Hmmm, all of a sudden, I don't think so.
In an interesting Op-Ed this day, the Messrs. John Bolton and John Yoo want to restore treaty-making powers to the U.S. Senate.
Like past presidents, Mr. Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the requirement that treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The usual methods around this constitutional constraint are executive agreements or a majority vote in the House and Senate to pass a treaty as a simple law (known as a Congressional-executive agreement).
Bolton and Yoo on Senatorial Powers
Two-thirds majority? What is that? Sixty-six or 67 senators lined up behind President-Elect Obama?
What a wonderful way to cripple Obama's treaty-making powers.
But, more to the point:
The framers of the Constitution designed the treaty process with a bias against "entangling alliances," as Thomas Jefferson described them in his first inaugural address. They designated the Senate as the body responsible to protect the interests of the states from being bargained away by the president in deals with foreign nations. The framers required a supermajority to ensure that treaties would reflect a broad consensus and careful, mature decision-making.
America needs to maintain its sovereignty and autonomy, not to subordinate its policies, foreign or domestic, to international control. On a broad variety of issues — many of which sound more like domestic rather than foreign policy — the re-emergence of the benignly labeled "global governance" movement is well under way in the Obama transition.
Ah, the crux of the matter. A pox on international co-operation. Likewise to international entanglements such as the pesky Geneva Conventions, the Kyoto Protocol, the nasty U.N....
American ambassador seeks to scupper UN's global strategy with 750 amendments after just three weeks in the job... John Bolton has sought to roll back proposed UN commitments on aid to developing countries, combating global warming and nuclear disarmament.
Mr Bolton has demanded no fewer than 750 amendments to the blueprint restating the ideals of the international body, which was originally drafted by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.
http://www.independent.co.uk/...
There is no love lost between Mr. Bolton and the U.N.:
Bolton has long dismissed the legitimacy of the United Nations. In a 1994 speech at the liberal World Federalist Association, Bolton declared that "There is no such thing as the United Nations." To underscore his point, Bolton said: "If the UN secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/...
It would appear, then, that Bolton/Yoo are not so much interested in suddenly minding the U.S. Constitution and its provisions regarding legislative powers as they are in making sure that their agenda of American sovereignty at all costs remains in place.
There are still too many unfriendly senators in place to ensure that President-Elect Obama would not be hampered in making treaties. too many BushDog Democrats like Lieberman, the Senators Baucus and Bayh are problematical, not to mention Tim Johnson of South Dakota, both Nelsons from Nebraska and Florida, Dianne Feinstein... And Harry Reid is always at the ready to cave in to Republican tantrums.
In my heart of hearts, it would be right to restore senatorial powers according to the constitution but so utterly wrong because the wrongs done by Bush would still be in place.