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TODAY Thursday 26 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Thursday 26 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Bleeping Joan of Arc
"Who does she think she is, some bleeping Joan of Arc?" This was a presumably rhetorical question, put by a top White House operative last week, referring to the implacable Carol Browner, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Browner had surprised friend and foe by not budging (much) from her scientists' Clean Air Act recommendations for new, lower levels of permissible ground-level ozone (the indispensable ingredient of smog) and altogether new standards governing the permissible amounts of sooty particulate matter.
Yesterday she won, by TKO. President Clinton announced that he had accepted her recommended Clean Air standards, with modest exceptions, but that the time given to states and cities would be longer and more gradually phased in than the EPA had originally wanted (it will be ten years, for example, before a state can be sanctioned for non-compliance). The issue is far from over -- Congress can overrule within 60 days, and there will be hell to pay on policing the states -- but the fight within the Administration is over, and the winners are Browner and the enviros and the suburban women who are coveted so lustily these days by politicians in search of swing votes. Thus it was that Bill Clinton yesterday described the new standards as a key element of an overall program to protect children's health.
All this you can read in your paper this morning, so allow us to cut to the insider stuff. Two months ago the environmental organizations were on the defensive about Clean Air. Industry -- oil, coal, automobiles -- had surprised them by the amount of money dedicated to fighting the proposed regulations and the tenor of the message purchased with that money: to wit, that the scientific evidence was far too inconclusive to justify the vast expenditures and inconveniences that would be occasioned by the new rules. By concentrating on an alleged lack of "science," the opponents of the EPA proposals had found a buzzword far more telling than "cost-effectiveness." Soon you were able to read statements about the dubious scientific underpinnings of the proposals from sources (Members of Congress, Midwestern mayors) whose idea of a refereed journal is a magazine edited by men in striped shirts.
Rustbelt Democrats were defecting, previously stalwart Republicans (Senator Chaffee, for example) were distancing themselves, and the number-crunchers at Treasury and the Office of Management and the Budget were telling the President that the EPA proposals would flatten the curve of economic growth.
To their credit, the enviros picked themselves up off the canvas. Perhaps most energetic and influential was Phil Clapp of the Environmental Information Center. EIC organized and deployed truth squads to counter the science-disinformation campaigns and supplied grassroots enthusiasts with information and advice. Clapp himself was fitted with a telephone directly sutured to his left ear and he never stopped organizing and cajoling. He had been criticized in the past for his take-charge tendencies and his piles of Pew money (mostly sour grapes, for what it's worth), but now all the greens were glad to have him and re-doubled their own efforts. Enviro mail and phone calls zoomed. But so did spending by industry.
Things took a dramatic turn when Clapp and other leading enviros went on record to criticize Al Gore's intriguing silence on the issue. We won't be taken for granted, was the message, and diplomatic feelers went out to non-Gore Democrats who might be interested in assuming a high-profile pro-environment position while the Vice President dithered. Previously, Clapp had been criticized (in low tones) for his perceived unwillingness to pick a fight with the Administration; some thought they heard a little too much reverence when he talked about "the Vice President." Whatever. When the time came, Clapp and colleagues hit Gore hard and in public, to the National Journal and the New York Times and anyone who would listen. Suddenly the Administration could say truthfully that it was under siege, even under attack, from both sides of the issue and that its main concern was doing right by the children of America.
And, to briefly wander into the language of co-dependency, might we wonder whether the Vice President wasn't glad to be cuffed around by the enviros? Isn't a prerequisite of success in American politics that you have radicals on your flank so that you can run as a moderate? Was there a complicit wink? You could lose a lot a money betting against the complexity and sophistication and ambition of Al Gore.
TODAY ON THE SITE
For our Person on the Potomac, of course, we have the incomparable Hibernicus, who operates something of a one-man Gore Watch. Check out his most recent op ed on the Vice President and the need for a big-picture enviro SWAT team.
This week's "Today" columns:
6/25: The World at 42nd Street
6/24: Il Faut Que Get a Grip
6/23: The Emily Dickinson Parking Garage
To access "Today" columns from previous weeks, click "Archives" below.