Michael Grunwald - The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise

O N DECEMBER 11, 2000, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in George W. Bush, et al. v. Albert Gore Jr., et al., the partisan battle royale that would end the stalemate over the Florida recount and send one of the litigants to the White House. The deadlocked election had exposed a divided nation, and pundits were describing Governor Bushs Red America and Vice President Gores Blue America as if they were separate countries at war. After five weeks of ferocious wrangling over pregnant chads and hanging chads, hard-liners in both camps were warning of an illegitimate presidency, a constitutional crisis, a bloodless coup.

Inside the Courts marble-and-mahogany chambers, Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire watched the legal jousting with genuine awe. Smith was one of the hardest of Red Americas hardliners, a passionate antiabortion, antigay, antitax Republican, and he believed he was watching a struggle for the soul of his country. Smith was also a former small-town civics teacher, less jaded than most of his colleagues in Congress, and Bush v. Gore was a civics lesson for the ages, a courtroom drama that would decide the leader of the free world. It doesnt get any bigger than this, he thought.

But less than an hour into the proceedings, Smith suddenly walked out on history, squeezing his six-foot-five, 280-pound frame past his perplexed seatmates. Excuse me, he whispered. Excuse me. A bear of a man with fleshy jowls, a bulbous nose, and a sloppy comb-over, Smith could feel the stares as he lumbered down the center aisle, then jostled through the hushed standing-room crowd to the exit. Excuse me. Excuse me.

Smiths abrupt departure looked like one of his unorthodox protests, like the time he brandished a plastic fetus on the Senate floor, or the time he announced he was resigning from the Republican Party because it was cutting too many big-government deals with the Democrats. Smith was an unabashed ideologue, rated the most conservative and the most frugal senator by various right-wing interest groups. He had voted against food stamps and Head Start, clamored for President Bill Clintons impeachment, and even mounted his own quixotic campaign for president on a traditional-values platform.

But this was no protest. Smith was rushing to the White House, to celebrate a big-government deal with the Democrats.

At the height of the partisan war over the Florida recount, President Clinton was signing a bipartisan bill to revive the Florida Everglades, a $7.8 billion rescue mission for sixty-nine endangered species and twenty national parks and refuges. It was the largest environmental restoration project in the history of the planet, and Smith had pushed it through Congress with classic liberal rhetoric, dismissing its price tag as just a can of Coke per citizen per day, beseeching his colleagues to save this treasure as our legacy to our children and grandchildren. So after his dash from the Court, he headed straight to the Cabinet Room, where he exchanged congratulations with some of the Democratic Partys top environmentalists, like Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, the former head of the League of Conservation Voters, and White House aide George Frampton, the former head of the Wilderness Society. And Smith was not even the most surprising guest in the West Wing that day.

That was Floridas Republican governor, another key supporter of the Everglades plan, a former Miami developer named Jeb Bush. As the world waited to hear whether his brother would win his state and succeed their fathers successor in the White House, Jeb was already there, staring out at the Rose Garden with the air of a quarterback who had stumbled into the opposing locker room near the end of the Super Bowl. The last time I was here, your father was president! one lobbyist told him. Jeb tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace. One Clinton appointee began babbling about the Cuban Missile Crisispossibly the last time that room had felt that tense. Jeb even said hi to a Miami congresswoman who had publicly accused him of suppressing black votes. This, thought Jebs top environmental aide, is as surreal as politics can get.

Unless, that isbut no, Vice President Gore, a key architect of the Everglades plan, stayed home to listen to the Supreme Court audiotape. I was really proud of what we accomplished in the Everglades, Gore later recalled. But I was in a pretty pitched battle that day.

At 1:12 P.M., an ebullient President Clinton invited everyone into the Oval Office, the room that George W. Bush liked to say needed a good scrubbing. If the president was upset about Gores plight, or Jebs presence, or the legacy of impeachment, or his imminent move to the New York suburbs, the legendary compartmentalizer hid it well. This is a great day! he said. We should all be very proud. He used eighteen ceremonial pens to sign the bill, graciously handing the first souvenir to Jeb. Senator Smith quipped that it was lucky Clintons name wasnt Cornelius Snicklefritzer, or else the ceremony might never end. The president threw his head back and laughed. Wow, thought his chief of staff, John Podesta, this is like a Fellini movie.

If Floridas political swamp was tearing Americans apart, Floridas actual swamp had a knack for bringing people together. The same Congress that had been torn in half by Clintons impeachment had overwhelmingly approved his plan for the Everglades, after lobbyists for the sugar industry and the Audubon Society walked the corridors of Capitol Hill arm-in-arm. The same Florida legislature that was in turmoil over Bush v. Gore had approved Everglades restoration without a single dissenting vote.

At a press conference after the ceremony, Jeb sidestepped the inevitable Bush v. Gore questions to highlight this unity: In a time when people are focused on politics, and theres a little acrimonyI dont know if yall have noticedthis is a good example of how, in spite of all that, bipartisanship is still alive. Reporters shouted follow-ups about the Court, but the governor cut them off with a smile. No, no, no, no, youre going the wrong way on that one. Were here to talk about something thats going to be long-lasting, way past counting votes. This is the restoration of a treasure for our country.

TODAY, EVERYONE AGREES that the Everglades is a national treasure. Its a World Heritage Site, an International Biosphere Reserve, the most famous wetland on earth. Its a cultural icon, featured in Carl Hiaasen novels, Spiderman comics, country songs, and the opening credits of CSI: Miami, as well as the popular postcards of its shovel-faced alligators and spindly-legged wading birds. Its the ecological equivalent of motherhood and apple pie; when an aide on NBCs The West Wing was asked the most popular thing the president could do for the environment, he immediately replied: Save the Everglades.