New Mexico governor self-destructs on Meet the Press.
By John Dickerson
During the course of Bill Richardson's Meet the Press appearance Sunday, the New Mexico governor was on the defensive. Permanently. He tried to explain away his state's low rankings on high-school dropout rates, poverty, and crime during his tenure, his bold statements as energy secretary that turned out not to be true, his 72-hour change of mind on the immigration bill, his stance on guns, the stock he once owned in an oil company, his brief support of Alberto Gonzales, his résumé padding on his baseball career, and the story he tells on the stump about a dead soldier whose mother has asked him to stop telling it. Richardson is a world-famous hostage negotiator, so it was poignant to watch him fail to rescue himself from his own hostage crisis. By the end of the hour, he wasn't answering questions so much as swatting at them. "I'm not perfect," he said.
No one television interview should weigh too heavily on anyone's career. Talking-head TV is a highly formalized performance art in which you're doused in itchy makeup, forced to sit awkwardly under hot lights, and desperate to produce winning, accurate, concise answers without pausing to reflect. Anyone can slip up, invert words, or confuse facts. This is true of debates, too, where Richardson had a lackluster first performance.
Still, on Sunday, Richardson was bad. |
