President Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patty Davis has issued a blistering attack in Newsweek on President George Bush on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other issues, charging that Bush’s main goal is winning political battles rather than enacting policies.
“We have an administration in Washington that cares nothing for this planet, for beauty, for pristine places, for innocent animals with soft brown eyes,” Davis writes. “Everything is a war to this president, and he is determined to win.”
Indeed, there does seem to be a pattern here. Every issue now is a pull-out-all stops affair, pushed through with perfunctory negotiation and consensus then resolved via raw power politics. It’s seen in most major policies this administration pursues and on all kinds of appointments it makes — even if individual policies and appointments may be sound.
Davis writes that Bush must be feeling victorious about the oil drilling now:
Environmental groups have said the fight isn’t over, and I want to believe there is still something we can do—write letters, e-mails, rise up en masse and say no. But I don’t know if anything will help at this point. It’s possible that the only thing we will be able to do is weep—at the devastation of wild, untamed land where caribou are free to breed and give birth far away from the harm that humans bring. Where polar bear are a common sight and where cars and trucks and engines are never heard. Where people are outnumbered by the vast numbers of birds and animals—safe for the moment, but soon to be doomed.
Indeed, what would this man say? He would probably not be happy, but then the party today doesn’t have the values he had — which were unusual values even then. But we all benefited from them.
Davis predicts:
Roads will be carved, trucks will rumble through, drills will be stabbed into the earth. Oil companies don’t care about nature, the environment or the animals that will be terrified and traumatized. They don’t care, and neither does the Bush administration. It is possible that the senators who voted for this measure care about re-election, so that’s where the letters and outrage should be directed.
But she’s right: in the end it probably won’t matter. It’s all about numbers. And when you have the political numbers there are several ways to go. You can use a coalition and consensus to impliment policy. If that doesn’t exist, you can use political skills to develop a consensus for your proposed policies, then go for a vote when you’ve maximized support and won over — or at least soothed — the opposition. Or if you have the numbers you can say to hell with the opposition you have the numbers and you’ll do what you please. The latter has been the administration’s course.
She goes on to skewer Bush even more, charging his whole administration is about power politics:
I don’t believe this is even about oil; after all, we won’t see any of it for another decade. This is about another victory for the Bush administration. This is about Bush leaving his footprint on yet another corner of the earth and then walking away and not looking back at the damage he has left behind.
Davis is at odds with Bush over the war in Iraq, claims of weapons of mass destruction, and raises questions about his war record, etc. She is clearly not an admirer. But it’s the impending disappearance of the kind of protected area that Theodore Roosevelt and many presidents of both parties sought to protect that causes her the intense grief — plus her belief that in the end Bush will leave office and not care.
We will be left with the damage this administration has caused, with scars on the earth and memories of wildlife that used to roam and fly over vast acres … before they started dying.
True to his nature, this president will walk away and not look back.
Exaggerated? Perhaps. But bare-knuckles power politics does seem to be the style of this administration. And if you hear a mournful noise tonight it’s Teddy Roosevelt rolling over in his grave.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.