When Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced that he and the president wanted to increase protection of the McElmo Dome west of Cortez, a group of vociferous locals objected on the premise that they were sure the move was intended primarily to protect the BLM lands from them.

Others objected to Babbitt’s plan for different reasons. They, too, were sensitive about limits on multiple use, and they also worried that a change in management status would bring more traffic to the land, without a balancing increase in resources to solve the problems that created. They believed that some change was inevitable, though, and they were convinced that the only way to tailor that change so that it was less than disastrous for the local area was to participate in management decisions.

A third group, farther along the spectrum, argued for even more restrictions, pointing out abuses created by past uses of the land and advocating strict protections for future generations.

In politics, the extremes usually define the center, and the most likely conclusion of this political process was that the extremes would cancel each other out and we’d end up with Plan B — not perfect but workable. That’s the way the game has played.

For a while we thought Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell understood that. After all, he’s no political neophyte; he’s watched the machinations for many years. When he proposed a bill that would have safeguarded most of the rights locals were most concerned about, we thought he’d made the best of the situation that had been foisted upon all of us.

We didn’t expect him to chicken out.

There’s no way around the fact that Campbell has screwed up, either one end or on the other. If the national conservation area was the best plan when he proposed it, it’s still the best plan. He can’t have heard anything more than what he knew when he proposed it; none of the arguments are new. If he’s acknowledging that it was a mistake all along, that’s a sign that he didn’t perform sufficient research before he proposed it.

Campbell might have underestimated the depth of sentiment a change in land use inspires and, with an eye to becoming Secretary of the Interior for George W. Bush, decided he didn’t want to risk being considered in league with Babbitt and the president. That’s politics. Unfortunately, he’s left the residents of Montezuma County twisting in the wind.

Some landowners believe that Campbell has called Babbitt’s bluff. They’re forgetting an all-important point: Babbitt’s threat to create a national monument was not an idle one. Clinton has the power to do it, and the authority to manage public lands as he sees fit. Campbell knows Babbitt holds those cards.

By yanking his bill, seemingly in a fit of temper, Campbell has monkeyed with the odds, and he certainly hasn’t improved them. He did it without consulting Rep. Scott McInnis, who was left with few options because he knew his own national conservation area bill couldn’t pass without Campbell’s support.