Bill Richardson Criticizes "3 AM" Ad, Praises Obama's Judgement

Election Central:

Yesterday Bill Richardson gave an interview that has gotten a bunch of attention already, because in it he said that Dems should coalesce behind the candidate with the "clear lead" after tomorrow's voting....

...He was outspoken in his criticism of Clinton's new "ringing phone" ad, which suggests that Obama is not ready to become commander in chief. "I happen to disagree with that ad that says that Senator Obama is not ready," he said. "He is ready. He has great judgment, an internationalist background."

Read the whole story: Election Central

Comments

[snruB]

GO RICHARDSON!

[kellygrrrl]

If Clinton loses 3 of 4 on 3/4 MANY Dem. VIPs will make it very clear that the race is over - IMO

[armadillious2002]

I swear to you she could be my X wife's twin sister. All emotional and moody and changing moods at the snap of a finger. Going into red faced rages. Trust me - you do not want this woman for President and with her finger on the button. She might punch the damned thing just to spite somebody or to get even.

[gba]

So your X wife asked for the divorce?

[AnninCA]

Man.......the sexism just reeks!

[hiriumi]

I didn't view his comment as entirely sexism. Like it or not, it's based on his real experience and I can relate to that.

[Dandy12]

The more supposed "substance" that Bill and Hillary interject into the race (especially the pointed type), the less Clinton mstique is left. Bill and Hillary are good at being smooth, and for many, they don't like to see the rough edges. The 3 am number reminds me of the little Golwarer girl, the flower, and the bomb. It was too much.

[PTTY]

HILLARY UNMASKED

Feb 29 2008



The real Hillary Clinton stood up at the Democratic presidential debate this week: angry, sarcastic, stubborn, secretive, arrogant, mired in the past, victim of the media, and still firmly convinced that she is uniquely entitled to the Democratic Party nomination and the presidency.


That Hillary hasn’t really been on display much since the debacle of her disastrous health care plan and the end of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, when she haughtily flaunted her combative personality.

But make no mistake about it — that’s the Hillary Clinton that we’ll see if she somehow manages to steal the Democratic nomination.
She’s found her voice. The one that so alienated everyone she came into contact with over her health care plan that her own party destroyed it.

The one that publicly and loudly defended Bill and arranged for attacks on Monica Lewinsky when she knew the complete and sordid truth.


She’s always had a chip on her shoulder and a strange paranoia, but it’s definitely gotten worse. Now it’s not just the vast right wing conspiracy that is out to get her. Now it’s the mainstream media. How are they doing that? By asking her the first questions at the debates!
Hillary’s snide comment about whether Barack needed a pillow to be made more comfortable was downright embarrassing. The anticipated applause line on her script never happened. The audience was silent.

The press was amazed. And Barack seemed genuinely startled by her nuttiness — he looked over at her as if he was viewing a dotty old aunt at a family dinner, the one that everyone politely humors.


Her lifelong pattern of secrecy was once again evident. While publicly promoting transparency in government, she steadfastly refuses to release her personal income tax returns. That’s a clear tip-off that there’s something to hide. Recall that the Clintons selectively released tax returns in Arkansas, but refused to go back to 1980, when Hillary had her windfall in cattle futures.


During the debate, Hillary suggested that she’d release the returns “soon,” but her staff quickly backtracked. She implied that she’s been too busy to deal with releasing the returns.


Does she really think anyone believes that it will take more than simply making a copy of the return? She’s stalling and there’s a reason for that.
Most likely, the return will show how much Bill has been making from his partnership with the Sheik of Dubai and his other business ventures.

Should the spouse of a presidential candidate be in business with a foreign leader who needs favors from the U.S. government? Definitely not. That’s why we’ll never see those returns.
And then there are the Clinton Library records that document her schedule as first lady. She doesn’t want them released either because they will definitively show that she was never the co-president.

