Over the Edge

EVERY TIME be opens his mouth, Interior Secretary James Watt--the Elmer Fudd look-alike who wants to turn America's wilderness into an ecological charnel house--provides fresh proof that he is about as fit to run the Interior Department as your average fox is to guard a chicken coop.

Watt's remarks in two interviews made public last week were no exception to this rule. On the cable TV program "Conservative Counterpoint," Watt claimed that Indian reservations exemplify the failures of Russian-style socialism. Watt argued that Indians' dependence on government handouts explain the reservations' high rates of alcoholism, unemployment, and venereal disease.

Some Indian leaders welcomed Watt's recognition that the reservations face series problems. But most were puzzled by the Secretary's omission of some decidedly non-socialist government actions that have contributed to the American Indian's troubles over the year--from the warfare and broken treaties of the 1800's to the present Administration's cutbacks in Indian housing, health, and nutrition programs.

Even more bizarre was Watt's assertion in a recent Business Week interview that the American environmentalist movement is a totalitarian front. In Watt's view, environmentalists only pretend to care about fish, fowl, and forests. Their more sinister real purpose is to bring "central planning" to the American economy and to "subordinate the dignity of man." It's night-malish vision to be sure--just imagine Woodsy the Owl in jackboots with a club--but a little improbable.

Watt apparently wanted to portray environmentalists as subversive extremists so that his own rapacious policies would seem moderate by comparison. A Harris survey in the same issue of Business Week, however, showed that Americans overwhelmingly support tighter environmental regulations, despite their costs. The simple truth is that Watt himself is the extremist, concern for the environment has earned a firm position within the mainstream of American political opinion. By contrast. What's own recent shenanigans in Washington--such as revoking "protected" status for thousands of acres of land in the Midwest while Congress was in recess--betray a dangerous distregard for public wishes.

Watt's McCarthyist attack on the environmental movement was more than just clumsy. It demonstrated once again the secretary's belief that no one who disagrees with him can still be a good American. In other words, Watt seems quite confused about the difference between democratic political debate and scheming. It's an important distinction, and one that public' servants should be able to handle with ease.

When former Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), now president of the Wilderness Society, heard of Watt's remarks, he said: "The secretary has gone bonkers. It's time the white-coat people took him away." Such action may yet prove justified. But for now, we'd be satisfied if the White House people would come for Watt's resignation.