Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Sally Jewell: Locked in the Obama Cabinet?

BY JOEL CONNELLY, SEATTLEPI.COM

The nomination of Recreational Equipment Inc. boss Sally Jewell as U.S. Secretary of the Interior, earlier this year,  seemed like a breath of fresh air for a department charged with both protecting and exploiting vast swaths of the American earth.

Jewell was a highly successful CEO who grew Seattle-based REI, an accomplished outdoors explorer, and a civic activist genuinely committed to getting America's increasingly sedentary youth out into God's great out-of-doors.

The thick air of Washington, D.C., can slow you down, however, and the political climate of dealing with the White House can be as tricky as the summit of a Cascade volcano sheathed in a lenticular cloud.

Conservation activists in both Washingtons, and points in between, worry that Jewell is off to a slow start.  So far,  it seems --  to steal the phrase of ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich -- that she is locked in the Cabinet.

"I think 'This Town' just eats non-political people alive:  It's fine to be an outsider and bring a different perspective, but you still need to operate in the most political climate on the planet,'" said Marc Johnson of Gallatin Public Affairs, who worked for a great Interior Secretary, Cecil Andrus.

A trio of worries about Jewell, and ways out:

--Get out of the rut of photo opportunities:  In the eyes of the White House, jokes one who has worked there, a Cabinet secretary's role is like the owner of an auto dealership.  The job is to sell the model off the showroom floor, not participate in its design. Cecil Andrus, in an e-mail, was blunt on what Secretary Jewell needs to do:   "She has to quit playing to the PR trips and do a few substantive actions that will put her in control, and not the staff that now seems to be running things."  Or as Bruce Babbitt, as President Clinton's Interior Secretary, used to say:  "You gotta get into the field and into the mix of problem solving."

--Install your own people:  The best recent Interior secretaries, working politicians, brought trusted aides with them to the Interior building at 18th & C. Streets in Washington, D.C.  They shared the boss' agenda and could direct the bureaucracy. Jewell is badly in need of a consigliere, who has the boss' back, as well as what Johnson describes as "loyal, smart, capable people who can help navigate the politics of dysfunction." Politics ain't bean bag, in words of a famous political truism, especially in dealings with a White House that wants to run your department. "The bureaucracy will eat her up if she just responds to the daily ebb and flow of the Department of Interior and travels endlessly on the bureaucracy's agenda," warned Johnson.

--Connect with the President:  Obama does not have nature in his soul.  Neither did Bill Clinton.  Still, Babbitt was able to coax the 42nd president out of Martha's Vineyard into two poll-driven vacations in the Rockies.  Andrus hooked Jimmy Carter on fly fishing, and took him down the Middle Fork of Idaho's Salmon River. The Interior Department is on the outer reaches of the President's concerns.  The post doesn't have a lot of personal connection unless the Secretary is a political buddy of the POTUS.  Or unless the Interior Secretary is a strong-willed advocate. Stewart Udall, under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was such an advocate.  We have a North Cascades National Park, in part, as a result.

--Set a bold agenda:  The land conservation stance of the Obama White House can be summed up in three words:  Don't bother us.  Don't ask us to protect anything unless there is unanimity behind it and no political cost. Even then, as we saw with the San Juan Islands National Monument, to process has taken pressure and seemingly lasted forever. In contrast, the Obama administration has been overly eager to open federal lands and offshore areas to oil and gas leasing.  It has done little to encourage extended reach drilling in which the land is not disturbed.




 

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