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The Car That Makes Pollution Fashionable Again!  |
He'll be remembered as the first pro-carbon dioxide president
By
CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
President Bush has changed his mind.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Bush embraced a proposal designed to limit the amount of carbon dioxide gas emitted from the nation's power plants. Environmentalists cheered. They didn't cheer for Mr. Bush very often during last year's campaign, but they did that time.
Now, President Bush says he's thought things over and carbon dioxide isn't such bad stuff after all. So instead of cracking down on emissions of carbon dioxide by industry, he'll give them a pass.
Can you believe it? A politician has changed his mind? In public?
Jim Lehrer will become a rapper. Larry King will get contacts. Rush Limbaugh will shut up.
Newspaper reporters are entitled to change their minds. Business executives are entitled to change their minds. People buying neckties and sarongs are entitled to change their minds. Politicians are not entitled to change their minds. The candidate said he would do X during the campaign, and by God, he'd better do X, no matter what, after he's elected.
Mr. Bush says he changed his mind because he "embraced reality" and "the reality is that we have an energy crisis." Shifting more power plants from coal to cleaner natural gas would mean more expensive energy which the nation doesn't need right now, the president argues.
Left twisting in the wind in this case is the president's Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman. She had spent the first month of her stewardship touting the CO2 limitation plan. Then the president pulled the rug out from under her.
The outcry from the environmentalists was loud, indignant and immediate. There were dark mutterings about how lobbyists from the coal industry had reached the administration and caused the shift. (Shocking. Lobbyists seeking to influence public policy? What next? Jessie Helms acquires a southern accent?)
The media are delighted. Something new to shriek about.
Through some mystifying set of circumstances, W did not pick up the phone and call me before going public. He could have had the benefit of my counsel, to wit:
If a candidate makes a pledge on the campaign trail and then once in office finds things aren't the way he thought they were, he has two choices.
One, he can do a public reversal, a la Bush on CO2. For sure it's honest, but Lordy, do you get media heat.
Two, he can quietly avoid doing anything about it one way or the other and hope the public and the news media forget about it. Most of the time--not all the time, but most of the time--that works.
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Strategy Number Two also has the advantage of flexibility. Let's say that you pledged to end the navel lint subsidy when you were running for office. Then, when you're elected, you find the navel lint subsidy is a good thing after all, and ought to be endorsed by all right-thinking Americans, especially those with campaign coffers to refill.
So you just quietly let the navel lint subsidy continue to tippy-toe about its business. Shhhh.
But let's then say some damn reporter, who ought to be breaking up rocks at the local penitentiary but is instead looking for something to do, comes up with the story: "What about the pledge to end the navel lint subsidy?"
Not to worry. You can appoint a commission to look into the matter. You make a noisy announcement to let everyone know you're on the case, then not a peep out of you. Three months to select the members. Give them, say, eight months to complete their study--or don't even give them a deadline at all. Then when it's finally done, make sure their report is put on a shelf, no press release from you, and you pray the subject never comes up again. If it does, you can say you are studying the report. You can study the report for another six months at least before anyone accuses you of being a slow learner. By then, everyone has forgotten all about it.
British prime ministers mastered the Study It technique long ago. Vexing damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't problem? Appoint a Royal Commission.
In his 1960 campaign against Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy talked about a "missile gap" that had existed in the Eisenhower administration. There was no missile gap. But had he not been assassinated, JFK would have been a shoo-in for a second term.
Franklin D. Roosevelt assured voters that "American boys" would never be sent overseas to fight in a war. Guess what. But FDR was elected to four terms.
Want to know a secret?
Campaigns are designed to win elections. That's all they're designed to do. They are not a means of providing a framework for governing, no matter how many times politicians tell us they are, or how hopeful we voters become each time the campaign season rolls around.
Now you're more sophisticated about politics than 90 percent of your fellow citizens. Not that it feels all that good.
© 2001 by Charles M. McFadden. The illustrations are from the IMSI Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506, USA.
Chuck McFadden is a former
political reporter.
You can comment on this column or contact Chuck McFadden with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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