As with the global-warming advocate who explains each weather event — hot or cold, wet or dry — as proof of his creed, there’s nothing like starting one’s day off having your beliefs or assumptions affirmed. So when I picked up today’s Washington Post, I was confident that the lead editorial would feature angst over the lack of global-warming specifics in last night’s SOTU speech.

Lo and behold, in true self-parody, the Post laments in its ultimate paragraph:

But the greatest disappointment of the night was [Bush’s] failure to commit to working with Congress on legislation to create a mandatory carbon emissions reduction system in the United States — without which no international accord will be possible.

So the U.S. must unilaterally mandate carbon emissions in advance of international accords in which we’ll ask other nations to join us in mutually mandating carbon emissions? Which is to say: Handing over our main bargaining chip improves our bargaining position, because without that anticipatory capitulation there could be no pact? Thank goodness WaPo editorial writers aren’t negotiating U.S. treaties.

That vacuity aside, the most instructive part of this complaint is the mindset it betrays, which we also see in the halls of Congress: that President Bush must take ownership of this issue before he leaves office.

Remember, the next administration could just as easily push this agenda; it could ask Congress to approve the Post’s desired cap-and-trade legislation, or otherwise proceed as the warmist crowd demands. Besides, the odds are that the next president will be “one of theirs” (Clinton, McCain, Obama), although the Constitution is pretty clear that Congress doesn’t need a president to ask them to legislate. But after seven years of shrill demands that hearings are an irresponsible delay tactic and waste of time and Congress must act now, the new majority seized the gavel and . . . opted for dozens of hearings — not one of which, until recently, even discussed an identifiable piece of legislation (which carry identifiable price tags).

The anti–global warming agenda is expensive, intrusive, and would lead to job loss and increased energy costs with little measurable effect on global climate — just as it already has in Europe. So let George W. Bush take the blame for it.

As my CEI and Planet Gore colleague Marlo Lewis and others have pointed out, one of the demands made upon Bush to relieve Congress of responsibility — not through joining them on legislation but through the regulatory process — would necessarily trigger statutory implications with consequences both unfortunate and expensive — unintended and intended. These impacts are of such obvious consequence that they certainly will eventually require a “legislative fix.” That is, for Bush to do what the Post and others insist on with increasing desperation would not merely rescue Congress from having to follow through on their promises (which they actually dismissed before the 2006 elections), but also position them to clean up “Bush’s mess.” Better still, this would leave the regulated community grateful for the “fix” that would, of course, include imposition of the cap-and-trade regime that they presently oppose.

If you embrace this carbon-emissions agenda — which can advance only with considerable pain — the choice is simple. Let Bush take the blame.