POOR RICHARDSON. The Politico takes a look at the rumors that have been swirling around New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson for the past few years, and it’s about time. I’ve never come across a candidate who has been the subject of more unsubstantiated whispering among the press corps. Some paper with real resources needs to send someone to New Mexico to track down the start of the whispering campaign against Richardson, and then either knock it down decisively, to give the man the fair shake he deserves, or publish the story of whatever its basis might be. It is completely absurd, even Kafkaesque, to have a substantial portion of the national press corps convinced that the man ought not to be taken seriously based on unsubstantiated gossip.

–Garance Franke-Ruta

Garance Franke-Ruta is a former senior editor at the Prospect. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She was a 2006 recipient of a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.