I've just spent the last three weeks cruising across the inner West on a 3,000-mile road trip with my son. What are Americans talking about in coffee shops, retirement villages, university campuses, book stores, and in the bleachers at spring training baseball games?

Answer: How different the political landscape of this country might be when, and if, Texas Gov. George W. Bush defeats Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race.

Why is this especially relevant to a region like the West? Because rumors are rife that Mr. Bush likely will consider asking a certain governor from Montana to join his cabinet as the next U.S. Secretary of the Interior. It's a provocative notion, when you think about Marc Racicot, the man who has enjoyed Montana's highest political approval rating ever, taking the helm of a federal post which oversees the management of half a billion acres of public land, most of it in the West.

But here's the rub for Mr. Racicot: Imagine becoming Interior secretary, a job in which you are mandated to represent the interests of all Americans yet having to deal with a governor like yourself who openly treats the federal government as an enemy, who distorts science, and who trivializes the opinions of American citizens. No issue illustrates Gov. Racicot's federal antipathy better than his management of wandering Yellowstone bison. When the time comes, possibly, for President-elect Bush to name an Interior secretary, he would be wise to look at the blood from dead buffalo now on Mr. Racicot's hands. That Mr. Racicot has higher political ambitions is hardly a secret.

Late in 1998, he was invited on a tour of the Middle East with then unannounced-candidate Bush under the trans- parent auspices of a foreign trade mission. Obviously, Racicot's trolling for a federal job. His trip with Bush occurred, coincidentally, the same week that the first Yellowstone bison of the winter were needlessly killed on federal land by Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) cowboys under his control. Never mind that the nearest cattle were more than 40 miles away, or that the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said that killing low-risk Yellowstone bison was unnecessary in the battle against brucellosis. With the governor's blessing, the DOL asserted its primacy over federal land and public wildlife by targeting bison in places where the animals have a right to roam.

Not only has the governor perpetuated the slaughter, but the DOL cavalierly has asked law enforcement officials to arrest citizens gathered on public land exercising their sacred First Amendment rights to protest policies they believe have no basis in common sense. They aren't alone. Most of the 67,000 citizen comments received from every state on proposed bison management condemn Montana's actions. And so do a growing contingent of Native American groups. And a chorus of liberal and conservative newspapers.

What are they saying about Racicot and the rogue conduct of the DOL? From the Minneapolis Star Tribune: Disease control is the official reason for the killing, but it's a weak rationale. What's really being accomplished here is the placation of Montana cattle ranchers and their political allies ... [T]he notion of brucellosis spreading from buffalo to cattle is grounded more in superstition than in science.

From the Idaho Falls Post Register: A senseless slaughter... Is Montana just arrogant or paranoid?

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: If Montana's Governor and its Legislature cannot manage the nation's bison responsibly, Congress and the Department of Interior must move quickly to reclaim their authority over the animals. It's clear the rest of the nation sees through the governor's flimsy excuses for continuing to destroy buffalo.

In February, a bipartisan trio of Congressmen George Miller, D-Calif., Tom Campbell, R-Calif., and Christopher Shays, R- Conn. urged the governor to adopt APHIS's low-risk bison management strategy, but he refused. Last week, Racicot assigned his top aide to speak out against a bill in the Montana Legislature which would have granted bison leeway and rightly returned most of the authority over bison to the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks from livestock interests. Further, despite commendable efforts by the Forest Service to renegotiate the terms of cattle grazing allotments near Horse Butte to keep livestock off the open range until bison leave, state veterinarian Arnold Gertonson, with Racicot's silent approval, continues to dig in his heels.

The state instead is moving ahead with construction and maintenance of a $500,000 bison capture facility that APHIS says is non-essential and will require citizen tax dollars to build.

So I ask again: Is Marc Racicot the kind of politician America wants in charge of managing public land and wildlife in the West? Do we want an Interior secretary who has openly condemned such vanguard federal laws as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and other codes because they have ruffled the feathers of his special interest campaign contributors?

In the end it may be President-elect Bush who decides whether Mr. Racicot is an asset or a liability. Like Macbeth, the Montana governor will learn that no matter how hard he scrubs, he will never wash the haunting stains of blood from his hands.

Todd Wilkinson's syndicated column appears in the Bozeman Chronicle every Monday. Todd Wilkinson is a naturalist and author of a number of books on the wildlife of the northern Rockies.

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