{"id":969,"date":"2006-12-08T09:23:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-08T15:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/12\/richardson-makes-mistake-then-overreacts-when-unethical-network-capitalizes-on-his-slip-up\/"},"modified":"2006-12-08T09:23:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-08T15:23:00","slug":"richardson-makes-mistake-then-overreacts-when-unethical-network-capitalizes-on-his-slip-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/12\/richardson-makes-mistake-then-overreacts-when-unethical-network-capitalizes-on-his-slip-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Richardson makes mistake, then overreacts when unethical network capitalizes on his slip-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Is Bill Richardson running for president? <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The answer seems to be that he is, or at least that he will form an exploratory committee in January that is a formal preface to a run.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He just isn\u2019t quite doing it yet, at least officially.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s snafu involving a FOX News interview seems to have resulted from a slip of the tongue by the New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> governor made to a less-than-ethical network.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the slip:<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019m not running as a Hispanic,\u201d Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> told the network. \u201cI\u2019m running as an American who\u2019s proud to be a Hispanic.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Richardson<\/st1:city> spokesman Pahl Shipley told the Albuquerque Journal<\/a> that the governor misspoke in response to a hypothetical question posed by FOX political correspondent Carl Cameron and that the reporter, after Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> told him he was not making a decision until January, took the response out of context.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cHe misspoke and the reporter knew it was out of context,\u201d Shipley told the newspaper.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Steve Terrell of the Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a> reminds us this morning that this isn\u2019t the first time a media organization reported that Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said he\u2019s running. In February 2005, the Associated Press reported that Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> told Democratic Party leaders he would run.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> denied it, but the wire service stood by its story.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

And, as Terrell also reminds us, Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> has said in English during at least two public appearances in other states that he\u2019s not running, then said in Spanish, sort of jokingly, that he is running.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

FOX News also reported that former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, are moving to New Mexico<\/st1:state> to help Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019s White House run. Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019s spokesman told me the governor had no knowledge of that.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

I knew I\u2019d seen something about this before. That\u2019s because Wilson<\/st1:city> told the New Mexican in October, while the couple was in the state to campaign for Patricia Madrid, that he could neither confirm nor deny that he and Plame were considering a move to Santa Fe<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>.<\/p>\n

Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> appeared on CNN on Thursday. Reporter Wolf Blitzer said Richardson<\/st1:city> might run in 2008, and Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> promised to let him know if he does.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Which brings us back to the FOX News slip. Joe Monahan\u2019s<\/a> analysis this morning was great.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of taking him lumps and wiping the egg away with a serving of humor, the governor and his multi-headed press staff proceeded to make matters worse by insisting that the guv\u2019s statement\u2026 was taken out of context and that the guv was not running for the \u201908 Dem prez nomination, at least not yet,\u201d Monahan wrote.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know the rules at this level of the game,\u201d Monahan wrote. \u201cIf there is any room for doubt, the candidate does not get the benefit of it. Why? Because you want to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. Any questions?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cAs is usual with these cases of jangled nerves under the harsh glare of the national spotlight, the reaction to the mistake was worse than the error,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNews executives at ABQ TV stations were called by the guv\u2019s PR machine and implored not to cover the story! What did that make them do? Cover it even more, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> will announce the formation of an exploratory committee in January, Monahan wrote (Does anyone doubt this at this point?), \u201cand reacting so heatedly to this semantic error gets him off to a shaky start in a scene crowded with heavyweights like Hillary Clinton. When he could have made light of the incident and retracted the error, he showed an unnecessarily heavy hand that will have the pundits and media poking at him again to see if they can get another rise out of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It is certainly unethical for a reporter to take a comment out of context and then spin an entire story out of it, and if Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> truly did preface his comments with a statement that he hasn\u2019t yet decided whether to run \u2013 which seems likely \u2013 the reporter made a poor choice.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

At the same time, Monahan is right: Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> could have handled the situation better. Someone with a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 as impressive as the governor\u2019s should know by now how to handle such incidents. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Bill Richardson running for president? The answer seems to be that he is, or at least that he will form an exploratory committee in January that is a formal preface to a run. He just isn\u2019t quite doing it yet, at least officially. Thursday\u2019s snafu involving a FOX News interview seems to have resulted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}