Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt may get a lifetime job on the Supreme Court, but that prospect has made for long faces among environmentalists and the team that Babbitt has assembled to reform management of public lands.
"We get this wonderful, forward-looking interior secretary and now he's about to be snatched from us," said Ben Beach of The Wilderness Society.A Babbitt aide, who asked not to be named, described the atmosphere as "really down" Monday after the interior secretary told aides he would go to the court if called by President Clinton.
"After working for this man for five months, I was ready to follow Bruce Babbitt anywhere," said the aide. "I would go to Arizona if he ran for the Senate, or to the U.S. Trade Representative's office if he took that job. The Supreme Court is one place where I cannot follow him."