No Pardon for Billy the Kid

There's been a lot of speculation about what the future may hold for outgoing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

And, in the buildup for today, Richardson's last day in office, there was another kind of speculation — would he issue a pardon to the infamous Billy the Kid?

No one knows what the future holds for Richardson. But today, he announced that the immediate future would not include a pardon for the 19th–century outlaw.

The whole thing stemmed from a promise that was allegedly made to the Kid but was never kept.

Next July, it will be 130 years since the Kid (aka William Bonney) was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett. Prior to that, New Mexico's territorial governor reportedly offered him a pardon for killing a law enforcement officer in exchange for his testimony about killings he witnessed.

Richardson agreed that the territorial governor did, indeed, make a deal of some kind with Billy the Kid, but he said he "could not rewrite history." It was unclear, he said, why the territorial governor did not keep his promise, and because of that uncertainty, he could not issue a posthumous pardon.

Randi McGinn, the lawyer who defended the Kid, said the effort would go on and "perhaps a future New Mexico governor will grant justice for the Kid."

But it won't be Richardson, who claims to have read many books and seen many movies dealing with the subject.

The descendant of the territorial governor applauded the decision. Richardson "followed the correct, rational track in forgoing a pardon for a convicted murderer," he said.

And Robert Utley, the author of a book on the Kid, also supported Richardson's decision. "If Billy deserves a pardon," he said, "it will be granted by history, not the governor of New Mexico."

In nearly 130 years, history has not granted such a pardon.

The Prevailing Wind

I've been watching Larry King on CNN tonight. His guests in the early segment included New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is often mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate on Barack Obama's ticket.

To put things in context, at this point

1. Obama has indicated that he has chosen his running mate. He has not indicated whether he has spoken to this person and made the offer.
   
   (If he hasn't made the offer yet, it strikes me as just a wee bit arrogant of him to assume that anyone who receives the offer will accept it.)


2. According to reports earlier today, Obama was speaking to all the also-rans to tell them that they wouldn't be on the ticket. That strongly suggests that most, if not all, of the names that have been floated in the last couple of months know tonight that they will not be listed with Obama's name on bumper stickers and lapel buttons this fall.


3. Tonight, we're hearing that Obama's campaign will be announcing the selection "early Saturday." No time has been announced — at least, I haven't heard one. So, theoretically, it could be at one minute past midnight, or it could be 11:59 a.m. or any other time in that 12-hour period.


4. We're also hearing reports that Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh are out of the running. CNN says "sources" have confirmed that both men have been told that they weren't chosen.

With all that in mind, Richardson certainly was cool as a cucumber if he appeared on King's show knowing that he will be appearing with Obama in Springfield, Ill., tomorrow.

King asked him about his running mate status directly, and Richardson would not confirm or deny whether he had spoken to Obama today. And I could detect nothing about his voice or mannerisms that indicated that he was going to be a candidate for vice president.

He did, however, mention his beard and how he didn't want to have to shave it off. It has been reported that Richardson will have to shave his beard if he is going to be the running mate.

As someone who has had a beard for more than 25 years, I can't understand why Richardson's facial hair would matter. Abraham Lincoln had facial hair, didn't he? So did Theodore Roosevelt. And the last time I checked, both their faces were carved into Mount Rushmore.

(While I'm on the subject, the presence of facial hair doesn't mean someone would make a great president. Ulysses S. Grant, for example, was a great general but a terrible president. Of course, the clean-shaven look doesn't necessarily mean anything, either. Many presidents who are remembered by history as failures had no facial hair.)

Anyway, if Richardson knows anything, he didn't let the cat out of the bag.

Tonight, the Associated Press is reporting that Sen. Joe Biden has emerged as the leading contender. As I've said before, I like Biden but I think his 36 years as a senator is contrary to Obama's message of "change," which many of his supporters seem to feel means getting away from the establishment.

And Biden hasn't exactly developed a reputation for tact — although I do believe his expertise in foreign affairs could be valuable to the Obama camp.

