Our presidents are good at praising America’s magnificent national park system, but they’re lousy at maintaining it. Bill Clinton-the-candidate, for example, spoke of how lucky he was to have Hot Springs National Park as a childhood playground. Yet Clinton-the-president sat idle as that park’s natural wonders and facilities deteriorated — and as the National Park Service’s maintenance backlog soared to $5 billion.
Likewise, in his 2000 campaign, a khaki-clad George W. Bush posed in the majestic Cascade Range. He wailed that parks were “at the breaking point” and vowed to eliminate Clinton’s backlog. Instead, he slashed the Park Service budget (including a 40 percent cut in needed repair funds for the Cascade parklands he’d used as a political prop).