I don't believe that American leaders should pay a whole lot of attention to the never ending howls of outrage from the anti-energy activists. But neither do I believe that American leaders should first give the appearance of accepting the position that carbon-based fuels are bad, and then “discover” that they think otherwise once they are safely in office. This cannot lead to good things.
I don't think that Mr. Bush intentionally misled voters when he campaigned on two clearly contradictory policies. And I advocated his decision not to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant. But I also think that his failure to anticipate the need to pick between placating the alarmism of the global warming crowd and satisfying the evidently burgeoning energy requirements of the free American economy is revealing. It shows a disproportionate confidence in the reliability of management techniques over the decisiveness of argument and reasoning about evidence. It has demonstrated the kind of trouble a leader can get into when he concentrates more on being pleasing than on reasoning from principles to the correct policy choice.
President Bush's letter explaining his decision states fairly well the pragmatic reasons that regulation of carbon dioxide would be foolish: “At a time when California has already experienced energy shortages, and other Western states are worried about price and availability of energy this summer, we must be very careful not to take actions that could harm consumers. This is especially true given the incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change and the lack of commercially available technologies for removing and storing carbon dioxide.” In short, regulating carbon dioxide would be an economic disaster and we don't have much reason to think that it would be a good thing anyway.
It was as clear six months ago as it is today that there is no compelling scientific evidence to support the claim that we are experiencing human induced catastrophic global climate change. The scientific models positing this thesis are problematic and deeply controversial among qualified experts – political correctness notwithstanding. Certainly, any enthusiasm for federal co2 regulation is not only utterly premature, but likely to be environmentally counterproductive. Why didn't the Bush campaign simply say so?
But it was also as clear six months ago as it is today that any plan to regulate carbon dioxide emissions would have draconian economic effects, and that those effects would begin with a dramatic increase in the cost of energy. Global warming true believers can reasonably ask why the President didn't notice the need to reconcile these facts until this week. The two pledged policies were contradictory, and when events forced the President to choose, he appears to have conducted a serious review and made the right choice. My objection is to an apparently habitual disinclination on the part of current political leadership to realize that policy choices can be contradictory – and contradictory policy, because it is incoherent, undermines responsible self-government. Such contradictions may not be evident right away, particularly to politicians who are not as interested in the principles from which policy choices arise as they are in the effort to satisfy the desires of many groups of citizens. But when government pursues actions which force it to contradict itself, it inevitably does violence to any right understanding of either of the policy goals which are in conflict. And when leaders give the impression that both sides of a policy dispute will gain satisfaction, the losing side is set up for keen disappointment.
The comment of Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, was typical of such disappointment in the wake of the Bush decision: “So much for an administration that was trying to appear to care about the environment. The president has acknowledged that global warming is one of the most important environmental issues we face, and one of his first acts is to walk away from his most explicit environmental promise.” While I think that global warming is not one of the most important environmental issues we face, I certainly understand the frustration of those who do, and believed that the president did as well.
How important is it for leaders to make clear from the beginning the principles on which they will make decisions? I believe it is crucial to successful statesmanship. A leader must be interested in making the right case for policy, and in articulating principles that will enable those he leads, and other leaders, to anticipate with confidence the decisions he will make.
It is a truism in foreign affairs that unpredictability in diplomacy is dangerous, leading to miscalculations on the part of other nations, and sometimes to war. In important ways this is just as true in domestic policy. The “environmental community” is angrier today then they would have been if President Bush had been clearer about his priorities from the beginning. And whenever a leader responsible to the people postpones making such tough choices, his eventual decisions all too often cannot even plausibly be claimed to have the consent of the governed. Occasionally, no doubt, the statesman is wise to guard the secret of his ultimate purpose, and the elative ranking of his principles of policy choice. But generally he should make the best case, early and often, for principles that can form the basis for an informed judgment by the citizenry. Then he should choose policy on the basis of such principles, and expect the citizens who elected him to recognize those policies as the fruit of their own choice at the ballot box.
President Bush has tended to keep his distance from such preemptive explanations of policy. In the campaign, and in the early weeks of his administration, he has avoided any suggestion that he is much encumbered by the need to consult a systematic moral or political philosophy that would impel him to certain conclusions, and thus to certain policies. Whatever escape he has thus engineered from the political conflicts of an ideological age has come at a price of which the environmentalist response to his reversal on carbon dioxide is but a foretaste.
On tax cuts, the budget, abortion, and a host of other issues, policy choices must be made, and reasons given for those choices. Perhaps more accurately, reasons for those choices must themselves be chosen. The President will eventually have to decide whether he is going to think about taxes in terms of the static socialist concept of redistributive “fairness” demanded by the Democrats, or in terms of the dynamic reality of a free economy that will explode in wealth creation if government ceases to punish those who do the creating. He will have to decide if he will challenge the homosexual agenda with a more ringing statement of belief than he did in the debates, in which he sandwiched the less-than-inspiring remark that “I just happen to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman,” with multiple protestations of his great “tolerance.” He will have to decide whether to permit, as is apparently happening, diversity quotas in the choice of nominees to the federal bench. And sooner or later, he will have to decide, either in the current stem cell “research” battle, or in subsequent debates, whether he will defend the immutable principle of human equality from its greatest assault – in the womb.
Mixed signals have been given by a president who does not naturally or easily consider the fundamental reasons for policy choices. But when he acts he will necessarily make political losers out of some people who had thought he was on their side. The temptation for the losers to believe that the president is moved more by political calculation than by public interest may well grow.
Our Founders declared to the world the reasons that impelled them to political separation from England, and to revolution. Similar declarations of principle by political leaders, wisely considered and wisely made, can do much to maintain steadiness of purpose, prevent miscalculation by friend or foe, and preserve a standard by which political decisions can be judged. Consistency of principle provides insurance against the suggestion that policy choices are determined by backroom pressure or financial interest. Ultimately, the most important reason for political leaders to work hard to clarify the principles by which they will make decisions is that such work is essential to preserving the leader's own understanding of those principles. This time, the president's miscalculation has resulted only in frustrating the anti-energy lobby and embarrassing EPA head Christie Todd Whitman, neither of which is necessarily a bad thing. But next time there may be a real, even large, cost. The key to avoiding it is integrity – the coherent unity of the whole – in the policy choices of the Bush administration. Such integrity can only come from habitual adherence to principle, deeply pondered and proactively and carefully applied to the issues of the day. It is time for the President to be a “uniter, not a divider” of the political choices of his administration.
(Dr. Keyes recently founded and serves as chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles. To visit their website click here.)
