In the wake of Bill Richardson's dreams of being the next Malcolm Baldridge going up in smoke, Marc Ambinder writes:
You'd never know it, but the Obama team did not expect Richardson to take the Commerce job in the first place; they saw it as a demotion. But Richardson surprised them by saying yes.
It did strike me as odd that after being passed over for State, Richardson would take a second-tier cabinet post like Commerce (especially when you consider he'd already been Energy Secretary and U.N. Ambassador under Clinton). But I guess he was desperate to get out of Albuquerque. Which makes the spin that Richardson was the one who decided to withdraw his nomination seem a bit, uh, unbelievable.
--Jason Zengerle