Richardson Best of the Dem Candidates?

Bill Richardson has a very good interview by Charlie Gibson on ABC-TV news blog linked above. Although I tend toward the Conservative side of the political ledger, I like Bill because he is extremely smart, extremely likeable, and despite a tendency to commit gaffes, extremely competent.

I know Bill personally since marrying a woman he dated at Tufts and whom he helped get a job as a Legislative Assistant for Sen. Paul Sarbanes. Bill was an FSO then worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, one of the hardest and brainiest jobs to get in DC. When he went off to his native New Mexico to run for Congress, his fellow staffers laughed at him, or so he told me.

Marilyn & I gave a fund-raiser for Bill at our DC home over twenty years ago & Bill stayed on afterwards to talk in our back garden under a flowering magnolia, one of the most magnificent in the neighborhood of Wesley Heights. Bill was frank & candid when he told me that he wanted eventually to become a Senator from New Mexico. He also told me, during the era of the Cold War, that the single most important foreign threat to the USA was illegal immigration.

Well, Bill's career henceforward took him into some much more interesting areas than being a mere Senator from N.M. would have taken him. As UN Ambassador, Sec'y of Energy, and Governor of N.M., he's certainly poved himself a jack of all trades and a master diplomat.

Check out the link on his interview for a good reason why he should be the Dem VP candidate.