John McCain’s Role – Watching John McCain’s concession speech the other night, I was struck by the sincerity in his pledge to help the new President with the work ahead. Here’s an article from AP, via Yahoo, that gives me further food for thought: Democrats say McCain can help mediate standoffs.
McCain has a track record on climate change. He was one of the first, and still among the relatively few, Congressional Republicans to support a cap-and-trade regime. See his campaign website for more on his view.
He could and should play the role in the Senate, and beyond that, in his party, of an outspoken proponent of tough climate change legislation. Given their losses on Tuesday, the Republican Party could very well circle the wagons and let extremists like Jim Inhofe lead their efforts, as they allowed him to do for several years while he was the Environment and Public Works Committee Chair. One of the most prominent moderate Republican proponents of a cap-and-trade regime, John Warner, has left the Senate. So it could very well fall to McCain, and I think to the outspokenly progressive moderate Republican Senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, to help bring their caucus into line with the stunning reality of what we’re up against.
Epic Battle in the House – As I’ve noted here any number of times, the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its powerful chair, John Dingell, have a huge amount of juice when it comes to climate change and energy legislation. See this and this, for instance, for some background from me at the blog, and this from the Committee website on Dingell and climate change.
Now comes a shocking bit of news: The second-most senior Democrat on the Committee, Henry Waxman, will challenge Dingell for the chairmanship. See this article from “The Hill” and Waxman’s statement.
At first blush, you might think this is a surprise, but if you look back at nearly 30 years of history, you’ll see that Waxman and Dingell have been butting heads for a while. From 1979 to 1994, Rep. Waxman chaired the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. Waxman was one of the principal architects of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments that, among other things, introduced the acid rain title that was the first deployment of a cap-and-trade regime. When I was working on acid rain back in the 1980’s with the Sierra Club, their battles were already legendary. Waxman is tough, smart and a progressive. He’s got a good claim to the chairmanship. If you think that his presence in that role will help drive strong legislation further and faster, then you’ve got to be rooting for him. Suffice it to say, he is in Speaker Pelosi’s inner circle and would not be making this bid without her blessing. See Waxman’s bio here and the webpage devoted to his work on global warming legislation.
The sonorous crashing of antlers between these two enormous bull moose is already sounding on Capitol Hill.
