Richardson Withdraws as Commerce Secretary Nominee
Breaking News: Governor of New Mexico and former Democratic candidate for president Bill Richardson will withdraw as commerce secretary.
Richardson supported now president-elect Barack Obama after he dropped out from the Democratic nomination race and was rewarded with a nomination for commerce secretary in Obama’s up and coming administration.
The Hispanic governor gladly accepted the invitation but withdrew today. The reason: a pending investigation into a company that has done business with New Mexico. The company contributed to Richardson’s campaign and was later rewarded with a major $1 billion state contract. Federal investigators believe that coincidences do not exist and that the state and company were involved in a “pay-to-play” scheme.
Richardson is the second Democratic governor to be suspected of involvement in a pay-to-play scheme in only one month time. The other governor: Rod Blagojevich, the embattled governor of Illinois. Not only are both men members of the Democratic Party and governor, they are also close political allies of Obama.
Where Obama could distance himself relatively easily from Blagojevich thus far, the two controversies combined may give some observers the impression that Obama is bad, to put it mildly, at choosing friends and allies. Since the most important decisions presidents make revolve around appointing judges, secretaries, undersecretaries, ambassadors, judges, and so on, this may prove to be a recurring problem in an Obama administration.
It will also make clear to voters that although the Republican Party became known as the corrupt party in the last few years, corruption is a bipartisan problem. Both Blagojevich and Richardson are partisan and ideological Democrats.
In any case, Richardson’s decision to withdraw as commerce secretary nominee means that he fears, despite his public statements, that the investigation could turn out badly for him and / or his close(st) allies. Since this would make his confirmation hearing rather problematic and throw an Obama administration immediately into a controversy, Richardson’s decision to withdraw was wise. If he would pursue the position nonetheless, he could do tremendous damage to President Obama and their shared agenda for America.
In Richardon’s case I’ll grant you that this conclusion could be made, though I think more needs to be found out about just how public and credible these allegations have been and for how long. But assuming that they were relatively credible (and they must be, for Richardson to withdraw) and relatively well known, then yes the argument is clear that he’s a bad choice. But including Blago doesn’t quite cut it. So far, the sum of the association of Obama and Blago is that they were both from Illinois. Friends or close allies they simply are not. In fact, it appears as though Obama kept him far away from himself until it was absolutely necessary to establish some limited contact due to the Senate appointment.
Unfortunately, this seems to confirm what some of the Republicans were saying during the campaign.
And one has to wonder, with friends like William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, what did the electorate expect? What about the allegations of credit card misuse for fund raising?
I am increasingly wary of his selection process. While there is no evidence of corruption of wrong doing on Obama’s part, It seems as if the evaluation of credentials and resumes of persons wanting to join his administration should be a higher priority. Perhaps this underscores a point I have tried to make all along: It is more important to get competent people than to hire on the basis of identity politics.
ahh how it’s so – one sided.
For years we heard that if there was the slightest sniff of inappropriate behavior out of the right than Bush and Co should have chopped the Axe.
But now ——— well it is the party of tolerance.
– sometimes.