Pruitt was the swamp

The next EPA should respect its mission to protect

The resignation of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is an opportunity for President Donald Trump to correct a mistake.

In Mr. Pruitt, the president made a bad appointment that brought discredit on his administration.

With his penchant for pricey trips with first-class airline seats, a $43,000 soundproof booth for making private phone calls, a swollen personal security detail and a helping hand for his wife’s business career, Mr. Pruitt almost made swamp-thing behavior — corruption and entitlement — an art form.

He certainly made it easy for his enemies.

At the time of his resignation, Mr. Pruitt was under more than a dozen federal and congressional investigations.

Rather than emptying the swamp, as Mr. Trump promised to do, he was stocking the swamp with the appointment of Mr. Pruitt.

And though Mr. Pruitt was fulfilling the pro-business goals of the president in rolling back environmental regulations, Mr. Pruitt finally embarrassed the president enough to be asked for his resignation.

A former attorney general of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt built his career on suing the EPA. As EPA administrator, he rolled back regulations aimed at mitigating global warming pollution from the United States’ vehicles and power plants. And he played a leading role in encouraging Mr. Trump to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, under which most countries in the world committed to reducing emissions of planet-warming fossil fuel pollution.

Mr. Pruitt lacked not only an ethical compass but also policy balance. He was a zealot.

Mr. Trump’s next choice to head up the EPA should be someone who has run something — a state, a federal agency or a large business, and who is a pragmatist and a realist. That is, he should be a zealot of a left that bends the laws and regulations to say far more than they do and to make doing business in America impossible, and he should

be a zealot of a right for which clean air and water have no importance.

A person who does not believe in the EPA should not head the EPA any more than a person who does not believe in taxation should head the IRS.

The administrator should respect science and not try to muzzle scientists.

The next administrator should be a bipartisan figure who will make a good-faith effort to run the agency honestly and fairly.

The president might look for a GOP governor, or ex-governor, with a business background.

The EPA exists for a reason. If we destroy it, we will only have to reinvent it.