BETWEEN WORLDS

“I love campaigning, honing the message and delivering it to the voters”: a political memoir of the sort that usually precedes a bid for the presidency—a possibility the present New Mexico governor surely keeps close to his heart.

Richardson is a new, and very well situated, kind of politico: bilingual and bicultural in a nation increasingly both those things, born to a Mexican mother and Anglo father, long resident in Mexico but with an East Coast education, a boomer who didn’t partake, let alone inhale, and who missed out on Vietnam but would have gone if asked. He is also a bold and very shrewd practical politician who isn’t bashful about unveiling an ultraliberal pedigree. It was Hubert Humphrey who sent him off to New Mexico to bag his first elected office; Bill Clinton who appointed him ambassador to the UN (during which service, among other things, Richardson won a surprising concession from none other than Saddam Hussein); and Al Gore who made noise about sharing the ticket with Richardson in 2004. That pedigree, proudly worn, will likely not earn Richardson points among wealthy, right-leaning Texans, but there’s enough pointed politicking in these pages to launch a write-in campaign right now, as Richardson pushes for the preservation of wild places here, talks tough on crime and international outlawry there, faintly praises the sitting president (“Kerry ran a good race. Bush ran a better one; people just liked the guy”) and gets in a few digs at members of his own party.

Good-natured, self-serving, with useful lessons for budding officeholders (hint: let someone powerful introduce you to your first big crowd). We’ll be hearing more from this author.