Richardson makes his pitch
FORT MADISON — Every person who came to hear New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s speech here Tuesday got a baseball card
The card shows the Democratic presidential hopeful — ball in his right hand, glove on his left — preparing to throw a pitch at what looked to be the Field of Dreams in Dyersville. On the back listed his “positions played”: seven-term congressman, United Nations ambassador, Secretary of Energy, two-term governor. And on the front, in an upper corner where the Topps or Fleer logo would go, flashy font reads, “2008 All Star.”
The question is, can Richardson throw a complete game.
The governor ranks in the middle of the pack both in Iowa and nationally, and, after a strong stretch early in the season, he has cooled off of late, dropping two percentage points in a Des Moines Register poll of likely caucus participants released over the weekend.
Still Gwen Brown hopes to see Richardson take the mound for the Democrats in the general election.
“He needs to be better known,” the Fort Madison woman said after the governor’s speech. “In terms of the press, there has been very little about him. There needs to be a lot more coverage so that people understand him.”
Brown especially appreciates Richardson’s position on the Iraq War. As it happened, that was the topic he came to town to discuss.
Richardson advocates a full United States military withdrawal within one year, followed by a multi-national diplomatic push buttressed with a United Nations peacekeeping force on the ground.
“I believe our kids have become targets,” he said, referencing as evidence an unnamed poll in which seven in 10 Sunnis and Shiites said shooting a U.S. service member is acceptable.
Richardson is the fourth Democratic candidate to come through the area in the past five days, following Joe Biden, John Edwards and Chris Dodd. Like those three, he worked hard to differentiate his position on the war from that of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the leader in the polls.
Last month, Clinton said up to 75,000 U.S. troops might need to remain in Iraq.
“I believe leaving one troop behind doesn’t end the war, and my opponents, senators Clinton and (Barack) Obama (of Illinois) leave thousands behind until the year 2013,” he said. “That’s not ending the war. That’s just changing the mission.”
Richardson has traveled to Iraq multiple times and once negotiated with Saddam Hussein for the release of two U.S. contractors held captive. He also has undertaken diplomatic missions to Sudan and North Korea.
He is now laying claim to being the foremost candidate with such high-level head-to-heads in his background.
“President Clinton used to say that bad people like me,” he said while responding to a woman who had asked about his diplomatic successes.
The statement, light-hearted though it was, zeroed in on one of the obvious ironies of the race. Richardson, after all, did serve his stints at the U.N. and the Department of Energy under Hillary Clinton’s husband.
When not talking about Iraq, foreign policy or Clinton, Richardson found time to hit the high points of his expansive health care proposal, which guarantees insurance coverage, lowers the Medicare eligibility age to 55 and emphasizes wellness and disease prevention programs.
He also touched on border security (he favors a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants) and the genocide in Sudan. On the latter topic, he suggested the U.S. should aid refugees in the Darfur region but pointed out that China has the most leverage to stop the genocide because it buys Sudanese oil.
In an out-of-the-ordinary subject related to China, a woman asked Richardson how he would protect consumers from tainted toys, pet food and other products from that country.
“I wouldn’t let them in,” he answered, drawing a short round of applause.
That kind of common-man language was the governor’s hallmark in previous visits to southeast Iowa. But there is no proof it is being heard over the noise made by Clinton, Obama and Edwards.
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