Nixon and the Environment

Environmental History, Apr 2001 by Wellock, Thomas R

Nixon and the Environment. By J. Brooks Flippen. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. ix + 308 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95.

Despite a childhood in Southern California, Richard Nixon was so hopelessly disconnected from nature that he wore dress shoes to the beach. Yet, no other chief executive approved as much important environmental legislation. J. Brooks Flippen grapples with this paradox in his excellent monograph. Flippen argues that the president's motives were simply political. His was a "carefully crafted and cunningly planned" strategy to court the burgeoning environmental movement and outflank potential presidential rivals, while still protecting key business constituencies from more aggressive environmental policies (p. 62). Later, Nixon just as calculatingly abandoned environmentalists when they failed to support him, while economic stagnation, business opposition, and the energy crisis dampened public enthusiasm for further reform.

Maintaining a tight chronological focus on the development of Nixon's environmental policies, Flippen demonstrates that between 1969 and 1971 the administration crafted ambitious initiatives to peel away political moderates from the Democrats. Personally committed to the cause, Interior Secretary Walter Hickel and staffers such as John Whitaker and Russell Train played to Nixon's political pragmatism by urging him to "take the initiative away from the Democrats" and "identify the Republican Party with concern with environmental quality" (p. 47). Hoping that an activist agenda would neutralize one of Edmund Muskies issues in the 1972 presidential campaign, Nixon approved the landmark National Environmental Policy Act and legislation on clean air, national parks, endangered species, pesticides, coastal protection, and ocean dumping restrictions. As Russell Train put it, it was the Nixon era that "put into place the basic principles and framework of environmental law" (p. 227).

Despite these accomplishments, the White House gained nothing. Criticized by environmentalists, who wanted even more from him, and upstaged by Democrats in Congress, a frustrated Nixon determined to change strategy. Capitalizing on cleavages over the Vietnam War and racial issues, Nixon embraced a conservative domestic agenda, including support for industrial polluters and opposition to further reform. With his reelection assured, Nixon later sacked or reassigned most of his environmental advisors. Only Watergate blunted Nixon's conservative revolution.

Nixon and the Environment is highly recommended for students of environmental politics and policy. Flippen conducted superb interviews with key activists and officials, and solid research in the Nixon administration papers in the National Archives and the senatorial papers of Edmund Muskie and Henry Jackson. Flippen writes with flair and an exacting eye for important details buried in bureaucratic memos. In particular, this book provides a fresh perspective on the environmental movement's efficacy in accomplishing its goals. While critics often claim the movement's failures were due to its conservatism, Flippen suggests that it was single-- minded advocates and unrealistic expectations of Nixon, who could not ignore his business constituency, that destroyed bipartisan support for the environment. As David Brower told the author, "[environmentalists] did not know how to say thank you" to Nixon. He "had great promise and did great things, but we deserted him" (p. 228). Given Nixon's general rights,ard shift, bipartisan cooperation may have been doomed anyway, but the cost of the movement's militancy is still worth pondering, as is this fine book.

Reviewed by Thomas R. Wellock, assistant professor of history at Central Washington University and author of Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958-1978 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998).