ONRC seems to have been pretty successful at avoiding political partisanship. Was that a conscious decision?
When you look at the environmental movement there has been a lot of discussion about this. A lot of good environmental things happened under Richard Nixon. Andy Kerr’s analysis has been, and I’m not sure if I agree with this totally, is that Ronald Reagan polarized the movement in the sense that the Democrats became the environmental party and the Republicans were the anti-environmental forces. I know that James Monteith, for example, when he was director [of ONRC] always registered as a Republican. He talked about Teddy Roosevelt being a Republican and made the effort to make things bipartisan. We didn’t want to get into the position of saying that unless you’re a registered Democrat, you couldn’t be for the environment. I don’t know if we were really successful at that.
I remember us making a swipe at the Reagan Administration in one of our membership brochures and one of our board members pointed out that we may have alienated a person who might have otherwise supported us. It still comes down to looking at who is voting which way, but there was a point in time when even Mark Hatfield could say, in all honesty, that he supported the Endangered Species Act. But Hatfield and other Republicans will say that they never expected it to be applied as it has been. I think what really happened was that Hatfield and other Republicans were arrogant enough to believe their own propaganda too much. They never thought, in so developing the earth, species would become threatened or endangered. They really did think that logging made it [the land] better and there would be more species. Earlier on they might have gone along with protection of the environment, but now they’re having second thoughts. But I also think that it became obvious in the 104th Congress that the environment still pulls well with the public, that you don’t run for reelection in most of the country by being anti-environment. Overall, I think that has served as our greatest strength.
I think it has been a slow progression over the past two decades where the Democratic Party has been associated with more pro-environmental legislation. The way I cynically look at it is that with the Democrats you have a chance to
present your case–I’m broad brushing this because there are notable exceptions in both parties. With the Republicans you’re basically shut out. But I don’t, by any means, feel when the Democrats are in control of Congress that our gravy train has come home, or that we have it all our way. It’s just that we have a chance to make our case. They still want to know where the votes are if they do what we want them to do. I don’t know where Andy [Kerr] read this, but somebody talked to FDR once about whatever the issue was and he replied, “You’ve convinced me, now make me do it.” Which was to say, provide now the political reason [for me] to do it, that I’m not comfortable yet. Our greatest strength is that the populous as a whole believes that the environment should be protected. Our greatest weakness is that the populous doesn’t get into the detail of what is happening, so a lot of abuse can occur before an awareness happens.