Nevertheless, Biden had to abandon his first bid for the presidency in 1988 because it turned out he had plagiarized sections of a speech by the head of the British Labour Party.

Jake Tapper's Political Punch blog for ABC News says the Secret Service has been dispatched to Biden's home. Is that a sure sign that Biden has been chosen?

If it does turn out to be Biden, that should please David Brooks of the New York Times, who writes that he hopes Obama picks Biden "for the good of the country."

Whether Biden is the choice or not, take a look at the National Review's Campaign Spot blog and what it has to say about an Obama-Biden ticket. It's interesting reading and it raises some good points.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

Obama's Choice for Veep

The word is out.

Everyone is saying that Barack Obama is about to decide on his running mate.

Hmmm. The Democratic Convention begins a week from today.

Other than the fact that the Summer Olympics will be in progress until Sunday (therefore creating a bit of a distraction in the news media), I don't think you have to be psychic to conclude that Obama would need to make his choice soon.

• CNN says Obama is "expected to end the guessing game this week."
  
  And CNN's blog, Political Ticker, says Sen. Joe Biden is likely to be the choice.
• Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that Biden "may have become the front-runner," although he hesitates to dismiss Kaine as a possibility.
  
  "On the downside," writes Tapper, "an Obama-Kaine ticket would have two candidates who are so new to the national arena that they could be attacked for being light on experience."
  
  (Er, um, but Biden has been in the Senate for 36 years. Isn't that a little too status quo for this year's ticket? Where would "change" fit into that equation?)
  
  Tapper also reports that his colleague, George Stephanopoulos, now sees Hillary Clinton as a dark horse for the veep slot, rating "50:1" odds.
  
  (Many of Clinton's supporters believe that she earned a spot on the ticket with her strong showing in the primaries. But it doesn't work that way. I know John Edwards was the second-place finisher in 2004, but it was John Kerry's decision to put him on the ticket. It wasn't something Edwards earned. This decision is Barack Obama's to make.)
• Ben Smith and Glenn Thrush agree in Politico that Obama will make his announcement this week.
  
  But they are making no commitments on who the choice will be.
  
  They observe that Obama was scheduled to campaign with Gov. Bill Richardson today in New Mexico (where Hillary Clinton made an appearance yesterday, urging her supporters in New Mexico to "work as hard for Sen. Obama as you worked for me") and with Virginia's current and former governors, Tim Kaine (incumbent) and Mark Warner (now a candidate for U.S. Senate), later in the week.
  
  Observers now seem to think, however, that Warner's selection as the convention's keynote speaker will adversely affect fellow Virginian Kaine's chances of being Obama's running mate.
• Dan Balz reports, in the Washington Post's The Trail blog, that Obama has narrowed his list to five prospects — Biden, Kaine, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius — and he says that speculation on the fifth name is centering on Richardson, Chris Dodd and Jack Reed.
• If Obama doesn't bring enough experience to the ticket, the New Republic's blog The Stump has a name with eight years' worth of vice presidential gravitas — former Vice President Al Gore.
  
  A word of caution, though — Al might be a little old for a redux of that bus tour thing.
  
  Of course, come to think of it, Biden is older than Gore is. And so is Dodd. And so is Richardson.
  
  Sebelius is about Gore's age. And Reed is a little younger — but not much.
  
  Bayh is a comparative youngster at 52 (53 by Inauguration Day). And Kaine is the youngest of all, at 50.

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias writes, in the Think Progress blog, that it's time to abolish the vice presidency.

What? And give up the opportunity to speculate wildly — sometimes on both parties' running mates — for weeks every four years?

My goodness, what would the pundits do with all that time on their hands?

A Modest Prediction

I'm not gifted with insights that tell me when the presumptive presidential nominees will announce their selections for running mate.

Nor do I have any inside information on who those choices will be.

But Barack Obama will accept his party's nomination in a little more than two weeks.

