Certainly, westerners and Republicans have reason to gripe. Clinton is running roughshod over them because he knows monuments and roadless forests sell back East. Public lands are political lands, and Democrats can play the same electoral game Republicans have played so artfully since Reagan's ascendancy. Still, there is substance to what Clinton is doing. Republican silence on the environment is also rooted in a misreading of the polls.
Conservation is way down on the list of voter concerns.
George W. Bush, McCain, and the other GOP aspirants see this as a reprieve from having to deal with their party's Achilles' heal. But no other issue, save jobs, touches the personal lives of Americans more than the quality of their living environments. Voters may not be voicing environment as a national concern, but the subject engages tens of millions of them daily. If November's vote is close, the margin of victory could well be green in hue. Some Republicans are tickled pink by wilderness.