Leadership Quote by Dirk Kempthorne

A Republican politician praising “cooperation” in federal land management is never just offering a civics lesson; he’s staking out a power arrangement. Dirk Kempthorne’s line is built to sound like common sense - who wants confrontation? - but the real work happens in what “cooperation” quietly implies: less litigation, fewer top-down mandates, more bargaining among agencies, states, counties, industry, and local stakeholders. It’s the language of process as virtue, designed to reframe conflict over public lands as a failure of tone rather than a collision of interests.

Kempthorne delivered this kind of message in an era when conservation was increasingly fought in courtrooms and in the pages of the Federal Register: endangered species rulings, roadless rules, grazing rights, energy leasing, wildfire policy. “Confrontation” is a coded critique of environmental groups using lawsuits and federal regulation to force outcomes. By contrast, “cooperation” nudges the center of gravity toward negotiated compromises - which, in practice, often favor established economic uses because they arrive with payrolls, permits, and political leverage.

The sentence is also a rhetorical move to claim conservation as bipartisan and managerial, not ideological. Calling cooperation the “hallmark” tries to make consensus the metric of success, not ecological results. It’s a soothing frame with sharp edges: if you object, you’re cast as unreasonable, even if your objection is that the deal on the table sacrifices habitat, water, or long-term resilience for short-term peace.