Bill Richardson has risked criticism for naming Justice ‘Whizzer’ White when asked to name his “model Supreme Court justice” during the Democratic debate. White was one of two dissenting votes in Roe v. Wade, with Richardson apparently unaware of this. When asked about this answer, Richardson responded:
Mr. Richardson said he chose Justice White as his first answer because he was an all-America football player who was nominated by President Kennedy, who was Mr. Richardson’s hero.
“I was thinking really fast — I didn’t know, was he dead or alive,” Mr. Richardson said yesterday. “I don’t regret what I said. I make mistakes.”
After six years of George Bush denying all his mistakes, I find this honest response rather refreshing. I can understand how a candidate could have difficulty answering a question such as this when they have little time to think during a debate. I would expect him to do better if he had time to research and consider his answer, and consider his actual views on abortion rights to be far more important than how he answered this question during the debate. Still, after this and a couple other minor gaffes during the debates, Richardson is going to have to do better if he expects to mount a competitive campaign.
Richardson indeed is an honest man. He is my governor here in New Mexico, and was reelected by a record 69% of the voters. Honest always, I would say, but perhaps too easily pressured by high powered lobbyists like Michael Stratton, who represented Ajinomoto, the world’s largest aspartame and monosodium glutamate manufacturer, in 2006, which resulted in scuttling some of the most advanced consumer protection legislation in American history. I know, because I wrote most of it, in order to create a New Mexico Nutrition Council and in order to prevent the scourge of the artificial sweetener Aspartame from doing any more neurodegenerative damage to the 70% of New Mexicans and 40% of our children who ingest it daily, not knowing it is metabolized as methanol and formaldehyde and diketopiperazine, a proven brain tumor causing agent….The fact that most state governments are run by lobbyists? Yes, of course, for sure: but that really isn’t Richardson’s fault.
Personally, I think if Richardson had had a chance to think about it a bit more, he might more likely have said William O. Douglas, who is my favorite. Earl Warren was pretty great putting an end to Segregation in South Carolina, also. See that movie wherein Sidney Poitier plays Thurgood Marshall III.
Stephen Fox
Santa Fe
Sorry, I haven’t decided upon a candidate yet, but when I do its a safe bet that the deciding factor will not be their position on Aspartame.