WASHINGTON INSIGHT

NEW ENVIRONMENT: When President Bush chose him to head the Environmental Protection Agency, William K. Reilly was considered a nonpartisan, patrician defender of the earth and all its creatures. Conservatives viewed him suspiciously.

No more. Now Reilly is giving sharply partisan stump speeches, winning cheers from audiences, such as the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Raleigh, N.C.

Democratic criticisms, Reilly thundered, are “the actions of a party that doesn’t expect to be back in power anytime soon.” Bush, he said, is “taking back the issue of the environment and he’s driving some Democrats crazy.”

QUORUM CALL: Congress can’t seem to act on the Administration’s $300-million aid request to help Nicaragua’s spring planting. But it’s sending the next best thing--lots of congressmen.

When Violetta Chamorro is inaugurated Tuesday as Nicaragua’s new President, at least 25 members of Congress, a half-dozen sub-Cabinet members and dozens of other officials will fly down from Washington, all led by Vice President Dan Quayle. “The limiting factor turned out to be how many people we could fit on Quayle’s plane,” one official said.

“There is a certain irony” in the failure to pass the aid, a State Department official noted. “Of course, we are confident that Congress will do the right thing . . . eventually, anyway.”

BETTER READ THAN RED? Rita Klimova, ambassador of the newly democratic Czechoslovakian government, sends out letters on old embassy letterhead emblazoned: “The Ambassador of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic”--with the word “Socialist” crossed out by hand.

YEN TO TRAVEL: President Bush’s incessant travels are causing some changes in the White House press corps. With Bush traveling about one day in three, newspapers with only one White House correspondent are having trouble keeping up. Moreover, as the newspaper industry struggles with sharp declines in advertising revenue, many have decided full-time coverage of the President is simply too expensive. Besides, many of Bush’s trips simply do not produce any news.

The net result: roughly a 30% decline in the number of reporters following Bush over the last year. But as American reporters drop off the presidential press plane, some are being replaced by correspondents for Japanese papers: At least three now cover Bush full time.

DELUGE: Unhappy with some details of a new Democratic spending blueprint during a House Budget Committee hearing, Rep. Jack Buechner (R-Mo.) sought to drive home his point by recalling the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, in which all the animals went aboard Noah’s vessel two-by-two, including a pair of skunks.

“There may be a couple of skunks in this ark,” Buechner declared, “but our job is to get it to float. You guys got your way of launching the ark, and we got ours, but the important thing is that the ship of state remain afloat.”