The rest of the term

Feb. 15, 1999
Interior Sec. Bruce Babbitt shows the U.S. oil industry what life will be like in the last years of Bill Clinton's presidency. Unwilling as his boss is to acknowledge mistakes and make them right, Babbitt resorts to name-calling and counterattack. In defiance of Congress, his department's Minerals Management Service continues to push an oil royalty program that won't work. And Babbitt acts bitter toward the affected industry for the impasse, even accusing it of fraud.

Interior Sec. Bruce Babbitt shows the U.S. oil industry what life will be like in the last years of Bill Clinton's presidency. Unwilling as his boss is to acknowledge mistakes and make them right, Babbitt resorts to name-calling and counterattack. In defiance of Congress, his department's Minerals Management Service continues to push an oil royalty program that won't work. And Babbitt acts bitter toward the affected industry for the impasse, even accusing it of fraud.

So will things increasingly go in government as an impeached President spends the rest of his term stage-managing history. It will not be pleasant for unfavored constituencies, among which the oil and gas industry must count itself.

Antagonism

At this writing, the Senate seemed certain to acquit Clinton of both impeachment charges, perjury and obstruction of justice. In fact, the Republican-dominated Senate acted as though all it wanted was to shed itself of the controversy. When the matter ends, politics will seethe with antagonism.

Impeached but not contrite, Clinton will remain in office. He and his media manipulators will try to brush away impeachment as partisan mischief from the House of Representatives. House Republicans will feel betrayed by kindred party members in the Senate. Eventually, even the dense Senate leadership may come to recognize a need to make the world's greatest deliberative body appear to derive principle from something beyond the latest opinion poll.

In return for the lock-step loyalty they afforded a dishonored President, meanwhile, congressional Democrats will expect reward. Clinton responded with an expensive if doomed catalog of old-style Democratic spending programs in his state-of-the-union address last month. Government activism thus returns in an atmosphere of general mistrust.

Everyone knows that the President lied under oath and to the public, covered his tracks, and played cunningly with the law to dodge judgment. He was impeached for good reason. Even Senate Democrats who supported his acquittal complained about his misbehavior.

In the next 2 years, therefore, well-founded doubt will greet Clinton's every move. The fault lies with him and his mistakes. Yet, as is his habit, Clinton will respond to dissent by assaulting the motives of dissenters. His handlers will dismiss every note of discord as the rant of people who hate their man. Debating issues will be difficult. Discourse will give way to name-calling.

The administration, in other words, will lapse further into a pattern of intolerance epitomized by the Interior Secretary. In his latest outburst, Babbitt ignored congressional intent by refusing to negotiate further with the oil industry over new ways to determine production values in federal-royalty calculations. The industry agrees that old methods need change. But it argues correctly that the MMS proposal would create more problems than it solved.

So Babbitt accused the industry of fraud and declared his intention to alert Americans to "the kind of conniving that's going on in the oil industry." Such open hostility toward the oil industry characterizes Babbitt's tenure at Interior. The problem is made no less serious by the feeble peace offering with which he followed up his royalty diatribe-relaxation of federal lease terms for stripper wells hurt by low oil prices.

Babbitt's world

What's more, Babbitt can't abide views not his own. Contrary opinion makes him snarly. In his world, opponents to the administration's stance on climate change are un-American. Opponents to his quirky proposal for royalty reform are fraudulent. In this world, negotiation and compromise yield to environmental activism.

As has long been argued here, dismissive self-righteousness makes Babbitt unfit for public office. The secretary is, therefore, more than suited to the Clinton administration's final biennium. He's the prototype.

Copyright 1999 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.