And John McCain will accept his party's nomination in a little more than three weeks.

So I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb here when I say that we'll know both parties' tickets within a month.

And my predictions on the identities of the running mates aren't based on any scientific methodology — just gut instincts (which means I'm just as likely to be wrong as I am to be right!).

Anyway, here (briefly) is my prediction:

• Democrats: I think Obama's best choice is Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico. With experience as a representative, governor and diplomat, Richardson has a résumé that few people can match.
  
  He's ready to be president if needed, and, being part Hispanic, he can attract support from the fastest-growing ethnic community in this country — a minority group that the Democrats haven't already tapped (unlike, for example, the black community — which has been voting nearly unanimously for Democrats for generations).
  
  Based on what I've been reading lately, I would say Obama's most obvious choice, at this point, is Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia. I don't think he brings to the table what Richardson does, but he has gubernatorial experience in a Southern state, and his popularity in his home state could help flip Virginia to the Democrats after spending four decades in the Republican column.
  
  I'm just not sure Kaine is quite as prepared to step in as Richardson is.
  
  So I predict that Obama will pick Richardson to be his running mate.


• Republicans: McCain has less of a margin for error — and he has fewer solid options than Obama does.
  
  It's a critical decision that McCain must make.
  
  I think the most obvious choice is Mitt Romney, McCain's former rival for the nomination who has been openly campaigning for the No. 2 spot on the ticket. I'm not convinced that McCain and Romney have patched up their differences, though, and I think being able to have a good personal relationship with his running mate is important to McCain.
  
  So, in spite of all the things that Romney could bring to the ticket, I believe McCain will go with the choice that I think best suits his need for someone he can get along with — former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.
  
  Ridge has a varied résumé of his own — in addition to being a former governor, he's been a representative and a Cabinet member.
  
  He may not be as conservative as some would like — he favors an accelerated death penalty process and he's against gay marriage but he's pro-choice, in spite of his Catholic upbringing.
  
  And he doesn't provide much contrast in age to McCain — Ridge will turn 63 on Aug. 27, and McCain will turn 72 two days after that.
  
  But there's a strong chemistry between the two men, and I think that's something that is important to McCain.

So that's my prediction.

Obama-Richardson vs. McCain-Ridge.

We'll find out soon if I'm right!

If 'Ifs' and 'Buts' Were Candy and Nuts ...

We have the latest entry in the "what-if" contest.

(A friend of mine sent me the link to this story, and he included this observation in his e-mail: "Interesting theory."

(That's about all it is, I think. A theory.)

Hillary Clinton's former communications director apparently tells ABC News that he believes Clinton would have won the nomination if the media had come up with the goods to force John Edwards out of the race when the story of his affair was first making the tabloids late last year.

"I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee," Howard Wolfson told ABC.

If you recall, Edwards edged past Clinton for second place in the Iowa caucuses way back on January 3. We don't have actual vote totals, just percentages.

And caucuses are handled differently in each state — in Iowa's Democratic caucuses, as I remember, a preliminary vote at a caucus only serves to eliminate those candidates whose support level can't reach a certain percentage in that particular caucus location.

A second vote is taken without the candidates who couldn't clear the bar — and that is the vote that is reported from that location.

Anyway, when all had been said and done, Barack Obama had 38% in Iowa, Edwards had 30% and Clinton had 29%.

There were five other candidates (Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich) who accounted for 3% as a group — I presume they were all removed from consideration in the elimination round at most of Iowa's caucus locations.

Wolfson clearly believes that Clinton would have won most of Edwards' supporters.

He has the right to believe what he wants to believe, but I don't think it's quite that cut and dried.

• Just taking the figures that we have, by removing Edwards' name, we suddenly have nearly one-third of Iowa's caucus participants who are left without a candidate.
  
  In order for Clinton to pull even with Obama, she would have to win nearly one-third of Edwards' supporters. That would still leave two-thirds of his supporters for Clinton, Obama and the other five candidates to fight over.
• Who would have won at that stage of the campaign? By most accounts, Clinton was the front-runner going into the caucus. Obama had not yet emerged as the anti-Clinton.
  
