Policy and Politics Collide as Obama Enters Campaign Mode

Nick Ut/Associated Press

Smog covering downtown Los Angeles. The Obama administration has delayed two major clean air rules as the White House sharpens its focus on the president's re-election.

By JOHN M. BRODER

Published: November 16, 2011

WASHINGTON — The summons from the president came without warning the Thursday before Labor Day. As she was driven the four blocks to the White House, Lisa P. Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, suspected that the news would not be good. What she did not see coming was a rare public rebuke the president was about to deliver by rejecting her proposal to tighten the national standard for smog.

The White House announced the decision the next morning, infuriating environmental and public health advocates. They called it a bald surrender to business pressure, an act of political pandering and, most galling, a cold-blooded betrayal of a loyal constituency.

“This was the worst thing a Democratic president had ever done on our issues,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “Period.”

Industry groups and their Republican allies praised the move, which leaves a far more lenient ozone rule in place for at least a year. But then they reeled off a dozen other proposed environmental, labor and health regulations they also wanted killed.

In the weeks since that decision, the administration has made a number of other environmental decisions, sending mixed messages that left both environmentalists and industry lobbyists perplexed. Two major clean air rules have been delayed, at least temporarily. The Interior Department announced a significant expansion of offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years. Last week, the administration bowed to pressure from protesters, green groups and residents and officials in Nebraska in announcing that it would delay a decision on the bitterly contested Keystone XL oil pipeline until after the 2012 election. Taken together, the moves mark the White House’s growing awareness of the costs of environmental regulation in a battered economy.

But the full retreat on the smog standard was the first and most important environmental decision of the presidential campaign season that is now fully under way. This examination of that decision, based on interviews with lobbyists on both sides, former officials and policy makers at the upper reaches of the White House and the E.P.A., illustrates the new calculus on political and policy shifts as the White House sharpens its focus on the president’s re-election.

The decision pitted Ms. Jackson, a Princeton-trained chemical engineer and self-described “New Orleans girl,” against the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, a son and brother of bare-knuckled Chicago mayors who was brought in to help repair relations with business and Congress. It also shows the clout of Cass R. Sunstein, the legal powerhouse who serves, mostly behind the scenes, as the president’s regulatory czar with the mission of keeping the costs of regulation under control. While Mr. Daley has recently given up some responsibilities at the White House, he remains the administration’s conduit for business interests. The ozone decision was jarring because it was wholly unexpected. Ms. Jackson considered resigning but soon abandoned the idea as a futile gesture.

Many of the president’s supporters remain unsettled, fearing that the ozone decision meant he was abandoning environmental issues. But White House officials cite two major vehicle emissions rules, the pipeline delay and the president’s stated promise to carry through on other clean air measures as evidence of the administration’s devotion to their causes.

                                                                     Taken by The New York Times.