Per an announcement by his family, former Secretary of the Interior James Watt passed away on May 27. The Washington Post provides a good overview of his tenure at DOI during the Reagan administration.
Watt was an outspoken and controversial figure. His aggressive mineral leasing policies proved not to be in the best long-term interest of the OCS program. As their principal target, Watt became an unintended fundraiser for opponents of energy development.
Watt’s indirect Beach Boys ban, which didn’t sit well with Ronald and Nancy Reagan, was perhaps his best remembered faux pas. Per the WP:
He did not explicitly mention the Beach Boys, but they had performed at previous July 4 events, and the group became the focus of outrage over Mr. Watt’s pronouncement. President Reagan called the interior secretary to the Oval Office and presented him with a plaster foot bearing a bullet hole to humorously — but unambiguously — convey the message that he had shot himself in the foot.
Watt’s hideous and insensitive comment about the composition of the Linowes Commission seemed to be the final straw, and he resigned shortly after he made those comments. The “cripple” in that remark happened to be someone I knew, a highly regarded mineral economist named Richard Gordon who was one of my favorite graduate school professors.
Lots of James Watt jokes circulated during his tenure. One that I found amusing went something like this: James loved baseball and dreamed of someday standing in center field at Yankee Stadium ….. drilling for oil 😀.
RIP Secretary Watt.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 