McCain on the Environment

Brad Plumer examines the record. It's kind of puzzling. One would hope for something as simple as "he talks a good game, but it's all a huge lie!!!!!" but it's not all a huge lie. But there's little in the way of a coherent pattern. As on other domestic policy issues, a lot of McCain's thinking on these subjects doesn't look to me like thinking at all; more like a baseline conservatism-without-real-commitment plus sporadic pique-driven deviations. This is kind of distressing:

Trying to explain McCain's wildly erratic record on environmental issues is a maddening task. "We never know where he's going to come from," says Debbie Sease, the legislative director of the Sierra Club. "As a general rule, on land and conservation issues ... he tends to be pretty good. But he's a doctrinaire conservative on the role of government in protecting people from pollution."

That kind of fits the idea of trying to be a TR for the 21st century. But I think it stands the merits of these issues on their heads. I think even pretty serious libertarians would tell you that some kind of regulations aimed at preventing pollution make sense. On land issues, by contrast, the merits are often murky even from an environmental point of view. In theory you can take land and put it in the hands of benevolent regulators who protect it from over-logging, unsound mining, etc. More often, though, you put it into the hands of regulators who work for politicians who take bribes campaign contributions from logging and mining interests and wind up letting the companies have their way with the land at sub-market prices.

The overall picture of the domestic McCain continues to be of a kind of ignorant conservatism punctuated by bursts of thoughtless stabs at reform.

Comments

This inconsistency on land conservation (yay!) versus environmental legislation (boo!) is not unique to McCain. It's the median-voter position (or maybe it was until Gore's movie). Plenty of spineless politicians have adopted that stance. Witness the number of Republican governors who crow about the number of acres of land they protected during their term of office. Of course, the epitome here is Jeb Bush and the Everglades, where the state policy became Spend Any Amount of Public Money But Do Nothing That Harms Industry or Development.

Posted by Marshall | March 5, 2008 12:31 PM

The overall picture of the domestic McCain continues to be of a kind of ignorant conservatism punctuated by bursts of thoughtless stabs at reform.

This kind of indirectly sums up my view on McCain. He wants to be a better person than he is, in terms of intellect, character, vision, etc. He wants to be a noble, high-minded politician, but he tells jokes about rivals' kids, laughs along with calling Clinton a bitch, and will get down and dirty when cornered. He wants to be principled and straight-talky, but staffs his campaign with lobbyists, 'cause that's who his friends and allies are; he talks a good, moral game about torture, but votes for it when his political survival depends on it; and he embraces hate-filled bigots because he needs their support to win. He talks about America being a force for good in the world, but thinks the way to do that is to bomb people into submission. He wants to protect the environment, buy doesn't actually want to, you know, do anything about it.

Posted by Jim | March 5, 2008 12:40 PM

that sounds a lot like the Teddy Roosevelt conservationism that Peter Huber recommends in "Hard Green".

Posted by Chris | March 5, 2008 12:40 PM

On land issues, by contrast, the merits are often murky even from an environmental point of view. In theory you can take land and put it in the hands of benevolent regulators who protect it from over-logging, unsound mining, etc. More often, though, you put it into the hands of regulators who work for politicians who take bribes campaign contributions from logging and mining interests and wind up letting the companies have their way with the land at sub-market prices.

Well, individual land policies may be good or may be bad. That's no different than popllution control policies, of course. But land and conservation issues are the most important environmental issues in our country today. Habitat protection is far, FAR more important an issue than global warming.

Posted by Al | March 5, 2008 12:46 PM

I agree that habitat conservation is important, but what's your support for it being far, FAR more important than global warming? If climate change continues apace, then a whole bunch of habitats would be threatened, anyway.

Posted by Adam Villani | March 5, 2008 1:21 PM

I think even pretty serious libertarians would tell you that some kind of regulations aimed at preventing pollution make sense.

What's McMegan say?

Take advantage of your inter-magazine closeness. Or is she not a serious libertarian?

Posted by MNPundit | March 5, 2008 1:29 PM

These types of assessments strike me as not very useful if only for the fact that these bills are so loaded up with non-germaine garbage, it's difficult to tell what anybody is really voting for or against. With somebody as unpredictable as McCain, he could be voting "green" on a particular bill just because it also includes a rider that funds some pork project in Arizona.

Posted by mike | March 5, 2008 2:00 PM

The overall picture of the domestic McCain continues to be of a kind of ignorant conservatism punctuated by bursts of thoughtless stabs at reform.

I'd have said the picture many of us have of the domestic McCain is while watching him on teevee punctuated by bursts of uncontrollable laughter.

Posted by Jemand von Niemand | March 5, 2008 5:00 PM

Habitat protection is far, FAR more important an issue than global warming.

Al, we disagree about global warming, but let's table that. I'm curious why you think habitat protection is more important than pollution prevention of our air, water, food, etc.

Posted by djw | March 5, 2008 6:45 PM

I think the truth about McCain is that his whole career has been personality driven. He has no real ideology, no real philosophy, no real core values, no real loyalties. He just shoots from the hip on everything, and all his positions simply represent his own idiosyncratic take on the world, regardless of facts and studies of the issue and guiding philosophies. He reacts to everything personally, and thinks this is the same as integrity. He says what he thinks, and confuses this with truthfulness. His whole political campaign is based on his own personae, his own biography, because he doesn't have anything else to base it on. And it depends entirely on us trusting John McCain's instincts to "do the right thing", when in fact those instincts have a pretty lousy track record.

Posted by conradg | March 5, 2008 10:03 PM