The land war had not been going well. The forces had been thwarted or pushed back at every turn, and the White House, although it wouldn't admit it, was frustrated.
When would it dawn on these people, they wondered, that the Bush administration was in there to help them, to liberate them from the iron-fisted tyranny of the ruling party?
How could the administration win the battles yet to come, if it couldn't win the hearts and minds of the people? And where could it best deploy its forces for a renewed campaign, to find an entry point into this place, this hostile territory, to establish a beachhead and work slowly inland, to take over the capital itself?
Of course! The seacoast! The very thing. And with that, "Operation California 2004" was underway.
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The Bush administration announced yesterday that it would not, after all, go marching up to the Supreme Court to challenge something conservatives usually adore -- state sovereignty. This was one kind of sovereignty the White House didn't much like, California's claim to a right to review any offshore drilling plans in federal waters from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara.
As it has before, the White House chose its timing cannily: a slow California news day, the Cesar Chavez holiday, when the only government stories would have to be coming out of D.C.
The administration had already swung wild and missed twice before in the federal courts on this, and the tactical decision not to take a third-strike swing with the Supremes was spun into cotton-candy sweetness. "Our administration strongly supports environmental protection and understands the importance of this issue to the people of California," announced Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
I hope Norton's inner ear is still intact, because she just did a 180 spin from last year. That's when she wrote that the reason the administration was buying back offshore oil leases to protect the coast in Florida -- home state of Bush's up-for-reelection brother, Gov. Jeb -- but not in California was because "Florida opposes coastal drilling and California does not."
Yeah, let that sink in for a minute. For almost 35 years, since the ghastly Santa Barbara oil blowout in 1969, it's been an article of faith for just about anybody who wants to get elected in California, Republican or Democrat: Thou shalt not drill for oil off the coast. Norton, who was once Colorado's attorney general, must never have come down from her Rocky Mountain High.