The Library has been stalling on the release of those documents for years. During the debate, she said that she wanted them released as quickly as possible and seemed to blame the Bush administration for the delay. But today, the White House indicated that she had made no requests for any expedited release.


The old Hillary, the real Hillary, is back.
And there’s apparently been no one to stop her from acting on her own worse instincts.


Underneath the veneer of the practiced smile and the strategically used giggle, there is a rage that is always close to the surface. It was on display in the debate.


Hillary Clinton is furious that America has not agreed to her coronation. She doesn’t understand why voters are rejecting her and embracing Barack Obama. She just doesn’t get it.


Never one to engage in self reflection, she can’t blame herself or even her incompetent strategists and advisers. They’re too close to her.


She can’t accept the sorry fact that her campaign has been a disaster because it was based on the past and not the future, because it was premised on her phony experience and maintaining the status quo, and because her negative outlook is completely out of step with the mood of America. And finally, because in the positive message of Barack Obama, Americans see a stark contrast with her doom and gloom view of the world.


So, she’ll blame the media. It’s their fault. And she’ll keep screaming about what a fighter she is. More like a bully

[AZDemocrat500]

What is your point, this seems like a rant. Did you take your meds.

[Susan1968]

Where's your source?

You set this up like it's an article.. if it is, link it.

[mhopgood123]

Please Governor Richardson, come out and endose Obama oficially

[AnninCA]

Won't matter. He's full of it. He's acting like a mediator, but frankly, he hasn't even been asked what his opinion is.

So he can endorse or say whatever he wants.

He's just full of himself.

[m4rk0]

Leave it to the Clinton campaign or its supporters to crap all over anyone who doesn't officially endorse Hillary. Come to think of it, they also crap all over the people of the various states that they have lost. "If your state didn't make us a winner then screw you."

[Ping]

He's got his eye on Secretary of State.

[estreya]

I wish he would "officially" endorse though. I think it would make a big difference.

[hank48188]

I think was he was still doing the debates he said he didn't think Obama had the experience for the job, because he doesn't. If Obama got to the White house he would make Jimmy Carter look good.

[AnninCA]

He sure did. So his words today just look like silly talk.

[obamagal]

Hello??? Of course he would say something like that during the debates - he was running himself for President. Get real.

[IkeChicago]

Hank, it the risk of calling you an idiot for making an idiot statement, draw the parallel for us.

[joebaggadonuts]

Obama reminds me of the Apple motto from the early days of Apple: A candidate for the rest of us.

[Ping]

So true.

[hiriumi]

Hillary being IBM and Obama being Apple. LOL So true!

[2liveNdie]

Is HRC talking about the 3am phone calls from Monica in the 90's as experience to handle the call?

[PTTY]

HILLARY UNMASKED

Feb 29 2008



The real Hillary Clinton stood up at the Democratic presidential debate this week: angry, sarcastic, stubborn, secretive, arrogant, mired in the past, victim of the media, and still firmly convinced that she is uniquely entitled to the Democratic Party nomination and the presidency.


That Hillary hasn’t really been on display much since the debacle of her disastrous health care plan and the end of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, when she haughtily flaunted her combative personality.

But make no mistake about it — that’s the Hillary Clinton that we’ll see if she somehow manages to steal the Democratic nomination.
She’s found her voice. The one that so alienated everyone she came into contact with over her health care plan that her own party destroyed it.

The one that publicly and loudly defended Bill and arranged for attacks on Monica Lewinsky when she knew the complete and sordid truth.


She’s always had a chip on her shoulder and a strange paranoia, but it’s definitely gotten worse. Now it’s not just the vast right wing conspiracy that is out to get her. Now it’s the mainstream media. How are they doing that? By asking her the first questions at the debates!
Hillary’s snide comment about whether Barack needed a pillow to be made more comfortable was downright embarrassing. The anticipated applause line on her script never happened. The audience was silent.

