The New York Times plays true to form with a story today by Andrew Revkin:

Climate Bill Success = Treaty Failure?
A predictable impasse is growing over the climate bill that Democratic leaders are trying to push through the Senate. To build sufficient support, it appears that the bill would have to include mechanisms punishing other countries — implicitly large emerging economic powers led by China and India — if they don’t pursue emissions cuts, too. . . .
The pincers on the president are tightened by another reality devolving from the nature of American democracy. No treaty can take effect here without the president’s gaining the advice and consent of the Senate — a two-thirds vote of approval. It was that situation that essentially guaranteed that the last climate pact signed by the United States, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, would never be sent to the Senate for ratification by either President Bill Clinton or President George W. Bush. [NB: the link provided for the surprising reference to the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, on the National Center’s site no less, was corrupt and I have provided what appears to be the intended cite]

Remember that it took until near the end of President Bush’s sixth year in office for the Times to run a November 6, 2006, correction acknowledging at last that its sniveling about W.’s refusal to sign Kyoto was, well, inaccurate — because Clinton had signed it. I had raised the point privately to a particular NYT writer on several occasions prior to that date, but it seemed the blame-Bush shorthand just fit the narrative better. The Paper of Record continued to maintain that Bush refused to sign Kyoto, and when it finally felt the pressure to more accurately describe the historical record, settled on saying that he “withdrew” from (unsupportable and nonsensical) or “rejected” (devoid of substance or quantification) the treaty.

What’s the point of such gymnastics — however conscious or subconscious they may be?

For the NYT to have said nothing for three years while Clinton refused to seek ratification, but later serially complain that the U.S. non-participation was somehow uniquely Bush’s doing was in the service of contrasting Bush the Wicked with Clinton the Good, while whistling past Kyoto’s political graveyard of that constitutional requirement of Senate ratification. Clinton Good, Bush Wicked. Moral delivered. Narrative satisfied.

Now comes this rush to remind us of that forgotten Article II Sec. 2 ratification requirement — which only serves to insulate Obama from the politics of roping the U.S. into a pact, including Waxman-Markey’s possible failure in the Senate. And of course, he is inherently blameless. Just ask him (say, about the economy, or the stimulus).

I’d like the Times to continue its maturation and disclose where it is written in the Constitution or statute that the Senate needs to be asked to ratify a signed instrument (hint: it isn’t). That signature is all the authority they needed if the Senate’s will to act on Kyoto really had been there. The Times never wanted to acknowledge that will wasn’t there when Bush was in office, and now in the Age of Obama it is eager to remind us that it (still) likely isn’t.

It’s all good, though. The issue of whether President Obama asks the Senate to ratify Kyoto II may never rear its head. We know from the Guardian and domestic trade press that the Obama administration is telling the Europeans that he likes the advice some transationalist-types are giving him, and that they should prepare to extend the Kyoto II timetable in the event the president needs to ready his domestic case for declaring Kyoto II “not a treaty” — to get around that pesky constitutional requirement he’s skirted on so many other occasions (hint: “more Czars than a Romanov portrait gallery”).