Editorial: More Obama arrogance
President Obama plans to join an international agreement next year to limit emissions of carbon dioxidewithout making a treaty. He may try to sell his deal as the equivalent of a treaty, but he's wrong. No country should rely on him.
What the White House called a "politically binding" deal that would "name and shame" nonparticipants would be worthless, because a subsequent administration in Washington could repudiate it. Given the stubborn uncertainties of climate science, the next administration shouldrepudiate it if it comes about.
In the 64th Federalist paper, John Jay wrote in 1788 "that it would be impossible to find a nation who would make any bargain with us, which should be binding on them absolutely [Jay's italics] but on us only so long and so far as we may think proper to be bound by it."
The Constitution provides that the president, with the consent of the Senate, makes treaties which become "the supreme law of the land." Why bring in the Senate? Jay's colleague Alexander Hamilton said in the 75th Federalist: "It would be utterly unsafe and improper to entrust that power (to make treaties) to an elective magistrate of four years' duration." Hamilton argued that, "An ambitious man might make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of" action against the national interest.
Rather sounds like the current resident of the White House, no?
Presidents often make agreements binding only themselves, but Obama knows that only a treaty binds the nation, and the Senate's unwillingness to approve one on global warming is why he's trying a go-around. He may get away with ignoring the law on Obamacare and immigration, but his arrogance on this will get him nowhere.
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