Mt. Rushmore and Global Warming

Looking up at the two great Republican presidents on Mount Rushmore, today I think of what might have been.

Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, set his party up as the default choice for African Americans until Nixon's "Southern Strategy" finished off all but the most stalwart of the black GOP. (For a fascinating look at the raw data, go here.) Today, an energized black vote has delivered a traditionally Republican Mississippi District into Democratic hands. (Story here from D.C. politics guru Stu Rothenberg.) Despite the efforts of able leaders like Michael Steele and Mike Huckabee, the perception persists that the GOP tent has a "whites only" sign hanging on it. John McCain has taken some baby steps towards tearing that sign down, but his snubbing of the Tavis Smiley forum early in the primary season will linger in many minds. Huckabee showed up and did himself a world of good for 2016, but I digress greatly.

Returning to the mountaintop, Theodore Roosevelt stands as our nation's most important environmental president. While TR was no pure preservationist, he brought a true love of the outdoors with him to the White House and was friendly with men like Sierra Club founder John Muir. He protected millions of acres and set a path that leaders from both parties then followed. While Nixon may have closed the door to black America, he left it firmly open to green America by championing (or at least signing and moderately embracing) the landmark environmental laws of the era. It was President Reagan who cemented the GOP's negative status in the eye's of the environmental movement (though he possessed a profound personal love of nature) and Bush 43 (failing to build on the decent environmental legacy of his father) has allowed that sentiment to harden even more.

Global Warming offers the Republican Party a chance for environmental redemption though, and I am proud to say that John McCain is responding to the altar call. In a speech this week that included more than just the usual pretty backdrop and greenwashing rhetoric, the Arizona Senator set a bold vision for CO2 reduction:

We will cap emissions according to specific goals,
measuring progress by reference to past carbon emissions. By the year 2012, we
will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission, by 2020, a return to 1990 levels,
and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of sixty percent below
1990 levels by the year 2050.

The good news for our world is that both Obama and McCain are committed to doing something real about this problem. McCain has long been a leader on this issue, even in a party populated with warming deniers like Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. For those like myself who fervently seek to protect life in the womb, it is imperative to also advocate for a better world in which future generations yet unborn can thrive. Senator McCain has done that, and I have to think that the South Dakota rocks are cracking as Teddy breaks out into a smile.