The right’s resistance to regulation
James Watt, who served as Secretary of the Interior from 1981 to 1983, is remembered primarily for a short, business-friendly tenure that ended with his resignation soon after an ill-judged remark about women, minorities and the disabled. And yet, as MIT professor Judith Layzer observes in her new book about environmental politics, “Open for Business,” there is good reason to regard Watt’s impact differently.For one thing, Watt, among others on the political right, managed to cut government funding for conservation efforts. For another, he installed staff members who emphasized the development of natural resources, rather than just the protection of land. In so doing, Watt was one of many Republicans who instituted fundamental changes in U.S. environmental policy. “I will build an institutional memory that will be here for decades,” Watt once said of his department, as Layzer recounts.These kinds of under-the-radar changes, Layzer argues, are one of two ways...