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01/28/2005: "Silly Christie, You’re Talking about the Wrong Party!"

Even a cursory reading of yesterday’s excerpts from former Bush Administration EPA head Christie Whitman’s new book shows the basis for her difficulties with the Bushies. Her first mistake is buying into the rhetoric that Bush is “a man of his word” when she assumed he’d honor his campaign promises relating to the environment. American political policy is littered with the corpses of policies that Bush said he would champion but did not. Let’s start with “I’m a uniter, not a divider.” Exhibit 2 is “compassionate conservatism.” We could go on, but this is not the point of this particular entry, which is where Christie went wrong in assuming she could get some traction for environmental concerns when in fact she ended up “lost in the Bush.” The main reason for her dismal results was mistaken identity. She assumed that she was in the Republican Party, the party founded by Lincoln with environmental legacy defined by Teddy Roosevelt. It’s an easy mistake. That party, the one she thinks she’s in, no longer exists. More properly, the standing of the GOP as the “conservative” party of the US is no longer operational because the term “conservative” has experienced a reversal of meaning in the last two decades. The term “conservative” used to mean “respect for traditional values of honor, morality, and stewardship.” This meaning had a close relationship to the concept of environmental protection. As tirelessly pointed out by TR (and noted in our Teddy Speaks page) it is dishonorable and immoral to deprive future generations of Americans of the rich bounty of natural resources that all prior generations have enjoyed. Stewardship is the actualization of this moral imperative, the means by which the aspiration to preserve is achieved by tangible policy choices. In contrast, the new meaning of the term “conservative” has nothing to do with honor, morality, and stewardship. It has instead evolved to mean “respect for greed and lust for power as the basic components of successful political strategy.” If you don’t believe this, consider Christie’s experiences as recounted in yesterday’s excerpt. She herself said that Bush’s evil twin Republican Party has assumed an “extreme anti-environmentalist posture” in order to “solidify its base.” What motivates this base? Is it love of breathing dirty air and drinking poisoned water? No, it is love of the extra profits that can be achieved by eliminating regulations imposed to ensure that exploitation of natural resources is done in a sustainable fashion. What is greed if not love of dubiously-gained profits, and what is lust for power if not an obsession with controlling the mechanisms by which government power is exercised, specifically laws and regulations? Christie’s ultimate mistake is believing that key figures in the Bush Administration have any interest whatsoever in the welfare of “our children and grandchildren.” In all fairness, their lack of concern for posterity isn’t personal. It’s just that screwing posterity is a great way to make tons of money and use it to buy the power to make even more money. Maybe this sounds harsh, but if I’m off base on this then I need to reconsider some other fundamental questions, like whether the sky is really blue and the sun is really bright!