OK, but the ultimate goal of Kyoto is to do something about all those nasty carbon emissions that are contributing to global warming.
He hasn’t proposed a plan to do that in the U.S.; he’s just said, “here’s our goals; technological progress ought to get us there; if not, we’ll revisit the issue in 2012.”
I don’t recognize that he’s put forth an alternative proposal. He’s put forth some goals, and a very vague reason to hope we achieve them.
We have very different ideas about what constitutes a ‘proposal’.
They’re at the table. We’re not. I see a great deal wrong with that process. We can complain that we thought Kyoto gave away the store to the Chinese and Indians, but since the Bushies didn’t ever make a serious effort to negotiate a better deal, all it amounts to is carping.
We’re the largest producer of carbon emissions. The world knows that. They need us to be part of the solution, and they know it. If we’ve got a serious alternative to Kyoto to put on the table, everyone else will be at the table.
Which gets us back to the OP: even as minor a matter as Clinton giving a speech was enough to get the Bush crew to walk out of the discussions. And this in what will quite possibly be the greatest challenge of the post-Cold War era.
It makes a fellow ashamed to be an American - our President cutting and running like this.
Well, I suppose he pull a “Clinton” and go for a meaningless, symbolic gesture and sign a treaty that he **knows **the Senate won’t ratify. Or, he could try to negotiate something that the Senate might actually sign. Bush’s proposal addresses both of the concerns the Senate raised in their 1997 vote on Climate Change. Seems like that’s an intelligent thing to do, even if you don’t agree with the specifics.
I don’t ever agree with John Mace politically, and I think Bush is flat wrong. But when I first heard Clinton’s comments (and before I read the attached article) it struck me as unusual – possibly even the first time ever – for an ex-president to so openly criticize a sitting president.
It strikes me as unusual (possibly, hell, probably the first time ever) that a sitting President was so openly screwing over the country, and the press wasn’t bothering to say much.
Up until Harriet Miers, how often had the Senate majority resisted Bush? Never, IIRC. Bush has had a clear field for all these years.
Except (a) it’s not 1997 anymore, it’s 2005, and we’ve got an extra eight years of evidence that this is real. Which is important on account of (b) the GOP really just didn’t want to do anything about global warming, because it would offend their corporate masters, and the theory that either the world wasn’t getting warmer, or humans weren’t contributing to it, was giving the GOP political cover that’s no longer present.
Earlier, I said hope is not a plan. But if you really don’t want to do jack about global warming, stallball is a plan.
You’re talking about this as if Bush and the Senate were independent actors, or as if Clinton could have worked out a meaningful deal with a GOP Senate back in 1997 that would have been an improvement over Kyoto.
It’s hard to see where Clinton had much room to do anything. He had, on the one hand, a global community that wanted to at least make the first moves towards getting serious about global warming. And OTOH, he had a Republican Party that controlled both houses of Congress, and wasn’t going to accept anything besides meaningless, toothless voluntary stuff. Seems a symbolic siding with Kyoto and the global community was the closest thing to a right course.
Yeah, I guess that’s why the Senate passed Bush’s proposals on Social Security reform and Immigration Reform. Sorry, but that argument just doesn’t cut it. Besides, the Senate vote in 1997 was 95-0. That’s exactly ZERO Senators who would have agreed to Kyoto. ZERO.
If you’ve got evidence that the Senate has changed its position relative to 1997, let’s see it. And you keep forgetting that not one Senate Democrat endorsed Kyoto when Clinton was president.
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this. You simply refuset to acknowledge Bush’s plan-- that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.
How many Senate Democrats were on Clinton’s side again? Let me answer for you: ZERO.
It certainly doesn’t compare with allegations that the administration has weakened our standing abroad.
Interestingly, Bush Sr. only pledged to avoid criticism of Clinton during his first year in office, though he later broke that promise.
RTFirefly:
---- (b) the GOP really just didn’t want to do anything about global warming, because it would offend their corporate masters,
I disagree somewhat. The insurance companies are fairly concerned about global warming; though surprisingly I haven’t heard a peep from Florida’s tourism lobby. And I would think that the flack from big energy would be manageable, though certainly not ignorable.
No, I think the GOP’s stance is ideologically based: they simply don’t like empiricism or fact-based analysis. Remember that modern conservatives judge policy on the way it makes them feel, rather than on its measured effects. Traditional conservatives operated more pragmatically, but the political power of men of integrity such as Bob Dole has long since disappeared. (I’d argue that the case of the honorable John McCain is rather singular.)
George Bush certainly has a global warming plan: invent climatologically irrelevant terminology based on greenhouse gas “intensity”, announce a non-binding “voluntary” target, and throw in a (more helpful) call for additional research and technology transfer. (Though I’m curious about the followup on these latter proposals.)
Oh wait. You didn’t say that Bush didn’t have a plan. You implied that he didn’t have a serious negotiating position: Bush is silent regarding what international mechanisms should replace Kyoto. That was the topic that you were responding to, right? An attack (reasonable, IMHO) on the Kyoto framework?
Well, any President who has served a number different than 4 or 8 years has either resigned or died while in office, except FDR, who was elected to four terms AND died in office.
Since you won’t answer the question yourself, I’ll tell you why I think you did it:
To detract attention from yet another ham-fisted, bullying and stupid move by Presidnet Bush. And it worked! Instead of discussing what a jackass the president is, we spent most of the first page debating whether or not Clinton broke an American Tradition.
I’ll also tell you what I think is Unamerican-- trying to supress dissenting voices. Throwing hissy fits, however, will be this administration’s contribution to American Traditions .
Where in the world are you getting this “Unamerican” and “American Tradition” stuff? Nobody but you said anything about American Traditions, or Clinton being Unamerican. You can’t just twist people’s words around and pretend like that’s their position. You don’t see how your argument is a strawman?
To be fair, I did say I thought it was an “unwritten rule” for an ex-prez to criticize a sitting prez, or that it was “bad form” to do so. I suppose that could be understood as saying something about “American Traditions”. But you’re spot on about the mischaracterization of those posts as a statement about “unAmerican” actions. That’s something I never even came close to saying.
And whether or not other presidents might have done the same thing doesn’t alter the sense of whether it’s considered bad form or not. What particularly made Clinton’s actions bad form, IMO, is that he went to the actual conference where Bush administration officials were actively negotiating the issue in order to make a speech critical to Bush’s position. It’s not suprising that Bush was pissed off. I’d be, too, if that happened to me.
Bush gets pissed at any and all disagreement, regardless of source, anyway.
Can’t *anyone * come up with a cite for this alleged rule of etiquette that predates this administration, any mention of it at all would do, or can we dispense with it as yet another RW-bloggers’ invention intended to divert exploration of the actual substance of the criticism? The fact that “so many have heard of it” demonstrates nothing, if they only heard of it recently, and apparently from each other, right, John?
Yes, but all I’m saying is that I (as the preson who brought that up) would not object to someone paraprasing my post in that way. I do object (strongly) to having it paraphrased as being unAmerican.
For example: It’s an American Tradition to eat turkey on Thanksgiving. However, it’s hardly “unAmerican” to refrain from eating turkey on Thanksgiving.
Well, there’s probably something to the story, mostly owing to fact that most ex-Presidents want to become Elder Statesmen, rather than political hacks. You know, “Above politics”.
Modern conservatives are experts at changing the subject, owing to their emotional inability to process information --particularly empirical information-- that they find unappealing.