  Would Obama have outdueled Clinton for the majority of the remaining Edwards supporters?
  
  Or would one of the other Democrats — Richardson, perhaps, or Biden — have benefited from Edwards' withdrawal?
  
  See, I don't think it's a given that Edwards' withdrawal would have meant that all his supporters would automatically gravitate to any particular candidate.
  
  I also don't believe the Edwards supporters were ready for the race to be narrowed to Obama vs. Clinton at that point.
  
  If anything, I got the impression from Edwards' supporters (and I was one of them) that they were looking for a break with the past. But, like any large group, the individuals had their own ideas of what kind of break they wanted.
  
  For some Edwards supporters, Clinton would have been an acceptable alternative — as indeed she was for some former Edwards supporters in the primaries and caucuses that came after his actual withdrawal in late January.
  
  For other Edwards supporters, Clinton wasn't enough of a break with the past. Her husband was president for eight years, and she's been in the Senate for the nearly eight years since the end of his administration.
  
  Sixteen years in Washington doesn't make you an outsider.
  
  These Democrats were wary of adding to the Bush-Clinton dynastic duel that has been going on now for 20 years (longer if you include the elder Bush's eight-year president-in-training period as Ronald Reagan's sidekick).
  
  Some, if not all, of the former Edwards supporters in Iowa might have decided that neither Obama nor Clinton were satisfactory. They might have breathed new life into Richardson's campaign — or Biden's — or Dodd's.
• I am reminded of the 1992 election. At the time, I was living in Oklahoma, a rock-ribbed Republican state where Clinton ran stronger than Democrats usually do, although George H.W. Bush prevailed — as Republican nominees inevitably do in Oklahoma.
  
  Many of the Republicans with whom I spoke about the election believed that, if Ross Perot had not been in the race, Bush would have been re-elected. As you may recall, Perot finished an extremely strong third with nearly 19% of the vote nationally (that was nearly 20 million votes).
  
  Those Republicans made the same mistake Wolfson makes. They assumed that a large bloc of suddenly uncommitted voters would naturally support their candidate.
  
  But the exit polls I saw after that election were not conclusive.
  
  Exit polls of those who voted for Perot indicated that, if Perot had not been on the ballot, about 40% would have voted for Clinton, another 40% would have voted for Bush, and the remaining 20% would not have participated at all.
  
  Whether we're talking about Ross Perot in 1992 or John Edwards in 2008, the fact is that the people who supported them supported changing the status quo.
  
  In 1992, George H.W. Bush represented the status quo. It never seemed logical to me that nearly 20 million people who voted for Perot (and, as a group, adopted the rebellious "United we stand!" as their motto) would have voted to retain the status quo if Perot's name hadn't been on the ballot.
  
  It always seemed more logical to me that they would have looked for another option or they wouldn't have voted at all.
  
  I've always given Perot credit for bringing millions of Americans into the political process. I hope many of them have continued to participate.
  
  But I never bought the idea that he took more votes from the status quo candidate than he did the challenger.
  
  In 2008, Hillary Clinton represented the status quo in her party. She had been first lady for eight years. She had been in the Senate for eight years. And she was the front-runner for her party's nomination.
  
  I'm not sure she would have been the beneficiary of Edwards' withdrawal before the Iowa caucus.
  
  But neither is it certain that Obama would have been the recipient of that (pardon the expression) windfall.

