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Nixon and Reagan policies
Q: In closing, how do you assess the environmental policies of Presidents Nixon and Reagan?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: The environment has only been a recent discovery of President Nixon's. In his writings, he has begun to take credit for EPA and the environmental initiatives. Yet, if you look at what he did and said publicly about the environment, it is quite significant. That is not necessarily what he thought about it, however. I would prefer to have a president who really believes in his own policies, and therefore truly supports their implementation. But Nixon was pushed to action by public opinion. As a result, I think a lot was accomplished in his administration.
In the public's mind, President Reagan will get no where near as much credit, and in fact, a lot of blame for his perceived blunders in environmental affairs. But as a human being he was much more curious about the problem and probably, in his own way, more supportive than Nixon. He did little about the environment because, like Nixon, he had spent almost none of his public life on environmental issues (although as Governor of California he did have to deal with these questions on occasion).
Prior to the 1968 campaign, however, it wasn't even an issue for Mr. Nixon. I would bet he didn't spend ten minutes thinking about it. To the extent he did, he saw it as an irritant. He had somehow gotten to be a great fan of Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution. Borlaug was a scientist who advocated the use of DDT and pesticides to drastically increase farm productivity. He felt the environmental movement posed a serious threat to the green revolution (green, that is, in the agricultural sense, not in the environmental sense). He convinced Nixon that when I banned DDT, I had made a terrible decision. I didn't find this out until after I left EPA; Nixon never spoke to me about it. In fact, he never asked me about anything going on in EPA. Never. He asked me about issues involving Indiana politics or relationships with the Congress, but not about the environment. He wasn't really curious about it.
Q: Mr. Ruckelshaus, thank you for your time and insights.