Brian Beutler writes:

I see that John McCain is holding up David Hayes’ nomination to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department because he once wrote “the conservative political agenda in the West is grounded in hoary stereotypes about the region and its people” and that “out of this conservative world view emerges the stereotypical Western man (and it is unquestionably a ‘he’)—a rugged, gun-toting individualist who fiercely guards every man’s right to drill, mine, log, or do whatever he damn well pleases on the land…. Like Ronald Reagan before him, President Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations—the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado.” […]

On the substance, of course, Hayes is completely correct. Hayes, as noted above, is slated to do high-level work in the Interior Department. And, as McCain should recall, Reagan’s own Interior Secretary was James Watt, who’s a weird man in all kinds of ways, but, on the issues, held that federal land should just be handed over to private, polluting interests to do whatever they wanted with, particularly if that involved mining or drilling or any unsustainable practice. He didn’t care about endangered species or the water supply or anything else, not simply because he was cold hearted, but because he thought the rapture was extremely nigh! Watt hinted at those dispensationalist religious views in testimony before Congress, when he said, “That is the delicate balance the Secretary of the Interior must have, to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations. I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”

Judging by his environmental record, he presumably didn’t think we had much time left. And his record belongs to Ronald Reagan.