This is not good.
Two recent stories illustrate the bumbling reality of Richardson’s campaign, and how it contrasts with his glowing resumé. The first concerns the Guv’s dumbass decision during last week’s debate to name Byron “Whizzer” White — one of the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade, and a dissenter from the majority in Miranda — as his model Supreme Court justice. Yet that’s not the worst part. When pressed to square his professed admiration for White with his alleged support for reproductive freedom and civil rights, Richardson made two more boners. Which one bothers you more?
A) He cited the fact that White “was an All-American football player besides being a legal scholar” as a justification for describing the often retrograde White as his model High Court member;
B) He apparently doesn’t really know or care about Roe, given that he excused his White pick by saying, “White was in the 60s. Wasn’t Roe v. Wade in the 80s?”
I can’t choose. (A) is a hopelessly meatheaded answer, and I’m saying that as a serious sports fan. What next? Is Richardson going to name Ford as his favorite president simply because he was All-American at Michigan? And if Bush had said that Roe was decided in the 80s, we’d be mocking him for weeks. Either way, l’affaire Whizzer is a stain on Richardson.