It is true that Vice President Al Gore flew to Japan to take part in the final, grueling negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and that he was much applauded for taking such a political risk. It is true that Gore signed on to the treaty, which committed the United States to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels by the year 2012, even as India and China assumed no commitments whatever.

But Gore didn't really mean it, he explained when he returned to Washington. The administration did not intend to submit the treaty for Senate ratification. Even as it signed the document one year later, it called it a "work in progress"; the signing, The Post explained at the time, was "a largely symbolic act." Beyond promising that new technologies would reduce greenhouse gas emissions without causing any economic pain, the administration never put forward a plan to reach Kyoto targets.

When it came to the International Criminal Court, Clinton was as worried as Bush about exposing American soldiers to international jurisprudence. He was dissatisfied with concessions his negotiators extracted in the final treaty; he complained about its "significant flaws." But again he signed it anyway -- to "reaffirm our strong support for international accountability," he said. Then he said he wouldn't submit the treaty for Senate ratification and would recommend that Bush not do so either.

Clinton was committed to the ABM Treaty with Russia, the primary purpose of which was to outlaw national missile defense. But Clinton also spent much of the last two years of his presidency unsuccessfully trying to persuade the Russians to redefine the treaty precisely to permit national missile defense. "One way or another," Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, told his Russian counterpart, according to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, "NMD was almost certain to proceed."

But it's also fair to ask whether Clinton's fudges would not sooner or later have proved untenable. It wasn't for lack of sincere diplomacy that Clinton failed to persuade Russia to bless U.S. national missile defense, or Europe to modify Kyoto or the ICC. Nor did he manage to win U.N. approval for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Kosovo.

In each case, the refusals had to do with foreign fears of America's unique place in the world, with resentment of its status as lone superpower, unrivaled in military and economic might. Clinton was more eager than Bush to assuage that resentment, but he was hardly more willing to shackle America's economy or cede judicial control over its troops abroad to do so. To misremember the history now understates the challenge America faces in the world, especially after Iraq, no matter who is president.