Babbitt Draws Equal Fire From Opposing Sides : Politics: After two sometimes frustrating years on the job, the Interior Department chief jokes that one of his predecessors ended up in federal prison and another in a mental institution.

WASHINGTON —  His once ambitious agenda to revitalize and protect America’s public lands is in shambles. He’s being sniped at by old environmental friends as well as conservative Westerners who see him as a threat to their way of life.

But after two sometimes frustrating years on the job, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt remains undaunted. He has no thought of resigning and says he has the full confidence and support of the only man who can make him go--the President of the United States.

“I like my job. I enjoy it immensely,” Babbitt said, chuckling over the frequent rumors since last November’s election and the Republican takeover of Congress that he is on the way out, perhaps even being pushed.

In an hourlong interview, he mused over “modest victories” and tried to put the best light on the setbacks.

He is the 146-year-old department’s 47th secretary and, alluding to the strains of the job, he often jokes that one of his predecessors ended up in federal prison and another in a mental institution.

As to his own tenure, Babbitt is philosophical.

“You’re going to be defeated from time to time . . . but that’s the price of doing something,” he said, one leg draped over the edge of a sofa as logs crackled in a fireplace in his sixth-floor office.

But a few days later he told a group of Georgetown University students that he never expected the “highly intensive warfare” over federal lands policies, noting that it’s a battle that “has been seesawing back and forth” for many decades.

Babbitt is a former Arizona governor, onetime Democratic presidential candidate and environmental activist. When President Clinton named him as head of the department whose principal job is stewardship of America’s vast public natural resources, he was quick out of the corral.

He set an agenda to tackle some of the thorniest Western public lands issues:

* Reform grazing policy so ranchers don’t overgraze public rangeland to a point where it is being destroyed.

* Change a federal mining law that allows the taking of minerals on federal land with only pennies going to the taxpayer.

* End abuses by private concessionaires in federal parks.

* Resolve a dispute between loggers and environmentalists over the future of the Northwest’s old-growth forests and the spotted owl.

Babbitt, an Arizonan whose family made its mark in the dry goods business and by ranching, soon ran into a thicket of brambles. Although he’s had some success in forging a truce over the spotted owl, that triumph has been overshadowed by defeats on grazing, mining and the parks.

Many Western politicians, who believe federal land should have both commercial and recreational uses, consider Babbitt’s public land reform proposals as an affront to their view on life.

“I don’t think anyone in memory has overtly moved to impose his version of the West as Babbitt has,” said Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), a former congressman who was elected to the Senate last November.

In recent weeks with a more conservative Republican Congress, Babbitt also has struggled to head off talk on Capitol Hill of gutting his department’s scientific research programs, many of which are crucial for enforcing laws that protect endangered species.

Through it all, Babbitt has sought to find middle ground. Some environmental leaders accuse him of bending too easily to political pressures from the White House. His defenders argue that Babbitt, a realist, is trying to salvage what he can from his original agenda.

“I understand the realities,” Babbitt recently told a House appropriations hearing, acknowledging that “the sun rises on an entirely new era.”

Babbitt’s attempt to overhaul grazing policies has earned him unsought attention. He wanted higher fees and more control of rangeland management, arguing that rancher abuses are destroying the land.

Looking back, Babbitt concedes that the Clinton Administration may have let the grazing issue get out of hand. He said that when the Administration withdrew grazing fee changes from its 1993 budget package, “it took on enormous significance.”

Grazing reform “became kind of a litmus test,” Babbitt said. Within months of that concession, Western senators blocked enactment of grazing-fee legislation. Babbitt was forced to backpedal the rest of the way and recently abandoned any further attempts to change grazing-fee policies.

Leaders of such groups as the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and National Wildlife Federation have accused Babbitt of caving in on grazing and complained that concessions on that issue made it that much harder to sway lawmakers on mining and park concessions reform. And they accused Babbitt of bending too easily to political pressures from the White House, where senior officials have worried how Babbitt’s agenda would play out West in the 1996 presidential election.

Babbitt suggests it would be foolish to think the President’s political fortunes are pegged to grazing fees. “Political people at the White House are nervous about everything,” he said.

Formerly head of the League of Conservation Voters, Babbitt has some straight talk about the environmental movement as well.

“The environmental movement is frustrated,” he said. “. . . They’ve had the run of this town with unstoppable, uninterrupted success. Now all of a sudden the tides are changing, the water is real choppy.”

“They’re going to have to play defense for the first time in 25 years,” Babbitt added.

Babbitt said such growing and emotional issues such as the debate over property rights versus environmental protection must be addressed not only in a constitutional and legal sense but with “an expectation of fairness.”

“It’s not (something) that every environmental group is ready to come to grips with,” he said.