Bill Richardson: Playboy Interview

For many Americans, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, is best known for his role as "undersecretary of state for thugs," as he himself has described it. Richardson—a former congressman, ambassador and secretary of energy—has been tapped by presidents of both parties to face off with some of the most unsavory rulers in the world, including Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro. Richardson's unique blend of experience has led columnist David Brooks of The New York Times to name him as the Democratic candidate with the most appealing résumé: a sitting governor (in a time when four of the past five presidents have had statehouse experience) who also has foreign- and energy-policy credentials.

Richardson's run for president began 60 years ago—on the day he was born. His parents lived in Mexico City, where his father was a branch manager for National City Bank of New York. But he sent his Mexican wife to Pasadena, California for the birth of their child. This gave Richardson U.S. citizenship and also ensured that he met the constitutional requirements for the presidency.

Richardson grew up "between worlds"—as the title of his autobiography puts it—shuttling between his privileged upbringing and friends who lived in the barrio in far more modest circumstances. He attended an exclusive boarding school in Massachusetts and then Tufts University, where he was a baseball star and made his first run for office; he was elected president of his fraternity.

Richardson's appetite for politics was nurtured when he worked as a staff aide in Washington, D.C., and his political ambitions next led him to move to New Mexico, a state where he had never lived, because he saw it as the best place to launch a political career. In 1982 he was elected to Congress. Fourteen years later President Bill Clinton named him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where Richardson's one-on-one backslapping political skills made him a favorite with the diplomatic corps. (A longtime member of the ambassadorial staff recently said Richardson would be "a natural" as secretary of state.) He left that post to become secretary of energy, but his reputation took a hit after a blowup over lax security at the Los Alamos nuclear-weapons laboratory. He survived, though, and went on to win his next election, becoming governor of New Mexico in 2002. In 2006 he was reelected with nearly 70 percent of the vote.

As a Democratic presidential hopeful in a crowded pack of candidates, however, Richardson faces daunting obstacles—some of his own making. Compared with front-running contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he has far less money. He does not look like the modern model of a president; unhappily for his image consultant, he admits to struggling with his weight. His physical style of campaigning has helped spur rumors—none of them accompanied by evidence—that he has a "Clinton problem" with women. In addition, his propensity for spontaneous "seat-of-the-pants" comments (as longtime Washington journalist Robert Novak put it) has brought him grief; he said in a recent debate on Logo, the gay-oriented TV network, that homosexuality is a choice, only to recant his statement the next day.

Playboy sent CBS News senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield to interview Richardson on the campaign trail in Iowa, New Hampshire and New York. "It takes about 30 seconds to see why Richardson has succeeded in politics," Greenfield reports. "With his arm on a voter's shoulder, an easy laugh and an unpretentious style of campaigning—'I'm getting my shtick down,' he says, using a Yiddish term he likely did not learn in New Mexico—Richardson is a natural fit with Iowa, where he is pinning his presidential hopes on a strong showing in that first-in-the-nation caucus state. Even if he does well, he'll need to demonstrate a sense of presidential gravitas to become a serious contender. He must also fight the perception that as a Hispanic governor in the Southwest, where Democrats hope to make major gains, he could be of more use to his party as a vice-presidential candidate than he would be leading the ticket."