A CONTEST OF IDEAS TAKES SHAPE IN U.S.

Concerning the imminent administration of Bill Clinton, a few conclusions can now be drawn. In accordance with the president-elect's political ideology and party affiliation, the administration will be unapologetically activist. And in obedience to political pressures that shaped the election, it will make economic growth its priority. Those conclusions were foreordained. Only in recent weeks has it become clear that, procedurally, the Clinton administration also will be a contest of

Dec. 21, 1992

3 min read

Last week's economic summit provides a case in point. Theatrics may have triumphed over policy making in the affair. But the image of a president-elect attentive to ideas from a variety of sources squares with the ideological diversity of Clinton's early cabinet and other appointments. He wants to preside in a crossfire of ideas. "It's almost as if two separate administrations were taking shape: solid fiscal conservatives for economic policy on the one hand and passionate liberals for environmental and social policy on the other," Phillips Petroleum Co. Chairman C.J. Silas said last week at an Arthur Andersen & Co. conference in Houston. "Our next president seems to enjoy surrounding himself with advisers who have conflicting views."

INTERNAL THREAT

For the oil and gas industry, an activist administration leavened with liberals should be no worse than the indifferent government that came before. The industry's main threat may be internal. Companies and trade associations, many still cutting staff and budgets, may be too lean to participate fully and persuasively in the contest of ideas now taking shape. What a shame. If the industry doesn't align its ideas with national economic imperatives and promote them vigorously within the Clinton administration, other interests will prevail.

The industry, for example, should not be comforted into inaction by Clinton's campaign statements about regulation of drilling and production wastes. Carol Browner, his choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is a professional environmentalist with a reputation for erring on the side of preservation. The approach, economic poison disguised as common sense, will appeal to some when Congress takes up reauthorization of hazardous waste laws. Coming from an EPA administrator supported by a hypergreen vice-president, it might even persuade Clinton to change his stance on the petroleum exemption. To keep that from happening, the industry will have to show how damage to its interests-drilling and producing activities-harms national interests such as jobs and economic growth and how it would conflict with other Clinton objectives, such as oil import reduction.

NO APPARENT HOSTILITY

An activist, liberal-leaning government would be especially troubling if its leader were by nature hostile toward the oil and gas industry. But Clinton shows no such tendency. He even made Arkla Inc. Chairman Thomas McLarty, a friend since childhood, White House chief of staff. So far, the industry has reason to believe its ideas will be heard if it formulates them with care and promotes them with force.

A pared-down industry thus must build to an activism of its own. It should have no trouble developing ideas about industry and national interests; its products are as essential as ever to U.S. security and economic health. The challenge is to advance those ideas in competition with the others that will emerge.

It won't be easy. There there will be no certain, readily measurable returns. In contests of ideas, no one wins all the time. But nonparticipants always lose.