba, Libya, or Iran he would say, "Send Richardson - the bad guys seem to like him."  (That's an example of what I considered effective self-deprecating humor.)

4. We have taken Richardson to task here for using the rhetorical device of saying (roughly) "I'm not one of those typical Democrats who loves to raise taxes." He has toned that down quite a bit, but there is still some of it in his stump speech. His words were roughly, "We need to unite the country. I don't believe in class warfare. If you want a candidate who likes to raise taxes, there are some of them out there." That steps back from reinforcing the Republican stereotype of the 'typical' Democrat, anyway.
   
5. He didn't (in the speech) say whether he would prolong the Bush tax cuts for the highest-income filers or let them expire, or mention the estate tax. Nor did he say where the revenue comes from to eliminate the deficit. I mention that because this whole theme annoys the hell out of me: the reason some candidates talk about restoring some taxes is to balance the budget again. To talk about balancing it while badmouthing one approach but not really spelling out an alternative is a mark in the minus column in my book.
   
6. He called for a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. "Governors have to do that, and I did."  But, Governors are not responsible for the military and national defense, or macro-economic policy. (Many credit FDR with pulling the nation out of the Great Depression partly by using Keynesian government spending. When the private sector is collapsing, using the federal government's credit to put people to work may make sense.)  Balanced budget amendments always have escape clauses that allow overspending in wartime.  So, without an amendment we balanced the budget under Clinton - but with one, we would still have a massive deficit in the Bush war Presidency.  Recent history teaches us we don't need an amendment - we simply need to elect Democratic Presidents.

7. His position on health care was, it seemed to me, confused. He wants to get to universal coverage. But he explicitly says that it needs to be a shared responsibility among the federal government, employers, individuals, and state governments. But he also says that it is a disgrace we lag behind other nations such as Canada - which adopted a single-payer system. He also proposed lowering the age at which people become eligible for Medicare to 50. That was pretty interesting. Duncan Black over at Atrios - who is an economist despite his ambition to be a "dirty f***ing hippie" - recently recommended that approach as a practical, gradual way of moving toward a widely-accepted single payer system. But Richardson didn't frame it that way; instead it was one component of a "don't make big changes to the process but expect big changes in results" plan.
   
8. He was strong on energy issues and the environment.  He chided Congress for raising the CAFÉ standard to 35 - "We should have raised it to 50 MPG!" He advised New Hampshire to protect our open space and start thinking in terms of light rail and other alternatives rather than wider superhighways.
   
9. On Iraq, he made a point of saying "no residual troops" or permanent bases when we withdraw, and he talked about a withdrawal process that helped Iraq stabilize: agreements on sharing oil revenues, a three-state national federation, and peacekeeping troops from Islamic nations. One of the questioners asked about Afghanistan, and Richardson said that because of the presence of al Qaeda and the Taliban we have a special need to keep troops there even as we leave Iraq. (We were in the woods just beyond Granite Lake, where the late Keene Sentinel publisher Jim Ewing had a summer place, and where he occasionally brought people from around the world as part of his work as co-founder of the International Center for Journalists, which encourages freedom of the press. One of Ewing's guests at the lake in the 1990s, I believe, was Hamid Karzai.)
   

I'm reminded that one of the best arguments for the retail politics of Iowa and New Hampshire is less about our chance to scrutinize and weigh each candidate, and more about the opportunity it gives candidates to try out different approaches and hone their messages. When the rest of the system is healthy - a reasonable campaign finance system, a reasonable calendar - we provide a shakedown cruise. The candidate we see in the six weeks just before the primary is often much more polished and confident than he or she was ten months earlier.

Richardson is already an attractive candidate with the most important parts of his message and platform - Iraq, America's role in the world - well-honed. As the retail campaign continues, I expect to see many of my quibbles resolved.