Republicans Talk, But Don't Walk Green

Christie Todd Whitman has resigned as the EPA Administrator at a time when Republicans themselves recognize the environmental issue as "the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans and especially for George Bush." Bush's choice to replace Whitman will offer a clear indication of how the White House plans to handle this vulnerability as it approaches the 2004 election -- and of how the president's opponents might exploit it.

The quote in the preceding paragraph comes from Frank Luntz, a top GOP strategist; his specialty is crafting messages that sell a political candidate or ideology to the voters. In a memo leaked earlier this year to the New York Times, Luntz further warned that the Republicans "risk losing the swing vote ... [and that] our suburban female base could abandon us." Since the swing vote -- those middle-of-the-road voters with no great loyalty to either of the two major parties -- is where the 2004 election is likely to be decided, the environment promises to be a crucial battleground over the coming eighteen months.

It's not hard to see why Republicans are in trouble on the environmental front. The environment has become a mom-and-apple-pie issue in the United States, and the Republicans are on the wrong side of it. According to a Gallup poll released in April, sixty-one percent of Americans say they are either active participants in or sympathizers with the environmental movement. Eighty percent favor stricter emissions standards for business. Only seven percent endorse the Bush-Cheney view that government is regulating too much.

But that hasn't stopped the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress from doing all they can to relax environmental regulations. Whether it's more arsenic in drinking water, killing the Kyoto protocol, pushing for expanded logging and limited wilderness, or putting industry executives in charge of dozens of regulatory agencies, Bush has pursued the most nakedly pro-corporate agenda in memory.

Christie Todd Whitman was the supposedly moderate Republican whose job it was to make these policies appear reasonable. Mainstream green groups unwittingly played along with the ruse, talking as if Whitman were genuinely committed to the environment and repeatedly expressing their disappointment at her failure to stand up to the White House's slash and burn approach.

But Whitman was never as green as enviros liked to think. During her tenure as New Jersey governor, she had instituted many of the policies that Bush has pursued as president, including corporate self-audits and drastically reduced oversight and fines of industrial polluters. As EPA Administrator, she continued to work against meaningful environmental regulation while running afoul of conflict of interest laws.

On Earth Day 2002, the EPA's former public interest advocate, Robert J. Martin, resigned as EPA Ombudsman after clashing with Whitman over a Superfund clean-up agreement that would have saved Citigroup -- a principal investor in Whitman's husband's venture capital firm -- up to $93 million. Martin alleged that Whitman ordered his office reassigned within the EPA bureaucracy and stripped of its independence after he opposed a nuclear-waste cleanup settlement with Citigroup that would limit the firm's liability to a fraction of the true cleanup cost. Whitman denied the charges, but has been dogged by a continuing investigation of the matter. That investigation has also focused on Whitman's questionable statements after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when she assured residents that the air of Manhattan was safe, even though EPA had not done adequate testing to support such claims.

So, with Whitman gone, what's next? For his part, Frank Luntz doesn't want Republicans to change their environmental policies -- just how they talk about them. He advises them to use words like "common sense," "sound science," and "balance." Republican candidates should call themselves "conservationists." They should stress how much they love national parks. They should assure voters that they favor environmental protection but simply believe that local people, not Washington bureaucrats, should be in charge.