Surely you've had many dealings with the House as well as the Senate. You don't need that many to have clout. If you get one or two Senators fighting your cause, unless there is hostility toward it, you can make headway. The platform states in the environmental section the importance of environmental concerns to the economy, trade and foreign policy. But inspection of those specific areas do not clearly reflect back these considerations in those sections.
Nothing is as unimportant as a party platform.
No one pays attention to it after it's been adopted. In terms of federal research dollars we're not doing the kind of research we should in any field, environment, health care, that is a deficiency. Take education as an example. The big thing here is that we should be pushing research on the electric car. California is doing more than the federal govenment by establishing standards.