Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
sought to extract as high a political price as possible for their eventual
approval of Reagan's initiatives by undercutting the credibility of his
administrators and publicly questioning the wisdom of his policies.
31
Tech-
nically, whomever Reagan appointed to administer federal agencies served
not only the president but also Congress. In the early 1980s, Democrats
used hearings to rein in Reagan's aggressive policymakers by reminding
them— and the American public— of their dependence on Congress.
32
The hearings also provided a forum for professional environmentalists
to voice opposition to Reagan's appointments and environmental policies,
a complement to mobilizing their constituents against the new president.
Ironically, while Watt was a walking catastrophe for the environment itself,
his objectionable and often reckless antienvironmental rhetoric helped
spark a revival of America's environmental movement. In the midst of their
political and policy defeats at the hands of Watt and the Reagan adminis-
tration, environmental organizations of all stripes— alongside traditional
liberal interest groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the
National Organization for Women— saw their memberships mushroom.
In the aggregate, these organizations experienced a 33 percent increase in
fund-raising returns in 1981, in large part from the combination of direct-
mail campaigns and press coverage of Watt's confirmation hearings.
33
The resurgence spoke to the ongoing realignment of the politically
fragmented environmental movement with the mainstream Democratic
left. The traditional conservation movement had deep Republican roots;
but as David Brower of Friends of the Earth and former Republican gover-
nor of Delaware and head of the Audubon Society Russell Peterson inti-
mated in the Watt hearings, the new administration's policies threatened
to accelerate a recent trend away from the Republican Party among the
conservation movement's rank and file.34
34
Meanwhile, as leaders within
more liberal organizations like the Sierra Club and Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC) saw friendly old-guard Republican conserva-
tionists like Russell Train and William Ruckelshaus increasingly margin-
alized in favor of administrators like Watt and Gorsuch, they too moved
steadily to the left.
35
The confrontational Watt hearings set the tone for Democrats' con-
gressional response to the Reagan antienvironmental revolution, but it was
the administration's energy policy that became the shared focal point for
Reagan's political, scientific, and environmental critics. Led in the House
