Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life by New Mexico governor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson is a 384-page personal memoir published in November 2005 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. The autobiography chronicles Richardson's life starting as a kid in love with baseball in Mexico, though the story focuses mostly on the various political hats he's worn and his international diplomatic success stories. —Katie Rooney
Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life
by Bill Richardson
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| Richardson's American Citizenship | Richardson's American-bred father and Mexican-born mother had been living in Mexico City for two decades until she became pregnant. But before his mother delivered their only baby boy in 1947 she moved in with her sister-in-law in Pasadena, Calif., to ensure an American birthright — and, as it turned out, the chance to run for president. "So it was that I was born on November 15 of that year in Huntington Hospital, safely within the Lower Forty-eight. My father insisted there would be no doubt of his children's citizenship." (p. 11) |
| Richardson's Childhood | Richardson did however actually spend his early years in Mexico City, where his mother and father, a prominent American banker, were financially very well off, with high-ranking Mexican politicians and businessmen dropping by as frequent houseguests. But unlike with other American families in the city, Richardson went to public school, lived in the Mexican part of town, and hung out with the Mexican kids, leading him to struggle in defining his national identity. "I remember thinking, I'm just a kid. It's not fair that I'm a Mexican and an American trapped in one body. I could speak English, but I thought and dreamt in Spanish." (p. 16) |
| Religion | While Richardson, a Catholic, says late in the book that "going to church is still an important part of my life," his few religious references take place during his childhood. His abuelita, or grandmother, forced him into catechism school as a boy and had him keep a blessed crucifix with him — even when playing baseball, the "ruling passion" of his youth. "I complained that the crucifix was too big to carry in my baseball pants, but she insisted. One time I executed a perfect slide into third and the crucifix tore up my butt. It was the last time I carried God in my back pocket." (p. 208,17,20) |
| Education in the U.S. | Richardson's father sent his son to New England for prep school, and despite a minor league baseball team encouraging him to enter the draft, he opted to attend Tufts University. As a "foreigner" to the U.S., baseball was what helped him fit in, but once he started needing cortisone shots to pitch in college, any professional prospects ended. He instead turned to taking on leadership roles, including being elected president of his fraternity. Although he admits getting into grad school with a B- average only after some serious string pulling, he stayed at Tufts after graduation to get his master's from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. "Politics would come to fill the void left in my life by baseball." (p. 43) |
| Meeting and Marrying Barbara | Richardson says he met his wife Barbara senior year of high school because of his popularity as the Hispanic baseball star (her mother was a fan) and they started dating. "One night in January, I walked over to her house and left a big Mexican sombrero on the doorstep with a love note. After that, we were inseparable." After college, Richardson asked Barbara's family for permission to propose. "As Barbara recalls it, I said to her father, 'Where's my dowry?' and her father said, 'You ate it. I've been feeding you for seven years.'" (p. 29,50) |
| Starting on Capitol Hill | Richardson insists that it was Hubert Humphrey (when he was a senator from Minnesota) who interested him in national politics. On a trip in grad school to the Capitol in 1971 Sen. Humphrey spoke to the group of students and sparked something in Richardson. "He didn't offer a partisan point of view but talked in general about the meaning of the words public and service.... I felt inspired to make politics and public service my life's work." After grad school he took an unpaid internship in Washington with a Republican congressman and was later hired as a staffer. (p. 45-46) |
| Richardson as a Congressman | Since staffers were for the most part "never recognized for their own worth," Richardson moved to New Mexico after accepting a job as executive director of the state Democratic party, but even then he had his eye on ultimately being elected to national office. After a few years, a lost election and, luckily, reapportionment, he got a seat in the House. He says he agreed with his congressional characterization by The Almanac of American Politics: "The 1992 edition called me 'a political anomaly as well as a political dynamo...an ambitious and often pushy politician who has sometimes taken impolitic stands for no apparent reason except the conviction that they were right.'" He often contradicted himself in his voting and did things based solely on his beliefs — such as voting against background checks for handgun purchasers but for the ban on assault weapons, or voting for a balanced-budget amendment but against cutbacks in certain initiatives. (p. 63,90) |
| Richardson as Unofficial Presidential Envoy | As a representative, Richardson used his seat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence to justify frequent foreign travel. He had a knack for diplomacy and often found himself — most of the time with but other times without the approval of the White House — negotiating the release of prisoners or encouraging such countries as Venezuela, Cuba, Burma and and Sudan to have better relations with the U.S. He made a dozen foreign trips "acting as a fact-finding member of the Intelligence Committee or a requested negotiator or an unofficial representative of the Clinton administration.... I was, during that period, the informal undersecretary for thugs." (p. 121) |
