Yesterday’s Journal had a front page article (subscription) about Governor Richardson calling for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld:
Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should resign, in part because “our policy in Iraq is just not working.”
“My view is the secretary should step aside,” Richardson said at the outset of a 10-minute interview on “Face the Nation,” a Sunday morning national news show hosted by Bob Schieffer.
Richardson went on to say:
“This reaches a new level of not being willing to admit mistakes and change policy that is just not working,” Richardson added. He spoke in a live by satellite from Santa Fe.
Ok, I’m willing to accept the Governor’s logic. Architects of unsuccessful public policy should resign. Of course, this line of thinking does present something of a quandary for our Governor Richardson. As I recall, the Governor has made himself clearly responsible for the success or failure of our education system:
Yes on One means now there will be a Secretary of Education — providing real accountability for our educational system — and ensuring that for the first time, the buck stops with one person, the Governor.
Yet after nearly four years in office, our education system is still one of the worse performing in the nation, but hey, don’t take my word for it. Go read what the National Report Card on Higher Education has to say about the K-12 experience in New Mexico. They give our state a great big F, and provide this as the rationale:
Over the past decade, New Mexico has shown no notable progress in preparing students to succeed in college. New Mexico is one of only two states to receive an F in preparation this year.
And it’s not just the education community that is taking notice of the Governor’s failures to improve our school systems.
[Vern Raburn, CEO of Eclipse] needs good public schools in order to succeed.
It’s not that Raburn can’t or hasn’t been able to recruit engineers and other talent from other states. He can. But that doesn’t mean he’ll keep them.
Raburn says he loses valuable employees for two primary reasons: Albuquerque’s too brown for some out-of-staters to get used to and its public school system is too poor for his employees to accept it as the educational provider for their children. Most employees get used to the brown if they last a year, but they often become disenchanted with the schools.
So there you have it. Everyone agrees the education policies of Governor Richardson are failing our students and hurting our businesses. Therefore, I’m calling for the resignation of Governor Bill Richardson. Governor Richardson should resign, in part because our education policy in New Mexico is just not working. My view is the Governor should step aside, or at the very least give up the silly idea of running for re-election.