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Opposition to these initiatives is loud and occasionally overwrought. "James Watt is sneaky and malicious," says William Turnage, executive director of the Wilderness Society. "He's the worst thing that ever happened to this country." On a few other issues, the criticism is less vituperative, and Watt's defenses are more solid and more temperate. Some people oppose his moratorium on the Government purchase of new land for parks, for example, but Watt believes it is more urgent to remedy the "deplorable" conditions of existing facilities. Indeed, Interior's budget for park improvements has nearly doubled under Watt: the sewage system at Yosemite is being rebuilt at a cost of $4.6 million, and Yellowstone tourist facilities are undergoing a $7.6 million renovation.
But such bits of unassailable work are usually lost amid the Watt bombast and anti-Watt bombast. He claims to wish that opponents would "sit down and intellectually discuss a subject with me instead of screaming." Yet in fact, Watt's antipathy for environmentalists, whom he dismisses as "left-wingers," practically precludes any such sober give and take. "Jim Watt did not make an honest attempt to come to terms with our concerns," says Jay Hair, executive vice president of the largely Republican National Wildlife Federation. "He kicked us out and slammed the door behind us."
Watt admits as much. After all, he says, "I have never had criticism from anybody I really respect." The problem is that for Watt, criticism and respect seem almost mutually exclusive. But even some allies have lost patience with Watt's combative bent. They regret, among other things, the political costs of Watt's proposal that snowmobiles and motorbikes be more widely permitted in national parks.
For his part, the Secretary contends that the truculence has been necessary to beat back an "inherited program that was so far in left field, I had to shock the staff" — if not the public — "to bring about the changes we wanted." He smiles. "Some time I hope to write a book: 'The Theatrics of Management.' " Some of his theatrics have given pause to Administration political advisers, although apparently not to Reagan, and Watt says the White House has never told him to shut up.
Watt still enjoys widespread support and even adulation in most of the West, where indeed Interior policies have their greatest impact. Ranchers, who often graze their herds on federal lands, are pleased that Watt has given more authority to local bureaucrats, who they feel administer grazing rights most sympathetically.
Senator Simpson thinks Watt will keep his job as long as he wants it. But he understands his friend's central problem: inflexibility of almost heroic proportions. "He has never been in [electoral] politics," Simpson explains. "He has never been through the forging process when you're getting your hide torn off, and you have something you really believe in. He has never learned how you compromise on an issue without compromising yourself."