My Road Trip with Bill Richardson

by: Mike Caulfield

Mon Feb 19, 2007 at 21:31:05 PM EST

The audio is here.

My thoughts on Richardson are below.

My Road Trip With Bill Richardson

When Joaquin Guerra invited me to interview Bill Richardson during a car ride from Manchester to Concord, I jumped at the chance. He asked me to send a short explanation of who I was to brief the Governor.

So I did. I said I was an ex-dotcommer, that I was a relatively recent political blogger, that I'd helped assist in the outing of IndyNH as Charlie's policy director, and that Blue Hampshire was the most trafficked Democratic Community blog in the state.

What I didn't say was I think that half the things that Richardson believes in are bullcrap. People here know that I despise the drug war, and that I think redistribution of wealth is a valid goal of tax policy. You may also know that it was an Indian company that put the "ex" in my ex-dotcommer, ably assisted by big name venture capital firms, the supposed heroes of the New Economy. If you've read me for more than a couple of days, you know that I think far too much burden has been shifted onto the American worker; we live in a society now where corporations reap rewards, while their workers take the risks.

I mention all this because I am going to say two things that might look strange under my byline. Big breath...here we go:

1) In terms of the general election, Bill Richardson is the most electable candidate the Dems have seen in some time, and

2) That might not be such a bad thing.

I'm going to put point #2 aside for the moment, and deal with that later this week. For right now, let's talk about some of the reasons why Richardson is the most electable candidate.

He does retail politics like the second coming of Bill Clinton. I met Richardson at a small coffee shop in Manchester, where a bunch of Young Dems had come to see him. The place was small, but packed. Richardson walks in, smiling broadly.

"You want me to make a speech?" he says, "or should we shake some hands?"

A general leaning to the handshaking is murmured.

"Yeah," he says, with a self mocking grin, "I thought so."

He then jumps into a display of classic retail. He knows the names, he knows who everyone is.

"Hey, Phil" he says to one guy, "How are you doing?"

Turning to another guy, he points to Phil. "I went to Mass with this guy. He went to confessional. He wasn't out for 40 minutes."

I can imagine groaning at that joke if it came from any other politician. With Richardson, it's different. You laugh, or shake your head in mock disgust. You can't help it. There's something about him, you can't simply observe him, the way you can Hillary or Edwards.

You can't be within ten feet of Bill Richardson without wanting to be on his side.

The man is made of Teflon. Bill is a much less polished speaker than any of the other candidates. And he can get a little lost sometimes in answering questions. But he's got an important attribute the other candidates don't have: he is made of Teflon.

I find it hard to explain. Bill committed one of the worst sins one can while I was talking him: he argued against a straw man Democrat. That stuff generally sends me into seizures. I braced for the seizure.

It never came. "Aww," I said to myself, "he's just got some rough edges. He doesn't mean that."

Bill can be taught to stop invoking Democrat stereotypes. I'm hoping he learns that lesson soon. What can't be taught is the Art of Being Teflon. Richardson has got that. In spades.

The campaign called us. OK, this may be arrogant to say. But the fact that the campaign set something up with us impressed me. The Edwards campaign was good to us, but even with their fabled net-savvy, we got 20 minutes with 14 or more bloggers there.

And of course the Edwards campaign had to do it that way. It was a HUGE event, and they gave us a little piece of it to show us respect and get the word out.

The fundamental realization of the Richardson campaign is people like me would rather have a large piece of a small event than a small piece of a large event. I don't have to cover the launch. I'm not on deadline, or competing against CNN.

They took a car ride that was useless to anybody else and gave it to me to use. A one-way car ride at that. I actually had to call my parents up for a ride back to my car. (How embarassing is that?)

But it was perfect.

Because it's not about ego, or status, or deadlines. Blogging is about the fundamental truth that if I have some questions that are interesting to me personally, they are probably interesting to other people as well. Give me a chance to ask those questions, and to react as a voter, not as a reporter, and then you've started to unlock the power of the thing.

I don't know if it's Richardson or not, but someone on that campaign gets that. And in 2007, that's an ace in the hole.

He's done it. The narrative as it stands now:

Hillary/Obama: We can do it.
Edwards: I'm doing it now.
Richardson: I've already done it.

Unfair? Perhaps. But from a general election perspective it's a huge strength. Whether it's Romney or McCain that comes up the pike, Huckabee or Guiliani, Richardson will be able to say he has one half of the experience that the other candidate doesn't.

I've gone on too long here. If this post seems a little more incoherent than my posts on other candidates, it's probably because my thoughts on Richardson are still unformed, and somewhat conflicted.

But listen to the tape and let us know what you think.

Some quotes pulled from the audio after the flip...

I'm a traditional Democrat. I believe that the function of government is to help people. To invest in education, in health care, in human needs. I call myself a New Progressive. I'm a progressive in that I believe in investing in people, in education and health care, in workforce training. But I believe there has to be two factors accompanying that: discipline and accountability. And I also don't believe that the answer to every economic issue and human needs issue is additional taxes. I just believe there are other ways we can achieve similar goals

To what extent do you want to demonstrate a willingness to attack while negotiating with a country like Iran?

It's counterproductive. You know, the president saying Iran is responsible for all the ills of Iraq -- it's not true. Iran is responsible for messing around and helping terrorist elements...The worry I have is I can see the same game plan four years ago in Iraq, preparing the American people for a hostile act. I think it would be ludicrous to do it...I think we should be bargaining hard with them. Diplomacy. Talk with them directly. Instead we do it through the Europeans and we attack each other in the press. It's a policy that makes no sense.

On what he learned from watching the last election:

If you're attacked, you have to respond right away. And I think that didn't happen last time.

On what differentiates him from other candidates:

Foreign policy, Energy, and the fact that as Governor I actually created jobs...all the other candidates have maybe voted to do that. I've actually done it.