Bill Clinton's Lost World

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And Clintons righteous indignation over those who had placed domestic politicking over foreign policy priorities raised a few eyebrows among some U.S. allies, who have long been concerned that the President has a habit of doing the same thing. "This was badly mishandled on both sides of Washington," says Calabresi. "The Republicans scheduled a vote and then tried but failed to find a way out. But the administration clearly hadnt done nearly enough work to muster support for the treaty." Adds TIME White House correspondent Jay Branegan, "Its too bad that the President offered his most spirited defense of the treaty only after it had been defeated. If hed done that earlier it might have helped sway some votes."

Clinton has long been criticized for an apparent failure to generate a coherent foreign policy and to risk any of his own political capital on going to bat for it. On the issue of the U.S. repaying its long-standing delinquent debt to the United Nations, for example, the White House periodically throws up its arms in exasperation but has for the most part declined to go head-to-head with the Republican legislators obstructing the funds. "Clinton has been accused of offering no overarching vision in his foreign policy, instead simply managing crisis after crisis with no clear sense of overall objectives," says TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell. The crises that have dogged his presidency have only deepened the problem. "Impeachment challenged the Presidents moral credibility," says Dowell. "And moral credibility was something he badly needed to prevail on the CTBT issue."

But the foreign policy drift precedes the Lewinsky scandal. In fact, the CTBT debacle confirms a steady trend throughout the '90s of diminishing attention to Washingtons international commitments, and a diminishing of the office of the presidency as the locus of foreign policy decision making. Voting down an arms control agreement painstakingly negotiated with Washingtons key allies and adversaries would have been almost unthinkable during the Cold War. Not that the Senate didnt have the constitutional right to do so, but the global conflict with the Soviets created a political culture in which partisan debates ended at Americas shores, and a respect for the paramountcy of the presidents authority on matters of national security. Not for nothing did the term "president" become interchangeable with "commander in chief."