Richardson appears in Playboy…
Posted: Friday, November 02, 2007 4:06 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
...thankfully, not in the way people usually "appear" in the magazine.
In an interview appearing in the November issue of Playboy, Richardson bluntly levels criticisms and frustrations about the Democratic Party. He talks of the “tactical mistake” made in 2000, how the party has “become the party of the poor instead of the party of the middle class,” and that he reveals a resentment of “elites,” particularly on his position of gun control.
“We’ve become the party of the poor instead of the party of the middle class,” Richardson said. “I believe we have to help the poor, but we forgot about middle-class anxieties.”
He added later, “We have to broaden our base. Too often we have nominated candidates who may be very strong in New England and Los Angeles and San Francisco but are unelectable in the great in-between. I resent some elites telling me my position on gun control is wrong, for example. It’s a cultural issue in New Mexico and the West, a respect for a way of life. Most gun owners are law-abiding. I’m not going to change my position. That’s where I may deviate from others in my party, too, the elites on the coasts. I have very common tastes.”
Richardson also spoke about the way forward in his campaign, talking to dictators, baseball -- including Barry Bonds and growing up with Mickey Mantle as an idol but later becoming a Red Sox fan -- and why he and his wife never had children.
On the Democratic Party: “We’ve become the party of the poor instead of the party of the middle class. I believe we have to help the poor, but we forgot about middle-class anxieties.”
“In 2000 our party made a tactical mistake. We should have run under the banner of economic prosperity; instead, we ran under a banner of populism. It was totally out of sync with a country that had a balanced budget, a surplus and prosperity.”
“We have to broaden our base. Too often we have nominated candidates who may be very strong in New England and Los Angeles and San Francisco but are unelectable in the great in-between. I resent some elites telling me my position on gun control is wrong, for example. It’s a cultural issue in New Mexico and the West, a respect for a way of life. Most gun owners are law-abiding. I’m not going to change my position. That’s where I may deviate from others in my party, too, the elites on the coasts. I have very common tastes.”
On campaigning: “I will never go negative. I will never attack them personally. I will, however, emphasize my advantage over senators Clinton and Obama. I will never go negative. I will never attack them personally. I will, however, emphasize my advantage over senators Clinton and Obama.”
On talking to dictators: “You draw a line with an entity like Al Qaeda that professes to want to kill you. You can’t talk to them. I might agree to some kind of mediation in a situation of dire national emergency but not otherwise. But yes, Obama and Clinton are fighting over whether or not you should talk to a dictator. Nobody’s bothered to ask me, but I’ve talked to almost all of them.”
On Fidel Castro: “Fidel Castro has an enormously powerful intellect and is well informed. He told me he reads every newspaper, sees every morning broadcast and reads prodigiously. He showed me all the books he read. While I have enormous dislike for his policies -- especially human rights; he incarcerates everybody who disagrees with him -- he is a fascinating character who tries to intimidate you with his intellect. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, tried to intimidate me with his physical actions. He would try to stare me down. He had a bunch of the Revolutionary Guard around us. He was heavily armed. His gestures were menacing. But through his intellect, Castro would try to destroy every argument I made about why he should take certain steps.”
On Barry Bonds: “There’s no question Bonds is a great player and should be in the Hall of Fame. But I believe there should be some kind of an asterisk placed alongside his record. It should say, “There is a strong possibility that he used steroids.”
On not having children: “Somebody once used it against me or once implied it in a race. The explanation is that Barbara and I tried to have children but weren’t able to. We tried. We tried in vitro. It’s one of our great regrets. If you look at a lot of my career, especially as governor, there’s an emphasis on children. I feel I’m responsible for all children.”
And why they never adopted: “We were always moving. I was in Congress, commuting back to New Mexico. I went to the UN in 1997; I became secretary of energy a year after that. I went into the private sector, and then two years later I was running for governor. Time passed us by.”
