There was something so sleazy, so cold-blooded about the shafting Bill Richardson gave the Clintons when he endorsed Barack Obama for president a week ago that, for the first time this campaign season, I find myself sympathizing with—even rooting for—one of the big three presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton.

I can’t get that picture out of my head—the picture of Bill Richardson lapping up the televised face time with Bill Clinton in New Mexico on Super Bowl Sunday, lapping up the status points that attended the public courtship by the former president.

I submit Richardson knew, even as he basked in Clinton’s supplication, that he would eventually—treacherously—endorse Obama. Richardson’s public statement justifying the Obama endorsement proves as much.

"As a Hispanic…," Richardson explained, "race trumps everything."

Oh wait, the "race trumps everything" part was from Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor, longtime speaker of the California assembly, and a black man, spelling out to the Washington Post why black voters have so embraced Obama, even against the legacy of the Clintons. "I think most white politicians do not understand that the race pride we all have trumps everything else," explained Willie Brown.

Does Bill Richardson’s race pride, too, trump everything else? Is even the debt he owes the Clintons, whose patronage it was in the first place that made him a national figure capable of commanding a public plea for support from a former president—is even that debt trumped by race pride?

It would appear so, judging by the reason Richardson gave nearly a year ago for why he supported former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales even as his co-ethnic was (deservedly) going down in flames. "As a Hispanic…," began Richardson’s explanation for his support for Gonzales.

When I read Richardson’s as-a-Hispanic reasoning for why he continued to support Gonzales when it was clear to everyone Gonzales was a pernicious presence at the head of the Department of Justice, I thought to myself, Screw you, Richardson. You put your race pride above the good of the country, and you want me to vote for you for president? Sorry, Bill, the campaign slogan “as a Hispanic” doesn’t move me. I vote “as an American.”

I felt short-changed, in fact, for Richardson was once my congressman. I realized that, as an Anglo, I spent the first half of the 1990s only secondarily represented in Congress by my as-a-Hispanic representative.

But with Richardson’s endorsement of Barack Obama, I wonder now whether I was even being represented secondarily. In the email announcing his Obama endorsement, Richardson wrote, "As a Hispanic, I was particularly touched by [Obama's Reverend Wright speech]. I have been troubled by the demonization of immigrants—specifically Hispanics— by too many in this country."

Demonization? The big national debate over immigration is about enforcement of our immigration laws. Is support for the enforcement of our immigration laws what Richardson terms "demonization?" Was it me and the eight out of ten Americans who support the enforcement of our immigration laws whom Richardson was attacking as demonizers?

If so, then I was represented in Congress for half a decade by an enemy, a threat to the rule of law, and a racial demagogue not fit to hold public office.

If, on the other hand, support for the enforcement of our immigration laws is not what Richardson meant by “demonization,” then just where is the demonization of immigrants Bill Richardson laments? Where is the demonization of Hispanics? I don’t see it.

The only demonization I’ve run across lately, in fact, is the demonization of white people by the rabid Reverend Wright—the hatemonger who led to Christ the half-black candidate for the presidency that the treacherous half-Hispanic governor of New Mexico just endorsed on racial grounds.

Tags:   Clinton · Obama · Richardson · Santa Fe · Willie Brown · Wright4 Comments