Politics

Get The Greens

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 19, 2001 / 1:44 PM EDT / CBS

In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer takes a look at the political ramifications of President Bush's environmental agenda.

Theories that kinder, gentler environmental policies were part of President Bush’s compassionate conservatism have themselves become endangered theses. The young administration seems to have declared the greens to be Public Enemy Number One.

Since this White House is so disciplined, so robotically "on message," one must assume this is a fully calculated campaign. The question is, just what are those calculations? Why is this good politics for Mr. Bush?

The litany of the administration’s alleged enviro-sins is lengthy and now familiar. The administration so far has:

retracted a campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions thought to increase global warming;
essentially withdrawn from negotiations over an international global warming treaty;
continued to vigorously champion exploring for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;
undermined a plan to prohibit road building in one-third of American forests;
suspended a rule to control possibly toxic runoff from mining sites;
attempted to ban new lawsuits to add species to the endangered species list;
cut the EPA budget by 6.4 percent.

The administration is so intent on its environmental course that it took on a most unlikely enemy – first brother Jeb Bush, governor of Florida. Interior Secretary Gale "Watt-lite" Norton sent Gov. Bush a letter last week in which she said she intended to proceed with auctioning off oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast – a move the president's brother opposes.

Undoubtedly, the move that received the loudest heckling was the decision to withdraw the new standards for arsenic in drinking water that President Clinton established in the 11th hour of his term.

The word "arsenic" had rhetorical punch that environmental propagandists and stand-up comedians couldn't resist, even though the last-minute Clinton standards were themselves highly debatable. Still, the Bushies have now eased up on arsenic and will go back to the drawing board, pronto.

As Earth Day approached and the environmental groups started cutting unflattering TV ads, Mr. Bush took other baby steps backwards. The EPA announced it would leave in place a Clinton rule change that would expand protection of wetlands areas. Then the president decided to let stand more Clinton rule changes to make industry increase reporting of lead emissions into the atmosphere (note: increase reporting, not decrease emissions).

Mr. Bush even went to the extraordinary length – for him – of staging a Rose Garden ceremony to announce the United States would sign an international treaty (born in Stockholm no less) calling for a global phase-out of toxic chemicals including dioxins, DDT and CBs.

The question remains, why the get-the-greens onslaught?

The political risks of the strategy aren’t hard to spot. Women and independent voters, groups Mr. Bush needs in 2004, are stronger environmentalists than others. More important, in upscale suburban areas, especially on the coasts where Bush did badly last year, the environment is a big issue.

Rep. Tom Davis, who is in charge of getting Republicans elected to the House, said, "Environmental issues matter most in the suburbs." Coming from Texas, where the environmental movement has perpetual laryngitis, the Bush brain trust may not have been highly tuned in to this.

There is also a rather convoluted theory floating around that runs something like this: George W. Bush won in 2000 by collecting states that rarely go Republican – West Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas. He almost got Pennsylvania. These are all energy producing states, with no shortage of blue-collar workers concerned that in hard times, too much environmental goody-goodies may cost them their jobs.

Another constituency, of course, that is cheering on the Bush environmental approach is Big Bidness. In his first months, Mr. Bush hasn’t yet thrown his corporate backers too many really big bones. In fact, he has forcefully told them not to attempt to add corporate tax breaks to his income tax bill, which really bugs their K Street lobbyists. Maybe the ungreening of the meager Clinton environmental legacy is a Milkbone for business.

In the campaign, Mr. Bush did use environmental rhetoric to persuade voters that his conservatism was compassionate. His most un-conservative appointment, too, was Christine Whitman as EPA administrator. And his new ranch homestead in Crawford, Texas, apparently has a water-recycling gadget and a geothermal heat pump. But in Washington, his armored limo is still a gas-guzzler.