By David Harsanyi
Monday, November 08, 2021
If it’s not the Supreme Court, or the Electoral
College, or states’ rights, or equal Senate representation, or most of the Bill
of Rights standing in the way of “progress,” it’s the Treaty Clause. Without
it, Barack Obama would already have slowed the oceans’ rise and allowed our
beleaguered planet to heal. Just ask him.
This week, the former president, owner of multiple homes
— including an $11.75 million mansion on 30 acres in Martha’s Vineyard — had
some complaints at the United Nations Climate Change Conference about our
profligate habits. Then he said this.
It takes some nuclear-powered audacity for Barack Obama,
of all people, to whine about unilateral governance. The only reason Donald
Trump was able to “unilaterally” withdraw from any international agreement was
that the previous president had enlisted the nation in said agreement without
the consent of Congress. The Paris Accord is allegedly the most critical
international agreement ever forged by mankind, and yet it wasn’t quite
important enough to be subjected to genuine national debate or the checks and
balances of American government.
When first joining the Paris agreement, Obama noted that
global warming “does not pause for partisan gridlock.” Or, in other words, the
former president offered one of his numerous rationalizations for a historic
slew of executive abuses. Obama didn’t merely ignore the
limitations of his office, he popularized and normalized the notion that
executive overreach was acceptable if the president claimed there was moral
imperative to act. And Obama didn’t simply pretend that every issue was an
existential threat — now a mainstay of Democratic Party politics — he openly
bragged about working around the lawmaking branch of government that refused to
accede to his demands. He continues to make that destructive argument on
foreign soil.
There is, of course, a simple, nearly foolproof method of
avoiding the embarrassing dilemma of failed deals: Go to Congress and debate
the issue. Ratify treaties. Or don’t, and move on. (Any climate deal that is
subjected to scrutiny would likely meet the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, which
was rejected by the Senate in 1997, though perhaps not by a 95-0 vote.)
These days, the Democrats, who are currently in charge,
rely on un-American arguments in favor of direct democracy and majoritarianism. In
those days, Obama regularly accused Republicans, who ran Congress, of “failing
to act,” as if they had a God-given obligation to pass the president’s agenda.
If Congress is simply rubber-stamping the executive-branches desires, it is
irrelevant. The Constitution is built to frustrate one-party rule, which is why progressives
find the document so aggravating when they win the White House.
It’s not only the climate issue. CNN’s chief
national-security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, says foreign diplomats are asking him, “What do US
commitments on climate, Iran deal, NATO, etc. mean if the next president might
reverse them? We’ve seen the pendulum swing over last several years. Takeaway
for partners is: US is no longer a reliable ally.” Echoing this theme, Iran’s
new foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, recently demanded assurances that “Washington will not renege
on the deal again” before restarting talks on a nuclear deal with the Biden
administration.
The United States upholds all its treaties. It never
reneged on any deal with Iran, since the Senate made no binding commitment to
the mullahs. Amir-Abdollahian only needs to read the 2015 open letter to Iran by GOP senators to understand the
supposed intricacies of the American system — a letter the entire left-wing
establishment freaked out over. Then-vice president Joe Biden called the irrefutable contents of the letter “false”
and “dangerous” and “beneath the dignity of an institution I revere.”
Biden reveres the institution so much that he too has
decided to circumvent it and unilaterally rejoin the Paris agreement. Hopefully, the next Republican
president will again withdraw from it — and not merely because the unworkable
deal undercuts American competitiveness and makes us poorer, but because
presidents who govern by fiat should have their legacies atomized for the good
of the nation.
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