The press was amazed. And Barack seemed genuinely startled by her nuttiness — he looked over at her as if he was viewing a dotty old aunt at a family dinner, the one that everyone politely humors.


Her lifelong pattern of secrecy was once again evident. While publicly promoting transparency in government, she steadfastly refuses to release her personal income tax returns. That’s a clear tip-off that there’s something to hide. Recall that the Clintons selectively released tax returns in Arkansas, but refused to go back to 1980, when Hillary had her windfall in cattle futures.


During the debate, Hillary suggested that she’d release the returns “soon,” but her staff quickly backtracked. She implied that she’s been too busy to deal with releasing the returns.


Does she really think anyone believes that it will take more than simply making a copy of the return? She’s stalling and there’s a reason for that.
Most likely, the return will show how much Bill has been making from his partnership with the Sheik of Dubai and his other business ventures.

Should the spouse of a presidential candidate be in business with a foreign leader who needs favors from the U.S. government? Definitely not. That’s why we’ll never see those returns.
And then there are the Clinton Library records that document her schedule as first lady. She doesn’t want them released either because they will definitively show that she was never the co-president.

The Library has been stalling on the release of those documents for years. During the debate, she said that she wanted them released as quickly as possible and seemed to blame the Bush administration for the delay. But today, the White House indicated that she had made no requests for any expedited release.


The old Hillary, the real Hillary, is back.
And there’s apparently been no one to stop her from acting on her own worse instincts.


Underneath the veneer of the practiced smile and the strategically used giggle, there is a rage that is always close to the surface. It was on display in the debate.


Hillary Clinton is furious that America has not agreed to her coronation. She doesn’t understand why voters are rejecting her and embracing Barack Obama. She just doesn’t get it.


Never one to engage in self reflection, she can’t blame herself or even her incompetent strategists and advisers. They’re too close to her.


She can’t accept the sorry fact that her campaign has been a disaster because it was based on the past and not the future, because it was premised on her phony experience and maintaining the status quo, and because her negative outlook is completely out of step with the mood of America. And finally, because in the positive message of Barack Obama, Americans see a stark contrast with her doom and gloom view of the world.


So, she’ll blame the media. It’s their fault. And she’ll keep screaming about what a fighter she is. More like a bully

[PTTY]

OBAMA’S REAL EXPERIENCE: HIS CANDIDACY

The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is the ability with which he has run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it. For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running.

As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his path, we cannot help but be impressed with his judgment. Adam Wallinsky, who served on Bobby Kennedy’s staff, once singled out good judgment as JFK’s most salient characteristic. Obama has faced so many delicate questions and issues and seems always to have the right feel for how to handle them.

At the start of the contest, he chose to avoid running as a black candidate for president and ran, instead, as a candidate who happened to have black skin. He crafted a middle course between the determined rejection of his race and its grievances of a Clarence Thomas and its emphatic embrace by a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton. While Hillary invoked her gender at every turn, Obama decided to transcend his race rather than invoke it.

He began his candidacy eschewing donations from PACs and lobbyists, preserving his purity and giving him ground on which to stand in his claim to represent a new kind of politics, rejecting the special interests. When Hillary, whose campaign decisions have been as faulty as Obama’s have been flawless, wallowed in such donations, the Illinois Senator used the difference to paint her into the corner of the status quo candidate.


Beyond simply avoiding special interest money, Obama learned the lesson of Joe Trippi and the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 (even though Trippi was working for Edwards) and used his star power to develop a massive cyber-roots fund raising base which he mobilized again and again by the click of a mouse.

He realized the potential of the Internet to democratize campaign funding in a way the other candidates in general, and Hillary in particular, did not. (Mrs. Clinton invested tens of millions in direct mail instead with all of its costs and limited returns).

When Hillary criticized him for lacking experience, he brilliantly seized the opening she provided by becoming the candidate of change. He realized, as Hillary and Bill did not, that America wanted a change beyond the Bush/Clinton oscillation and grasped the fact that Hillary’s emphasis on experience would play into his hands.

