From the vantage point of our tricycles, we could not imagine what the Cold War was. We had no idea the factories where our fathers and neighbors worked might be poisoning them. We didn't know the cigarettes the grown-ups relaxed with over coffee were killers.

Our parents assumed that if the Chamber of Commerce or the local cop or the priest told us everything in our community was hunky-dory, then of course everything was.

This was before Rachel Carson and long before Erin Brockovich. It was back when, if the plant doctor said there was nothing really wrong with you or that the house they were abruptly purchasing from you was worth a pittance-well, that was that. No avenging angel in Julia Roberts' body was going to swoop in to tell you different.

The enemies abroad were clear, and official belligerence was patriotic. The independent science to refute claims of industries that polluted and made people sick wasn't available. The business of America was fighting the Commies.

And doing business.

I missed all this the first time around. There was no way to know I would get a second chance. Now, of all things, President George W. Bush offers one.

We know his ascension to the White House marks the first time since the Eisenhower era that Republicans control Washington completely. We just didn't know Bush would take us back to the '50s.

The president has thrown out scores of Russians for spying, and the Russians have struck back. It's the biggest purge since the Cold War, a result of the case of a rogue FBI agent who spied.

Robert Hanssen is neither Communist nor Russian. He is a calculating American who betrayed his country. The official anger at the Russians isn't entirely misplaced. But there seems to be no ire at the FBI, which proved altogether incompetent at uncovering its mole.

In Korea the administration has gotten tough. It has cut short a promising diplomatic overture for two apparent reasons: It was started by Bill Clinton, and it involves giving the Commies a say.

We don't negotiate with Commies, you know. It's all much too '90s for the United States to broker what could be a historic rapprochement between two sides who have bristled across a line of demarcation since-well, since the '50s.

Forget about Fidel. Not that this would be the administration to give up those few thousand votes from the South Florida hothouse. It might need them more next time, especially if the voting machines in Democratic precincts get replaced.

Which brings us back home. The president has decided to help the mining industry by abandoning tougher standards for lowering arsenic levels in drinking water. He's decided to help the oil and coal industries by abandoning his own promise to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. He's had his aides cast doubt on the science behind global warming and the arsenic threat. He's nominated a regulatory czar whose own research has been bankrolled by industry.

We can step right back in time. The president is willing to take us there.

But I think there's going to be a hitch.

We have seen Love Canal and Three Mile Island and yes, Erin Brockovich. We have seen the tobacco company executives raise their hands to testify, and we've seen the documents that prove they lied. They made a movie about that, too. We know Corvairs were unsafe at any speed and that Firestone tires were flawed-and their maker knew it.

Americans won't go back to accepting on faith the science produced by industry, for industry. We have come to expect that someone is going to do the science for us, not them.

Overseas, the European Union gasps at Bush's turnabout on carbon dioxide and global warming. It sent word to the White House of "deep concern." The Europeans have even voted to send their own envoy to talk with North and South Korea.

This independent streak would have been unthinkable half a century ago. The initiative is itself a measure of how much things have changed. The old assumptions do not apply.

Bush may wish to put all the genies uncorked during the past few decades back in their neat containers. But the genies, I suspect, will likely put up one heck of a fight.

Copyright © 2001 Newsday, Inc.

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