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The Washington Times - Commentary - FORUM
Sunday, December 15, 2002
‘Third Rail’ Redux for Republicans
F. Patricia Callahan
I am an environmentalist. I am also a staunch supporter of private property rights, our military, and entrepreneurial capitalism. I am not alone. There are millions more like me. The problem is that most of them are afraid to utter the words, "I am an environmentalist."
Why? Because we have allowed the elitist environmental left to hijack the originally well-intended environmental movement. They have convinced the American public that anyone who supports private property rights, the military, or capitalism must be out to destroy the environment.
It is time for us true environmentalists to take back ownership of that word. It is time to place the emphasis on improving the environment rather than "protecting" it. The only way to accomplish this is with a strong, coherent national policy that brings sanity back to the environmental landscape. And the only person who can initiate that policy is President Bush.
For decades, Social Security was considered the "third rail of American politics" - anyone who dared to touch it died politically. But President Bush changed that by exposing the vicious lies of Democrats who had frightened the elderly into believing that Republicans wanted to take away their Social Security benefits, and by boldly proposing a way to put new life into the Social Security system by allowing younger taxpayers to put a small portion of their payroll taxes into individual savings accounts.
Now, the environment has become the third rail of politics for Republicans. But President Bush, with a Republican Congress behind him, can change that by exposing the lies of the special interest groups that have become a powerful tax-exempt environmental industry with a financial stake in "chicken-little" rhetoric.
It won't be easy. The environmental industry had eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration to get their activists firmly entrenched in all levels of government. They receive billions of dollars of our tax money in the form of grants to take private property out of the hands of ordinary citizens and businesses.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has done very little to change course. Environmental policy is still being set without regard to its impact on human beings. The EPA is still focused on enforcement for enforcement's sake. The Justice Department is still pursuing Clinton-Gore era court cases against property owners that should have been dropped long ago in light of the US Supreme Court's SWANCC decision that the federal government does not have jurisdiction over isolated wetlands.
Clearly, President Bush is not being well-served by his advisers. Not only are they rudderless on environmental policy; once they do make the right choice, they don't know how to sell the message.
The Bush Administration has made half-hearted attempts to remove some of the Clinton-Gore restrictions that have severely hampered military training under the guise of protecting "endangered" species. But instead of making the case that the lives of our men and women in uniform are more important than the lives of turtles and fairy shrimp, the Administration meekly bows to pressure from the environmental industry and its supporting foundations.
Last month, the EPA proposed rules that would encourage power plants to improve pollution control by removing the Clinton-Gore requirement that any plant upgrade must include a total, expensive overhaul - sort of like requiring you to replace your car's entire engine if you only need a new carburetor. But instead of trumpeting these new common-sense rules, EPA timidly issued a press release the day before everyone left town for the Thanksgiving weekend, allowing the liberal press to misrepresent the rules as a virtual elimination of clean air standards.
The New York Times recently quoted a White House spokesman as saying that President Bush believes economic growth and environmental protection can go hand-in-hand. That is exactly the right message. But the messenger shouldn't be a third-level spokesman, and the message shouldn't be buried in the thirteenth paragraph of a hostile article in the Democratic Party's primary house organ. Instead, President Bush should be using his bully-pulpit to shout it from the rooftops. Only then will the American public begin to understand what true environmentalism means.
Just as the millions of ordinary Americans who have recently begun to participate in the stock market now realize the value of President Bush's bold plan to save Social Security, so too would the millions of new homeowners realize the value of a bold plan to improve the environment without destroying their property rights.
We have at least six years to expose the well-organized anti-private property rights, anti-military, anti-capitalism industry masquerading as environmentalists. But first, President Bush must have a strong, coherent environmental policy and the personnel to carry it out. Then he needs to stand up and proclaim, "I am an environmentalist!"
F. Patricia Callahan is the founder and president of the American Association of Small Property Owners.
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