Ok, I've read the article, and it has some good and bad points. The good
points are obvious, the bad ones rather sly.
Good points.
1. It points out that Bush, in his first 100 days as president, has not
shown himself to be any more of a partisan/corporate whore than
Clinton. Probably true, but essentially meaningless...it's only the first
100 days, after all. The more interesting comparison would be to note
that Clinton, at the beginning of his term, wore his liberal credentials
on his sleeve and got heartily slapped down for doing so. GWB, by
contrast, has been working hard to keep his decisions "under the radar" so
to speak. He's not risking letting his convictions, whatever they are,
show.
2. It points out the the press tends to be fickle and alarmist and lazy.
No surprise there, especially if we're talking about major outlets for
news.
Bad points.
1. It suggests that we should project GWB's environmental stance for the
future based on his first 100 days in office (benign), and not on his
record as governor of Texas (abysmal). Silly. To suggest that looking at
GWB's first 100 days in office is the same as examining his environmental
record is likewise silly. The truth is that he doesn't have to repeal
Clinton's last-minute environmental rules directly--he has four years in
which to find ways and excuses to hamstring them, and there's no reason
for him to expose himself to condemnation stupidly and overtly.
Of course, we don't *know* that he will do that; my point here is that we
know, if fact, almost nothing of what GWB will do in the next four years,
and to try to deduce his plans from the absence of overt actions in the
first 100 days is ludicrous.
2. It suggests that his failure to immediately reverse a number of popular
Clinton decisions means that those decisions are somehow his. The new
diesel regulations is an example: at the beginning of the paragraph the
writer complains that the press isn't praising Bush for failing to repeal
them; by the end of the paragraph the writer is referring to them as
"Bush's strict new diesel rules." Huh? A nice bit "spin" there, eh?
In other words, the implication is that because he's done almost nothing
in a very short time, he should get equal pro-environment brownie
points for the things the Clinton (however belatedly) actually did do.
(Underlying this implication is the assumption that Clinton was a
scurrilous bastard and anything he did at the last minute deserves to be
repealed on principle, so environmentalists should transfer their
gratitude for Clinton's decisions to Bush, since Clinton clearly can't be
given credit for doing anything right. Ok, I'm reaching a little bit,
but since this article is about *spin* and not actually about policy, I
think I'm right.)
3. Instead of discussing what GWB might or might not do re: the
environment based on past history, the article chooses instead to lambaste
the press for not praising GWB for doing almost nothing, for or against
the environment. The article concludes that doing nothing is a good
thing, which implies that Clinton's last minute decisions and overall
approach were correct--i.e. softpedaling the biggest environmental issues
to placate business while throwing out a handful of positive decisions the
environment's way to placate environmentalists.
Ultimately, though, the article isn't about environmental policy, it's
about spin, and it's point can be summed up thusly: "Damn it, the press
practically lapped Clinton's boots whenever he did the slightest thing, so
why aren't those fickle, partisan hacks singing Bush's praises for not
repealing that skunk's last-minute attempts at legacy grabbing?" The
writer is complaining about what he sees as a unfair distribution of
positive spin and argues that Bush's failure to do bad means we should
give him credit for doing good.
In other words, the article is useless and ambivalent bullshit.
Am I right or am I right?
PS -- If, as the writer suggests, the Kyoto agreement as it stands is a)
dead on arrival in Congress, and b) undesired by Europe's governments as
well, who only want to lay the blame on America for killing the deal, then
by actually killing it Bush actually played into the hands of the EU by
giving them a convenient scapegoat. A competent politician who had
America's interests at heart would have kept the possibility of a Kyoto
agreement alive by offering compromise amendments, rather like Clinton,
thus keeping the possibility of negotiation open and refusing to let the
EU community slough its share of the obligation and blame on to the US.
On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, John D. Giorgis wrote:
> I know that many of you think that President Bush is in the pocket of Big
> Oil companies, and is making it his business to roll back the environmental
> initiatives of the Clinton years. Guess again - Greg Easterbrook and the
> New Republic have examined Bush's enviornmental record. Turns out that
> Bush is much greener than you think:
> http://www.tnr.com/043001/easterbrook043001.html
> __________________________________________________________
> John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
> "The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
> majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
> to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
>
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
