The Hope and Change Cabinet: Secretary of State

The Job:
The Secretary of State is the highest ranking member of the Presidential Cabinet. He/she is the head of diplomatic efforts and official foreign affairs.

Contender #1: Governor Bill Richardson
Biography
Bill Richardson is a 60-year-old Latino and self-described Roman Catholic. He was born in Los Angeles California, but spent his youth in Massachusetts, where he attended Middlesex H.S. in Concord, then Tufts University in Medford, where he earned a B.A. in 1970. He subsequently earned a M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford in 1971.

After college, he immediately went to work for Massachusetts Congressman F. Bradford Morse. He then worked on congressional relations under Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon. He moved to New Mexico for the first time in 1978 to run for Congress as a Democrat in 1980. He lost. He tried again in 1982 and won this time, in a newly-created Congressional district. He served as a U.S. Representative from 1983 to 1997. In 1997, he succeeded Madeline Albright as U.N. Ambassador under then-President Clinton. He served in this post until 1998 when he was named Energy Secretary – a post he occupied until G.W. Bush took over in 2001.

He then returned to New Mexico, and began to work in several academic and corporate positions, until he ran a successful campaign for Governor in 2002, a position in which he remains. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for Democratic nominee for President in 2008.

Positions on Life, Liberty, Property

Life

• Supports abortion on demand during any trimester for any reason
• Supports experimentation on human embryos

Liberty

• Supports the radical gay agenda and special protections for alternative lifestyles
• Supported and signed medical marijuana legislation in N.M.
  

Property

• Opposed Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that vastly expanded communities’ rights of imminent domain over private citizen property holders
• Supports punitive progressive and redistributionist taxation policies

Positions on Bill of Rights
Amendment 1:
o Opposes free speech & petition through lobbyists / special interests
o Supports free speech through a free and open internet
Amendment 2:
o Supports right to keep and bear arms
Amendment 4:
o Supports through resistance to Patriot Act domestic surveillance
Amendment 5:
o Supports through resistance to Kelo case
Amendment 9:
o Undermines by supporting special rights and protections for alternative lifestyles and minorities.
Amendment 10:
o Undermines by supporting large and powerful central government

Qualifications for job
1. Closeness to President? YES
Richardson ran against Obama in 2008. After suspending his campaign however, he eventually turned on his long-time friends, the Clintons, to support Obama, a decision for which he was labeled a “traitor” by long-time Clintonista James Carville. The two seem rather close, bonded more completely by this show of faith by Richardson.

2. Effective communication with diverse audiences? YES
Soft-spoken and calm, almost to a fault, Richardson gives the impression of a cool head under pressure.

3. Acceptable face of American foreign policy? YES
No stranger to the world diplomatic stage

4. Aggressively pursues American interests? NO
His two previous most high-profile diplomatic efforts in Sudan and Palestine/Israel were both complete failures.
His one notable success was in diminishing U.S. sovereignty by more completely tying us to ridiculous U.N. mandates for environmental goals.