"You're the enforcer," President Nixon told William D. Ruckelshaus when he swore him in as the Environmental Protection Agency's first administrator. As an afterthought, he added: "You're going to be called a lot worse."
Surprisingly, after a full year in office, Ruckelshaus, 39, has not been called anything a lot worse. Environmentalists generally praise the big, bespectacled ex-Justice Department lawyer as Nixon's best appointment. Even businessmen temper their complaints. In Washington, one good-humoredly introduced Ruckelshaus (who comes from a long line of Indiana Republicans) as "the greatest friend of American industry since...
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