Mike Leavitt's Election Protection Agency

[hatrack]

"Have a look at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt's calendar over the last several months and you'll notice that it appears to be in lockstep with the Karl Rove playbook. "I'd hardly call it coincidence," said Beth Viola, a leading environmental strategist for the Kerry campaign, "that after the EPA spends nearly four years pandering to industry, all of a sudden Leavitt is waltzing around battleground states in a green mantle -- doling out grant money, announcing new initiatives, threatening industry with enforcement actions, making amends to swing voters like hunters and anglers disgruntled about rollbacks. It's quite a show."

Leavitt's recent wave of swing-state politicking has won his agency the moniker "Election Protection Agency" in Beltway circles, according to Aimee Christensen, director of Environment2004, an organization committed to motivating voters on environmental issues. And many campaign analysts expect Bush's greenwashing efforts to intensify. Republicans still remember pollster Frank Luntz's 2003 memo declaring that, "The environment is probably the single issue on which the Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular -- are most vulnerable," a sentiment supported by subsequent Luntz polls. And in early June, Yale University released a comprehensive nationwide report in which 84 percent of respondents said the environment would be a factor in their presidential vote and 35 percent called it a "major factor."

EDIT

Maybe so, but connect the dots between the other announcements and initiatives the EPA has unveiled this election year -- and those it hasn't -- and it's hard to deny that they paint a distinctly politicized picture. In January, Bush requested new funding (albeit far less than what environmentalists deemed necessary) in the 2005 fiscal year budget to restore the Great Lakes. Leavitt has since made nearly half a dozen trips to the region, which is dense with swing states, to publicize these efforts. Meanwhile, he has faced a storm of criticism from officials and activists in that region and beyond for his failure to provide reasonable protections against mercury pollution in America's waterways. Then, in April, there was the Earth Day announcement that the Bush administration planned to move from its "no net loss" of wetlands to a new goal of an overall increase in wetlands every year. One (non-election) year earlier, the administration had proposed a controversial plan to strip federal protections from up to 20 million acres of wetlands. Critics called the move a blatant appeal to the hunting and angling community -- a traditionally Republican constituency that has been so outraged by the administration's attempted assault on wetlands that it marched on Washington in January.

EDIT

To further emphasize the EPA's commitment to clean air, Leavitt put in a feel-good public appearance in Tennessee -- another swing state. In mid-May, he traveled to Knoxville to commend a company for developing technology to limit the pollution generated by idling trucks. " ideas big enough to change the world," Leavitt beamed as he praised IdleAire Technologies Corporation. "It's stunning that he had time to do this but has refused repeatedly to meet with manufacturers of mercury-pollution filters," said Frank O'Donnell, director of Clean Air Trust. "The visit had nothing to do with policy developments of any kind. It was just another throwaway PR stunt."

EDIT

http://www.gristmagazine.com/muck/muck062204.asp