And when the Clintons tried to use race to derail Obama, he countered skillfully by making Super Tuesday a referendum on tolerance and inclusivity, overtly rejecting the racial polarization which seemed to have set in after South Carolina. Underscoring his message with victories in white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado and North Dakota, he buried the race issue.

While the Clintons went for the knockout blows of winning New York and California, Obama created a fifty state organization to win each caucus state. As Hillary’s campaign wasted half a million dollars on flowers, Obama’s husbanded his resources to put teams on the ground in the small states where his organizing paid off and brought him sufficient victories to survive the loss of the two big Super Tuesday states.

And when the Clintons went to full time negatives, Obama carefully parsed the attacks he would answer from those he wouldn’t and disdained to engage in the tit-for-tat negative campaigning, realizing that the process turned voters off more than the negatives themselves ever did.
Will he be a good president? If he is half as skillful in serving as he has been in running, he can’t miss.



Obama has real leadership quality?"

The World has witnessed him building a national political machinery from the ground up, out fund raising all other candidates Republican and Democrats most of whom came into the race with better name recognition.

Obama winning The Over Seas Democratic Elections that makes it 11 straight primaries shows Fantastic Commander In Chief Qualities and Leadership.

Hillary and John McCain cannot mange their campaigns and they are in shambles. We can measure their failures at Campaign managing to that of their Failure to manager the United States Government.

[jsinclair]

It's true. Obama has done a masterful job of leading a national presidential campaign (something that, unlike Clinton, he had no experience with previously).

He surrounded himself with intelligent, hard-working, and very very capable people. He and his staff have managed every aspect of the campaign--from ground work, to money-management--superbly.

I think this is EXACTLY how he would govern--choose wisely, keep focused on goals and outcomes, and lead his team (and his nation) to worthwhile outcomes.

And Hillary's shown exactly how SHE'D govern, too. Change from one message to the next. Take it for granted that you are entitled and then whine and complain when things don't go your way. She finds excuses. She blames others. She hides and dissembles (tax returns; library donors)

Worst of all, she completely mismanaged the money---blamed someone else for it---then called BILL in to go over the books and tell her where it all went.

Obama or Clinton? Look at the way they've run their campaigns. Obama will do very well as president--maybe even be the first -great- one we've seen in a long, long time..

[PJay]

Sounds like as close to an endorsement without actually endorsing.

[Knowledgeseeker]

Bill Richardson is right, Obama have the experience and the judgment to be presindent
and yes Richardson will be a good Secretary of State.

[mrcontinental]

Secretary of State Richardson does have a nice ring to it.

Hillary already promised it to Joe Wilson so what is Bill to do other than Obama '08.

[markusmarkus]

Joe Wilson won't be SecState regardless of who wins in November. He and his wife are living the good like in Santa Fe, NM. Why put up with Washington infighting and crappy weather.

[jsinclair]

Good for Richardson. Anyone can see he has wanted to support Obama for a long time. It was only as a compromise (due to strong-arming and bullying by Billary) that he's waited this long.

Go, Richardson! If you can't weigh in today, then hopefully you'll burst your shackles and be free (finally) on Wednesday. We're rooting for you!

[RyanB]

Ugh why didn't Richardson just endorse Obama? Geez.

[BitJam]

He owes a lot to the Clintons and they asked, begged, and pleaded that he wait until after the March 4th primaries before endorsing.

[obamagal]

I think you're probably right. Everything he has said in the last while has been leaning in the direction of Obama, increasingly so. I suspect he was begged to hold off, and his interview yesterday perhaps, (probably?) a message to HRC that if she doesn't win BIG tomorrow, she should bow out (and that he'll endorse Barack). My $0.02.

I agree, btw, he'd make a wonderful Secretary of State. I admire Richardson a great deal.