Bill Richardson: Stopping the Presses in Brazil

I was rather surprised last Saturday, for while checking my Brazilian news, I happened to see a photo of Bill Richardson. Yes, O Globo ran a story about Bill Richardson's candidacy for president. The article itself doesn't provide anything particularly groundbreaking in and of itself. It traces his political trajectory from a member of the House of Representatives to his presence in the Clinton cabinet as Secretary of the Interior to his role as New Mexico's government (although, come to think of it, O Globo actually like, you know, mentioned some of Richardson's credentials. I can't remember seeing a focus on things like experience in the media, so maybe it IS groundbreaking....but I digress). They also focus on his ethnicity (the opening line reads, "He has the face of a Latino and the name of a noble American: William Blaine Richardson III"), and then reprint in Portuguese an interview Richardson did with New Hampshire's Nashua Telegraph (the original Telegraph article in English can be found here).

Among other things, O Globo ran his answers to issues like immigration, education, Iraq, foreign policy, SCHIP, stem-cell research, global warming, and how the United States is ideologically divided (in that order).

There are a couple of interesting things in this. First...it's Bill Richardson. I mean, I'm not knocking him, but they have done NOTHING like this for the other candidates, and Richardson certainly isn't the only minority running here (see: Clinton, Obama). Obviously, Globo is drawn to his label as a Latino, something the readership can maybe identify with (while I've never heard Brazilians refer to themselves as "Latinos" or even "Latin Americans", they can empathize more with him on a certain level than they can with a Clinton, Edwards, Giuliani, or Romney). Secondly, (and again), they actually offer in-depth discussion and detail on Richardson's actual policy and beliefs!!!!! Let's be honest - in the country that gives us Swift-boat Veterans, Fox News, and Maureen Dowd, when was the last time we saw major journalistic sources going in depth on our own candidates? Certainly, some could say (fairly) that O Globo has given Richardson a fairer shake here than Globo ever gave to many political candidates in Brazil (Lula, Leonel Brizola). Nonetheless, it was remarkable, not only to see this in-depth analysis of a candidate in foreign media while it lacks in the U.S. media, but to see it going to Richardson of all people. Too bad for him Brazil doesn't vote in the American primaries....