| Richardson and Saddam Hussein | Richardson came face-to-face with the former leader of Iraq in 1995 to negotiate the release of two Americans imprisoned in Abu Ghraib after accidentally stumbling into Iraqi territory. Though he says sitting across from Saddam made his hands sweat, Richardson got what he wanted. "I am a big man, and Saddam, in his shiny black boots, appeared even taller.... Saddam and I sparred for nearly an hour. He told me he would release the men to me. At the end of our conversation, Saddam brought in the state-controlled media for a photo op." (p. 2-3) |
| Richardson and Fidel Castro | Successful with Saddam, Richardson decided to test his luck with another foreign dictator. In 1996 he met with Castro as a member of the intelligence committee to try and get him to release 10 political prisoners — he succeeded with three. "I knew when I was negotiating with Fidel Castro that we would have a lot in common. I knew he craved respect and that he liked sassiness. We spoke to each other in Spanish and we were both baseball fans...I knew if I could get in the room with him, I could convince him to release some prisoners." (p. 7) |
| Richardson as a U.N. Ambassador | In December 1996 Richardson went from Clinton's unofficial envoy to an official representative of the U.S. in the international community as United Nations ambassador. The U.S. appointee is typically unpopular within the UN because of stubborn and sometimes unilateral U.S. policy — and Richardson continued that legacy in his voting — but he said socially he tried to breathe some life into the "stuffy" institution by organizing events, like bringing the Security Council to a Yankees-Mets game, to lighten the mood. "All in all, given the tensions at the UN, we needed to work to reduce the grumpiness whenever we could." (p. 209) |
| Richardson and the Taliban | In 1997 Richardson headed to Afghanistan because he thought he could negotiate a peace treaty between warring factions of the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Richardson was successful in getting the group to agree to a treaty (which they violated months later) but he left with a new enemy. A second goal of the trip was to get the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S. "Later, on the national evening news, Andrea Mitchell of NBC reported that bin Laden, apparently made aware of what I asked of the Taliban, had threatened to kill me." (p. 229) |
| Monica Lewinsky Connection | Bill Clinton wasn't the only one making headlines in 1998 because of Monica Lewinsky — Richardson was dragged into the scandal after the press found out he offered to hire her as an assistant in the UN public affairs office (which she later turned down) as a favor to Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff John Podesta. "Suddenly, I was part of the nightly cable fodder. Was I ordered to hire Lewinsky? (Answer: No.) Did I interview anyone else for the job? (Answer: Yes.)" Soon after, Richardson said the president started dropping hints of his guilt in conversation: "Maybe it was my imagination, but I got the distinct impression in these chats that he was fishing for a way to tell his wife that he'd had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky." (p. 237,240) |
| Richardson as Secretary of Energy | In July 1998 Richardson became part of Clinton's official cabinet, though the job mostly only brought him headaches and a tarnished reputation because of security breaches at national nuclear laboratories — most notably at Los Alamos in his home state of New Mexico. "I did make mistakes, but in the main, the raps were unfair, because security concerns at the nuclear-weapons labs were growing long before I got there." (p. 248) |
| 9/11 | Richardson found himself working as a corporate consultant when the planes hit the twin towers. After some surprising media attention — he had been the last Cabinet-level official to visit Afghanistan — he started itching to be involved in government again and decided to make a run for New Mexico governor. "The tragedy convinced me that it was time for me to return to public service.... In the post-9/11 world, governors were bound to assume a greater role in homeland security, and New Mexico had more than its share of prime targets for terrorists — stockpiled uranium, nuclear-weapons laboratories, military bases, and more." (p. 286) |
| Richardson as Governor | Since Richardson became New Mexico's governor in 2003, he's been working on boosting the economy and improving its reputation. He instituted tax cuts and rebates for filmmakers and new businesses, particularly technology start-ups coming from nearby Silicon Valley. "Then, in March, my mug, supersized on a billboard, showed up in New York's Times Square, extolling the virtues of New Mexico. I got needled, of course, but this was no ego trip — I already had a national profile. New Mexico would have been foolish not to capitalize on it and send a signal that my state was open for business." (p. 306) |
| Richardson and North Korea | A few days into his stint as governor, the North Koreans, fond of Richardson from his congressional and UN days, called him to talk about the nuclear issue. Richardson got a delegation to come to New Mexico and worked out a plan for future bilateral talks, but Bush wouldn't have it unless our allies were involved and the North Koreans left empty handed. "It seemed fitting somehow that this would happen now. It drew a line between my past political life as a globe-trotting congressman, UN ambassador, and energy secretary and the political life that was about to unfold in the state I called home...Still, it was a strange way to begin my work on behalf of the people of New Mexico." (p. 301) |
| Presidential (and Vice Presidential) Aspirations | In the 2004 election Richardson was considered and even interviewed for the vice presidential spot alongside John Kerry, but he had promised the voters of New Mexico he would serve a full term as governor and didn't want to renege. Richardson says he told the Democratic candidate to remove him from consideration and he did, but he also got him thinking: "Near the end of our conversation, Kerry threw me an unexpected curve: 'Do you want to be president?' 'Maybe someday,' I said." (p. 334) |
| In Conclusion | In what sounds like a campaign speech, Richardson ends his book laying out future policy initiatives and recounting his merits. "In small but perhaps significant ways, I have made a difference in my country. Although our challenges as Americans and as citizens of the world are great, we face them together." (p. 361) |