How Green Was Bill?

Clinton tried to be the new Teddy Roosevelt, but his efforts to help preserve nature may have been too little, too late

Bill Clinton has always had a problem with time. There he was in April, standing in a grove of 3,000-year-old giant sequoias in central California, about to declare them a national monument as part of his green legacy. But the Secret Service told him he had only 10 minutes for a "hike in the woods." Clinton bounded off through the sequoias, fascinated by the 300-ft. skyscrapers that spring from a seed smaller than a rice grain. He returned, behind schedule, to make his designation speech before zipping off by helicopter to a fund raiser in southern California.

Nature operates on a...

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