Bush seeks to show his greener side
Push to boost president's environmental image starts in Arizona
By MIKE ALLEN
Washington Post
SCHEDULE
This month, President Bush seeks to polish his environmental image with three other scheduled trips:
• A "Healthy Forests Initiative" in Oregon.
• A trip targeting preserving national parks in California.
• A visit to a salmon habitat in Washington state.
INSPIRATION ROCK, Ariz. -- President Bush on Monday opened a three-week drive to bolster his environmental image by drawing attention to conservationist elements of White House policies embraced by the oil, gas and logging industries.
Republican strategists said the swing through the West is designed as insurance against expected campaign portrayals of Bush as a negligent steward of the air, water and land.
The nation's new campaign finance law likely will give a louder voice to environmental lobbying groups, which can receive huge donations that previously would have gone to the Democratic Party. White House officials said they expect the groups to make harsh attacks to raise money.
Bush flew Monday morning from his ranch in Texas to a national forest near Tucson, Ariz., to view the aftermath of the Aspen fire, an 85,000-acre wildfire that destroyed 333 cabins and other buildings in June and July.
From his Marine One chopper and a granite outcropping at 8,000 feet, Bush surveyed ash-laden hillsides with row on row of blackened trunks surrounded by spindly, drought-choked pines. Promoting his proposal to cut back on the regulatory and court reviews that have slowed or stopped tree-cutting projects on federal land, Bush said "well-meaning people" had put in place "a lot of rules and regulations" that caused kindling to build up, fueling this summer's fires.
"The decades of neglect, the decades of failed policy have meant that our forest fires are incredibly hot, incredibly catastrophic," he said. "Our job is to slice through the red tape and to get thinning projects moving forward."
Chris Mehl, a Wilderness Society official in Montana, said Bush "is going to do more environmental stuff in the next three weeks than he has done in the last three years," and derided the approach as "policy by photo op."
Bush alienated environmentalists early in his presidency with his decision to withdraw from the Kyoto global-warming treaty, and he has drawn criticism for an energy plan that emphasizes increased production, including oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; for a rollback of Clinton administration restrictions on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park; and for a proposal that critics contend would delay emissions restrictions on chemical plants.
With polls giving Democrats a 2-1 advantage over Bush for handling of the environment, some Republican strategists view the issue as his biggest impediment toward his goal of attracting suburban voters -- especially women and those on the coasts.
A strategist close to the White House said suburban voters do not cite the environment as their most important issue, but many of them do not want Bush to be "intolerable" on the issue.
Bush's visit Monday, and his three upcoming environmental events, were staged in connection with campaign fund-raisers. Bush carried Arizona by 6 points in 2000, but he has slipped in recent polls there. He lost Oregon by less than half a percentage point and lost Washington by 5 points. Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser, has singled out both states as likely to be in play next year.
A member of Bush's campaign team, who refused to be named, called the environmental tour "vintage Rove: Take it to the other guy, and close as many gaps as you possibly can."
Bush said Monday that his Healthy Forests Initiative, which has been partially adopted in differing bills passed in the House and the Senate Agriculture Committee, would reduce catastrophic fires through more aggressive thinning of undergrowth and brush. In remarks at Inspiration Rock picnic area, with his sleeves rolled up and charred stumps behind him, Bush called federal disaster assistance for firefighting "a legitimate role of the federal government."
But he warned of the "legal wrangling" and "delays in our courts" that postpone thinning projects. Bush said his administration is "speeding up the process of environmental assessment and consultation now required by current law, while considering both the health of the forests and our obligation to protect endangered species."
"There will be objections. We want those objections heard, of course," he said. "But we want the process to work quickly so we can get on about the business of saving our forests."
At the mountain's base, opponents held a rally with people who lost homes in the Aspen fire. Brian Segee, Southwest public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said Bush's plan would have done little to stem the fire's effects. "The only substance here is dismantling environmental regulations, without any of the funds that are needed to protect these communities," he said. |
