WASHINGTON — President Bush yesterday appointed a career agency insider as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, taking environmental groups by surprise and earning the White House rare praise from advocates who long have been bitter foes.

Stephen Johnson, 53, whom a former colleague praised as "the ultimate technocrat," is the first career EPA employee to head the agency. He has been the agency's acting administrator since Michael Leavitt left to become health and human services secretary in January.

In brief remarks accepting the nomination, Johnson told Bush: "Under your leadership, we have made great strides in environmental protection." If confirmed, Johnson said, he will continue to advance the administration's environmental agenda "while maintaining our nation's economic competitiveness."

The selection, subject to confirmation by the Senate, won bipartisan praise. It even won praise from environmental and industry groups locked in battles over Bush administration policies that generally ease strict regulations in favor of industry-friendly policies.

For most of his 24 years at EPA, Johnson held nonpolitical jobs in the part of the agency that regulates pesticides. He was promoted to a senior position there by the Clinton administration. Bush in 2001 named him assistant administrator for pesticides, which made him a political appointee, and the president has promoted Johnson twice since then.

"He knows the EPA from the ground up and has a passion for its mission — to protect the health of our citizens and to guarantee the quality of our air, water and land for generations to come," Bush said. "I've come to know Steve as an innovative problem-solver with good judgment and complete integrity."

Career bureaucrat

The choice of Johnson, a native of the capital, is a departure from other Bush second-term Cabinet appointees, nearly all of whom have closer and longer ties to the president and the Republican Party.

Johnson is part of the cadre of EPA career bureaucrats who stay in Washington no matter who's in power, a group with which industry and many Bush supporters often clash.

He's made so many friends that Republicans and Democrats, industry and environmental groups all claim him for their side.

"His selection suggests to me that the Bush administration is trying to depoliticize to some extent environmental policy, which may in fact produce better results going forward," said Dan Esty, director of Yale University's Center for Environmental Law and Policy. "We have gotten ourselves into a deep partisan divide here. And the attempt to put into place a top guy who really comes from the more nonpolitical bureaucracy may be an attempt to get beyond that."

Esty, a critic of the Bush administration who worked for the president's father, former President George Bush, called Johnson "the ultimate technocrat, with a way of bringing thoughtful, careful analysis to bear in trying to understand and solve hard problems."

"He's got a black belt in Dale Carnegie," said G. Tracy Mehan II, an assistant EPA administrator until 2003, in a reference to the author of the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

"He's got tremendous social skills and people skills. He knows the agency from the inside, and he's been able to flourish."

Praise was strongest from Democrats, former Clinton officials and environmental activists. The Environmental Working Group called it "a spectacularly good appointment."

"I promoted Steve several times," said Carol Browner, Clinton EPA administrator. "Steve was very, very critical and instrumental in all the work we did to ban and limit the use of organophosphates [pesticides] and was willing to take on the chemical companies.

"I'm a little surprised given the work he did with us that the White House would find him acceptable."

"Going to go by book"

Bill Kovacs, vice president of the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Johnson "is competent, and he's going to go by the book and run the agency as a professional as opposed to a politician."

Johnson will be tested quickly by his handling of Bush administration's controversial air-pollution rules, which Republicans have been struggling in recent weeks to get out of the Senate's Environment and Public Works committee.

Environmental advocates said Johnson had earned a substantial amount of goodwill but would need to prove he could keep politics out of the agency's scientific and regulatory activities.

That legislation is only one of the tough challenges ahead. The EPA is facing tough budget challenges and sustained accusations that its scientific mission has been undercut by political pressures. Former EPA Administrator Christie Whitman cited such interference in her decision to quit, and a recent inspector general's report suggested that political operatives had stampeded agency scientists into a plan for regulating mercury pollution that is biased toward industry interests.

Scientist administrator

Bush's two previous EPA chiefs were governors: Leavitt of Utah and Whitman of New Jersey. Bush billed Johnson — who has a master's degree in pathology from George Washington University — as the agency's first scientist administrator.

Leavitt called Johnson "fair-minded and respected by groups across the ideological spectrum."

"His experience alone is enough to have him in this top job in EPA," said Edward Krenik, an EPA associate administrator until 2003. "He's so down-to-earth. He takes his time to understand the issues and really thinks through all sides of an issue before he makes a decision. He's very calm."

Michael McCabe, a former deputy EPA administrator under Clinton, recalled working with Johnson during a crisis over the inadvertent release of genetically modified corn and found him "very level-headed."

"What I really fear is that they're putting him in a position of being a powerless functionary who will have to do what they tell him," said McCabe, now a Chadds Ford, Pa.-based environmental consultant and activist.