New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s entry into the 2008 presidential sweepstakes Sunday garnered little notice, overshadowed as it was by the announcement of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the day before.
The mainstream media appears to already have its narrative set for the Democratic primaries, pitching Clinton against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as establishment vs. the outsider. However, the punditry and the Democrats may just be overlooking the one candidate that the Republicans should fear the most and, perhaps, Clinton should as well.
Richardson has an impressive resume. He worked in the State Department as a congressional liaison after college, then worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as an aide.
He spent 14 years in Congress representing New Mexico, starting in 1980, mostly focusing on foreign affairs. He moved from Congress to leadership of the Democratic Party’s 2004 convention,working with President Bill Clinton on bolstering the party’s credibility with centrist voters.
Bill Clinton appointed Richardson as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., where he served a year, and then appointed him as Secretary of Energy, where he served from 1998 until Clinton’s term ended. In 2002, Richardson was elected to his first term as New Mexico’s governor and was re-elected last November.
This record gives Richardson an incredible amount of applicable experience for the presidency. He has extensive foreign-affairs experience; he has plenty of contacts in Congress and a long history of working between the legislative and executive branches; and most of all, he has solid executive experience that all of the other main candidates for the nomination lack. In fact, compared to Richardson, the rest of the pack look like amateurs playing at national politics.
Richardson should worry Hillary Clinton based on his extensive experience. However, his experience with the Clintons also might give Hillary Clinton a different set of vulnerabilities, depending on whether the former baseball player will go hardball in the primary race.
Even the fact of his candidacy makes a case for his readiness to dish on Hillary Clinton. He’s just young enough at age 60 to have waited for 2012 or 2016 to avoid going against Hillary Clinton, and yet he chose to run against his former boss’ spouse. That indicates that Richardson doesn’t feel especially loyal to either Clinton on the national stage and hints that some fireworks may await us on the primary trail.
Will he start telling stories out of school about first lady Hillary Clinton and her actions during those years? Richardson isn’t known as a hardball politician despite his prowess on the baseball field in his youth, but he has to know that running against Hillary Clinton will require such a mindset.
So far, Richardson is the only member of the Clinton cabinet nowrunning for president, and the only one with the motivation to go negative about Hillary Clinton’s work during her husband’s two terms in the White House.
The Democrats have no one else with a resume to match Richardson, with the possible (and extreme) exception of former Vice President Al Gore. The Democrats certainly have no other candidates with Richardson’s experience and his certified centrist appeal.
Neither do the Republicans have anyone in their committed field of candidates who can match this resume, either. And that should worry the GOP, if Richardson gets close.
The Republican front-runners have better track records than their Democratic counterparts, at least for the moment. Between them, Hillary Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards, and Obama have a total of 14 years of national office and only 21 years of electoral office experience.
By comparison, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been in the Senate for more than 20 years, Rudy Giuliani served as mayor of New York City for eight years and Mitt Romney has one four-year term as governor of Massachussetts.
Between them, these three GOP candidates have a dozen years just in executive experience, which the Democratic front-runners completely lack. McCain and Giuliani have notable biographies of service to the nation, while Romney has the rescue of the Salt Lake City Olympics to his credit.
The GOP has a significant edge in experience at the moment, but it is an edge that will evaporate if Richardson takes the Democratic nomination. Will the Democrats be smart enough to take advantage of it?
Given the hard-left nature of the rhetoric we’ve heard from the Democrats at the beginning of the presidential campaign cycle and the lack of attention paid to Richardson thus far, the GOP doesn’t need to start worrying … yet.
Ed Morrissey is a member of The Examiner Blog Board of Contributors and blogsat Captainsquartersblog.com.
