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This trend is hardly limited to Santa Fe.
The current national administration seems to be even more afflicted with "unitary executive" notions than Richardson is. Marty Chavez' tussles with the City Council are legendary.
So Bush says that he's entitled to bug anyone at any time without say-so from either congress or courts, and Chavez says that he can build towers with no input but his own.
We see this a lot more in corporations these days, too. The CEOs seem to be running the Boards of Directors.
Richardson is hardly alone in his meglomania, but at least he doesn't have any power to declare war. Of course neither does Bush, but, when you're the Commander in Chief of a compliant military establishment, it apparently doesn't matter.
It isn't that the country is being poisoned by a bunch of narcissistic politicians. No, it's more that the voters, for whatever reasons, have taken to electing narcissistic know-it-alls. And then we want to complain that they have no empathy with us. Narcissists don't have empathy for anyone, so it's no great surprise that they don't do governance very well.
Whatever happened to A Government of Laws, Not of Men? We have an active, justifiable contempt for the law system that is STILL trying Milosovec and Hussein after YEARS. Justice delayed is in fact justice denied, and I think we can see that.
When we have contempt for the rule of law, we vote for the apparently strongest people we can find to run the show. It's hardly a head scratch when they turn out to be strong primarily for themselves and their interests.
Want more selfless statesmen (and stateswomen)? Educate the populace about what they look like, and teach the voters about what happens when when they elect folks with spiffy commercials instead of a good platform.
Got a voting population collectively dumber than a tree stump? You probably aren't going to wind up with the sharpest knives in the drawer as your political officials, are you?
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