There were two factions in the Clinton administration: the opportunists (the Bill wing) that didn't care much about the merits of policy outcomes, and the true-believers (the Hillary wing) that cared passionately about increasing our government's power over the life its citizens and about decreasing its power in the world.

Bill Richardson, who is running for president, was a member of the Clinton administration. The good news is that he was not a member of the Hillary wing; the bad news is that this makes him a member of the Bill wing.

When he was in Congress, Richardson had been a strong environmentalist. As Clinton's Secretary of Energy, he skillfully used that reputation as a shield when he crossed the environmentalists. Someone who worked with Richardson at the Energy department describes him as a truly committed believer in situational ethics. In other words, a true Bill Clintonian

Richardson's accomplishments at Energy were so limited that he once said his proudest one was building a new gym for Department employees. His one truly important accomplishment was the opening of a repository for transuranic waste (plutonium based, as opposed to high level waste) whose radioactivity is more immediately toxic and derives from fission products. This project is far less important than Yucca Mountain, which is intended to deal with high level waste and spent fuel, but is significant nonetheless. Interestingly, Richardson opened the repository in Carslbad, New Mexico, which wanted it. I'm told that, as governor of New Mexico, he used his knowledge of the Energy Department to create crises with respect to its big assets there (Los Alamos and the new transuranic repository) and then solve them.

That's not the sort of problem-solver this country needs in the White House.

UPDATE: Over at the Forum WGPu writes:

For several years in the early ‘90s, I worked as an engineer at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP; the facility for deep geological disposal of transuranic watse near Carlsbad). At that time Bill Richardson was a U.S. Representative whose district was northern NM (Ab’q, Santa Fe). Though the WIPP was not in his district, he worked overtime to oppose opening the facility though it was fully constructed and represented a solution to a problem in his own district (TRU waste stored above ground at Los Alamos). This opposition suited his “enlightened” environmentalist constituency in Santa Fe, and helped his regular re-election.

Later on in the ‘90s, after he became Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Energy and, in order to achieve some success in that role, Richardson changed sides, and supported WIPP receiving its first shipment of plutonium-contaminated waste; which it did in March of ‘99.

Interestingly, in recent years, as governor of New Mexico, Richardson has supported expanding the WIPP facility’s mission, along with siting other nuclear businesses in SE NM (e.g. uranium enrichment) since it economically benefits his now full-state, constituency. Bill Richardson is purely a political opportunist clearly in the Bill Clinton camp.

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