Richardson has promised, he would engage, persuade and seek common ground with the rest of the world

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Fri Dec-21-07 10:40 AM
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Richardson has promised, he would engage, persuade and seek common ground with the rest of the world

Personal Touch for Richardson in Envoy Role

By Jodi Kantor
New York Times

Friday 21 December 2007

{snip}

Richardson, 60, is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, running not only on his years as an elected official - he was a congressman from New Mexico and is now governor - but also on his parallel career, as a self-appointed and official diplomat. He argues that no Democratic candidate has as much international experience and puts withdrawal from Iraq at the center of his pitch. A recent New York Times/CBS poll puts him a distant fourth in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationally, leading to speculation that he could end up as a vice-presidential nominee or in a cabinet post.

A kind of at-large dealmaker, Mr. Richardson does not specialize in any one region of the world, and he has no landmark achievement - no Dayton Accords or Middle East breakthrough - to his name. He is not associated with one school of foreign policy thinking or set of positions; in fact, he says he was wrong about the first invasion of Iraq (which he opposed), the second (which he supported), as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he helped pass.

Instead, Mr. Richardson practices diplomacy as contact sport, whizzing from country to country, conflict to conflict, and charming, insulting, even touching his way through negotiations. (After he persuaded Saddam Hussein in 1995 to release two American aerospace workers who had wandered into Iraq, Mr. Richardson reached over to clap the dictator on the arm, causing Mr. Hussein's men to reach for their guns.)

He is a singular creation: a governor whose mobile phone trills with calls from North Korean officials; a former United Nations ambassador who wore cowboy boots and told bawdy jokes; a negotiator who delivers tough messages cloaked in personal warmth; and a freelance troubleshooter who claims to have won release for Cuban political prisoners by needling Fidel Castro, in Spanish, first about his country's baseball pitching and then ethnic solidarity.

{snip}

As president, Mr. Richardson has promised, he would engage, persuade and seek common ground with the rest of the world - not just on a policy level, but personally. Asked in the interview how he would approach, for instance, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he did not mention a specific plan, but rather his desire to try his hand at one of the most bitter and long-running conflicts on earth.

"I know if I got in the room I would make some progress," he said. "I would be in heaven. I would be my own secretary of state . . ."

full article: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122107O.shtml

Richardson has promised, he would engage, persuade and seek common ground with the rest of the world

KISSINGER, McLARTY & RICHARDSON