Still, Whitman seemed to perceive life as having improved somewhat from the lightning-rod first months of her tenure. In 2001, she had told the New York Times that Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to her as a "wind dummy."

"It's a military term for when you are over the landing zone and you don't know what the winds are," she explained. "You push the dummy out the door and see what happens to it." In January of this year, Whitman told the National Journal that she didn't feel "as much" like a wind dummy. "That was back when we had both the arsenic and the Kyoto issues," she said, "which were the big ones out there. We've been able to ratchet down over here so we haven't been quite as visible." The controversies she'd experienced, she said, were because "it's a terribly emotional issue. And for some people, you can never, ever, ever do enough. For other people, anything you do gets in the way of progress."

In her resignation letter, Whitman not surprisingly chose to focus on her greener pastures, citing administration regulations to reduce pollution from nonroad diesel engines; the Clean School Bus USA initiative, which plans to ensure low-emission school buses for every student by 2010; the proposed Clear Skies Act of 2003 to reduce pollution from power plants; and an EPA plan to clean up PCBs from the Hudson River. These are the kinds of measures that have brought her under fire from various conservatives, who see the Bush administration's occasional nod toward environmental concerns as weak and something of a betrayal.

"She was just a carbon copy of anybody who's ever been head of the EPA," said Fred L Smith Jr., founder and president of the pro-growth Competitive Enterprise Institute. Smith says that EPA administrators traditionally "regard as their duty to figure out what the green lobby wants and to implement it as quickly as possible" to the detriment of the nation, and Whitman was no exception. "This presents a dramatic opportunity for the administration to put someone in place to reinforce the changes already put forward in Congress," where, according to Smith, for the first time in decades the members of the House and Senate leadership "aren't part of the green establishment. They're not locked into the view that the only way you can protect the environment is to lock businessmen in jail and pass more regulations."

With such sentiments being voiced from the right, it's therefore not all that surprising that Bush's green opponents expressed not entirely anti-Whitman notions, a sort of "What's a nice green girl like you doing in a place like this?" Even Lieberman, who had called for her resignation last year, said "it would be a welcome change if Gov. Whitman's successor not only shared her interest in environmental progress, but were allowed to pursue it. But I won't hold my breath, though we may need to do that to survive this administration's clean air policies."

Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said that "no EPA administrator has ever been so consistently and publicly humiliated by the White House." Though Whitman may have fought for the cause on occasion, he said, in the end too often "the White House listened more often to industry lobbyists than to its EPA administrator." Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe quizzically likened her to "a fish out of polluted water from the minute she stepped into the Bush Cabinet." True to überloyal form, Whitman appeared on CNN Wednesday morning and denied that she was "leaving because of clashes with the administration. In fact, I haven't had any." Regarding reports of any conflicts, Whitman allowed that "there's always give and take," but "that doesn't mean that you're having a battle about it."

Greenwood, who voted against the Bush administration's request to allow oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, seconded Whitman's take on the policy debates. The EPA chief "brings pretty green recommendations to the administration, and others whose job it is to represent industry and commerce represent other points of view. And there's pulling and tugging in the White House."

Both Greenwood and Gluck argue that environmentalists didn't fully realize what an advocate they had in Whitman. "I don't think you can fault Gov. Whitman for not bringing strong environmental proposals to the administration," Greenwood said, though clearly she didn't always succeed.

Most recently, Whitman expressed frustration about an Office of Management and Budget analysis that factored the worth of the life of a person older than 70 at $2.3 million while those younger than 70 were assessed to be worth more -- $3.7 million. While supporters of the move argued that it was practical and a realistic way to gauge the effectiveness of regulations, critics saw the change in policy as discriminatory and a way for the administration to undervalue the importance of human life. Whitman initially defended the OMB figures, saying critics were unfairly characterizing them, but after touring the country earlier this month she was frequently accosted by angry environmentalists and senior citizens over the issue. On May 7 in Baltimore, Whitman abruptly announced that the policy had "been discontinued. EPA will not -- I repeat, not -- use an age-adjusted analysis in decision making."

According to the Associated Press, possible successors to Whitman include David Struhs, Florida Department of Environmental Protection secretary, and Josephine Cooper, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Greenwood expressed the desire that in replacing Whitman the Bush administration "make a selection that will send a positive message to the environmental community." This isn't just for policy reasons; the environment is one of the few areas of vulnerability for the Bush administration and the GOP. In a January Gallup poll, 56 percent of those polled favored Democrats to deal with the environment as opposed to 27 percent favoring Republicans. Not incidentally, GOP pollster Frank Luntz -- in a memo obtained and released by the liberal Environmental Working Group -- issued a warning. "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general -- and President Bush in particular -- are most vulnerable," he wrote, and as a result Republicans "risk losing the swing vote ... [and] our suburban female base could abandon us."

Through much of Whitman's tenure, however, this was never a pressing concern. As one senior staffer from the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee assessed, "As long as people are scared of terrorists, most other issues fall by the wayside."

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