Let's assume, just for a minute, that Edwards was forced out of the race in early December. No one had won anything yet. No one had momentum (the "Big Mo," as George H.W. Bush famously said) — other than whatever momentum Clinton had from the perception that she was leading the pack. Edwards' supporters would have been in a position to alter the dynamics of the race. If, as Wolfson suggests, the majority of them had piled on Clinton's bandwagon, we might be anticipating her nomination later this month. Or perhaps they would have gravitated to Obama. He might have secured the nomination earlier than he did. Or perhaps they would have opted to support someone else. They might have rallied behind Bill Richardson — would he have proven more popular among Iowa's caucus goers than Obama or Clinton? He might have, considering the political résumé he brought to the table. Or they might have lined up behind Joe Biden. His experience in foreign affairs might have seemed particularly appealing, even timely, considering the fact that Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated just a week before the Iowa caucus (and gas prices hadn't yet careened out of control). But Biden has been a part of the Washington establishment for more than 30 years. He might have been seen as too much of a status quo candidate. And that doesn't even consider the possibility that another Democrat — perhaps a prominent one, like recent nominees John Kerry or Al Gore — might have decided to enter the race. Gore, who won the popular vote as the Democrats' 2000 nominee and won the Nobel Prize last year for his efforts against global warming, seems like a particularly plausible prospect. But both Gore and Kerry might have been seen as too entrenched in the establishment — even though Gore has held no elective office since leaving the vice presidency. And a movement to persuade Gore to run was launched by supporters in October. If Edwards had withdrawn before the Iowa caucus, that might have been the nudge Gore needed to try again. To me, this is another example of the truth of the old adage, "Timing is everything." It's a what-if that can't be resolved. And it's pointless, at this stage, to try. My gut feeling is that Clinton wasn't going to win in Iowa. And Jon Cohen appears to agree with me in a Washington Post blog entry. "It is a pure hypothetical, of course, and the entire dynamics of the contest would have been different without Edwards," writes Cohen. "But the public data do not bolster the notion that Clinton would have won." Want some facts?

1. Obama will be nominated later this month. He will give his acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
2. Hillary Clinton will speak at the convention. She will address the delegates about a week after the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in the United States.
3. It seems doubtful to me that she will be chosen to be his running mate.

That's reality.

Another One Bites the Dust

Sources are telling CNN that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will drop out of the Democratic race for president later today.

The numbers are the story, apparently.

Richardson, who is part Hispanic, finished fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire, neither of which has a large Hispanic population. But Richardson's campaign also suffers from a lack of funding, and donations haven't been on the rise lately.

So, according to the reports, Richardson will return to his home state and announce his withdrawal.

I haven't heard any speculation about this, but I wonder when Richardson will announce his intentions -- if he has any -- regarding Republican Pete Domenici's open Senate seat.

As you may recall, a few months ago, Domenici announced his intention to leave the Senate for health reasons, creating an opening in New Mexico. Prominent Republicans immediately began lining up to seek the party's nomination, but I haven't heard anything about the Democrats.

I think most were waiting to see what Richardson, who is quite popular in his home state, would do.

And, frankly, I'm a bit surprised that he is dropping out of the presidential race.

I've felt, all along, that Richardson was a longshot to win the nomination, but on Tuesday, as the returns came in from New Hampshire, he appeared to be focusing on Nevada, which will hold its caucus on Jan. 19.

So I assumed he was making plans for campaigning where he could expect to find a more receptive ethnic audience.

After making appeals in states that are both more than 90% white, candidates will find the population of Nevada is decidedly more diverse. Nearly one-fifth of the people in Nevada are Hispanic.

And that's another part of the numbers. It's the part of the story that seems to get lost in the talk of the potential for the first woman or the first black nominee for president.

But Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic group in America. They are poised to be an influential group in American politics, and it was long assumed they would gravitate to the Republican Party, but many have been alienated by the hard-line approach to immigration that has been taken by many Republicans.

And, frankly, many Hispanics weren't encouraged by what they saw in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

To this point, voter turnout among Hispanics hasn't been high. But it's no stretch to suggest that whoever can mobilize the Hispanic vote will win control of the government for his/her party for a generation.

For awhile, I wondered if Richardson might play a role in that story, but now it appears it will have to be someone else.

At least, on the presidential level.

Richardson may yet have a role to play in the U.S. Senate.