OLEAN -- Some readers wonder aloud (and in print) why we're always picking on President George W. Bush in this newspaper. One of your suspicions is correct: because it's so easy to criticize him.
Columnists are often too lazy to search for real news and Dubya provides, as the generals in his father's administration used to say of Iraq, "a target-rich environment" for opinion writers.
But there's a more subtle impetus, one driven by history: Dubya seems unique even within his own party in that he tarnishes the sheen of genuine accomplishments by past Republican presidents in several fields of endeavor. Let's take a look at a couple.
Exactly 100 years ago this month, another famously bellicose Republican president -- one who had actually experienced combat -- gained international prominence for his adroit diplomacy after arranging a peace conference between two warring nations, Russia and Japan. It took place in Portsmouth, N.H., and after three weeks and a couple of days of negotiating, the two belligerent countries signed a peace treaty on Sept. 5, 1905. For his efforts, President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
One need not speculate on the same happening for Dubya.
Last Thursday, in another area of federal endeavor, the House Resources Committee voted easy approval (26-12) of a massive rewrite of one of the century's most significant and successful pieces of legislation -- the Endangered Species Act. The fast-tracked bill is scheduled to come to the floor of the House of Representatives this week and may have already sailed through that conservative body by the time you read this. The Senate will likely get to it in a couple of months.
The bill's sponsor is right-wing California Republican Richard Pombo, who chairs the important House Resources panel. The bill reeks of self-interest. A rancher by trade, Pombo comes from a family whose Pombo Real Estate is prominent in the valley area east of Oakland. The California environmental magazine "Faultline" notes that Pombo's family "got where they are by helping farmers buy and sell land, usually to developers."
Pombo, who's been attacking the Endangered Species Act for years, has publicly stated the new legislation -- misleadingly titled the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 -- is merely an attempt to "reform" and "modernize" and "update" the much-praised law. Baloney. A more honest description is this: Pombo's revision will, if approved by Congress and signed by Dubya, completely gut the ESA.
California's Center for Biological Diversity describes that prospect better than I can:
"The bill does precious little to help species recover. It eliminates essential habitat protections, buries wildlife agencies under a mountain of costly, inefficient bureaucracy, and encourages industry groups to paralyze the government with lawsuits over Byzantine paperwork rules. It also threatens to throw government regulations of all kinds into chaos by overturning traditional property law (through) making the federal government pay to regulate private property. This provision would quickly bankrupt federal conservation budgets and spawn lawsuits challenging all federal regulations. ... Pombo's bill will make things worse by increasing bureaucracy and costs. It will replace conservation with endless paperwork, process, and review."
It would also do something else the public has yet to catch onto because the wording is carefully hidden deep within the boilerplate. A "sunset" provision would completely eliminate the so-far-successful Endangered Species Act by 2015.
Pombo's central argument is that the ESA's track record has been lousy, and that nine species have gone extinct and only 17 have been taken off the "endangered species" list in the law's existence. He overlooks the real numbers that show success in guarding the approximately 1,300 species marked for protection under the definition "threatened" -- of which fully 41 percent now boast "stabilized" or increased populations, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Gulf sturgeon, brown pelicans, cutthroat trout, steelhead trout, gray wolves, Chinook salmon -- all have benefited from the ESA, along with numerous other species. Perhaps the most notable success story has been the national symbol -- the American bald eagle.
This great, graceful, beautiful bird was listed as endangered in 1978, five years after the ESA was made law. At that time, about the only place you could glimpse a bald eagle was on the back of a quarter. In the big state of Montana, traditional range for the eagle, only 12 nests were counted in the whole state. Now there are 25 times that number in the Big Sky State. The same has happened in many states. You can see bald eagles along the Allegheny River in Western New York, or in suburban Maryland, or along the Potomac near the nation's capital, or just about anywhere these days. If the progress continues, it will soon be defined as "officially recovered" -- and you can bet your binoculars whoever is in power in the White House at that time will decree a loud, positive, national celebration.
So what does this have to do with my original historical premise about achievements by Republican presidents?
Well, pop quiz time. Who was the GOP chief executive who signed into law the Endangered Species Act three days after Christmas in 1973?
Surprise, it was the much-disgraced Richard M. Nixon of Watergate fame, and he was effusive in his praise of the new law, too. (Nixon, it should be noted from this column's earlier perspective, also presided over American involvement in a questionable war, and had also served in wartime, in the Pacific during World War II.)
The original Endangered Species Act had passed the Senate by voice vote, and in comparison to today's political climate, take note that 355 House members voted for it, and only four were opposed. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton signed strengthened extensions of the ESA in 1978 and 1995 respectively. Even the conservative Ronald Reagan extended the ESA in 1988 with some strengthened provisions, although he was lukewarm over creation of protected natural habitats.
And speaking of environmental responsibility, the aforementioned Theodore Roosevelt was an absolute hero when it comes to conservation. Even his grave in Oyster Bay, N.Y., on Long Island is surrounded by 12 legally protected wooded acres designated a formal bird sanctuary.
Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican who ended up on Mount Rushmore, established the first national park (Crater Lake), then several more, then the entire system we glory in. He created the National Park Service. He also created 18 national monuments -- not statues or buildings, but areas of spectacular wild beauty. And he signed protection laws creating no fewer than 150 national forests.
"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself," TR proclaimed. "Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying air and giving fresh strength to our people."
Now, if the full House and Senate end up passing the legislation described above, do you think President George W. Bush will sign into law the benighted Congressman Pombo's assault on the famous conservation law? Given Dubya's proclivity for blithely letting Big Lumber destroy old-growth forests and Big Oil drill just about anywhere it wants -- and his refusal to veto previous odious legislation -- the odds on YES are not long.
The House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, another California representative, said this summer, "The Bush administration takes the same approach to the Endangered Species Act that it takes to all the other major environmental laws that protect our air, water, and lands. Their approach is to appease, abuse, and assault."
Right on the head of the nail, congresswoman.
So, it's not about the politics. It's not about Republican legacy. It's about Dubya's studied ignorance of predecessor behavior.
Teddy Roosevelt must be spinning so fast in his sanctuary grave that even the nearby birds are alarmed.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Sept. 27 2005 |