Minor Adjustments, Major Controversy

Running as a centrist populist in the wake of the Watergate crisis, Jimmy Carter defeated President Ford by a margin of fifty-seven electoral votes, but he barely obtained a majority of the popular vote. The public interest groups that supported Carter expected him to appoint an environmentalist to run EPA and to stand behind the agency in its struggles with regulated industries. Carter fulfilled the first expectation. He appointed a thirty-seven-year-old attorney named Douglas Costle to head EPA. An experienced bureaucrat, Costle had worked at the Commerce and Justice Departments and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He had