elsewhere/grim amusements: richardson withdraws

[iainpj]

Richardson Withdraws:
...And probably the only people at all surprised by this are Richardson and Obama themselves. I must admit, I wondered just how badly the vetting process had gone that Richardson was nominated with this sitting out there. The investigation was well known by the time his nomination was announced. Given that one of the major points of Obama's campaign was that his administration would do business differently that it had been done before, why on earth would you nominate someone being investigated for this sort of thing? The one thing a new administration absolutely cannot afford is even the appearance of impropriety by one of its nominees; just ask Bill Clinton about his attorney general nominee and her nanny/social-security scandal, which was considerably more mild than this.

Of course, what really killed this nomination was the Blagojevich mess. Obama could scarcely condemn Gov. Hot Rod and repeatedly request that he resign, and then appoint as his Commerce secretary a person accused of doing much the same thing, if on a considerably smaller scale, for somewhat smaller stakes and in a less blunt and impressively foul-mouthed way....