In 1995, the US president was the country's last line of defense against a cleverly devised effort to transfer the stewardship of America's natural resources from Washington to the states and commercial interests. The developers, the miners, the cattlemen, the oil and gas people and their congressional allies won just about every legislative skirmish that meant anything to them. President Clinton pledged to veto a destructive revision of the Clean Water Act and to rise up against Congress's reckless effort to dismantle a generation of laws protecting America's air and water and what was left of its natural resources.