A fascinating window into how Congressional Republicans would rather jam President Obama than doing something good for the country, as well as an indication of how far conservative the country is as a whole as say, two decades ago, was manifested last night in an exchange on the PBS NewsHour between Richard Burt and James Woolsey on the new nuclear arms START treaty with Russia that the White House is hoping to get approved by the Senate in the lame duck session of the current Congress.

Arizona  GOP Senator Jon Kyle opposes the treaty because he says he is concerned about maintaining a modern,working nuclear stockpile.

But the White House says there has been plenty of time to negotiate, and considering there will be less Republicans Senators in Washington in two months, wants to vote on it now.  Yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met yesterday with Senate Democrats and the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Indiana's Richard Lugar, to press for a vote now.  Clinton noted that 18 committee hearings have been held and the Foreign Relations panel already passed the treaty on a 14-4 bipartisan vote.

Traditionally such agreements pass nearly unanimously on a bi-partisan basis.  But not in a Washington where the Senate Minority Leader has already declared that the number one mission of his body is to make sure Barack Obama isn't re-elected.

Last night on PBS's NewsHour, Richard Burt , the chief U.S. negotiator for the START-1 treaty with the former Soviet Union in 1991 under George H.W. Bush's administration, debated former CIA director James Woolsey about the deal, and Burt said flatly Republicans were opposing it because it was a Democrat who was proposing the treaty:

MARGARET WARNER: Let me step back in the remaining time we have, which is, if you look at the START-1 treaty, which you negotiated, Mr. Burt, approved, I think it was, 93-6, and the Moscow treaty that under the Bush 43 administration, something like, I don't know, 95-0, why has this become so politicized, so controversial and politicized?

RICHARD BURT: Well, again, I don't think it's because of problems with the treaty. Jim talks about ballistic missile defense.

The — there are no constraints on this administration or any future administration's options for developing ballistic missile defense. The language in the treaty which is in the preamble is exactly the same as in the language in the treaty I negotiated and previous administrations negotiated.

Why is it getting so politicized? Well, first of all — and, here, I can say this as a Republican — this is the first time a Democratic administration has sought to get ratification for a strategic arms treaty. And I think that is a — it makes — creates a difficult dilemma for Republicans.

It's hard for Republicans to oppose a Republican administration's treaty, particularly in the current hyper-partisan and polarized atmosphere in Washington. I think it's much easier for Republicans to oppose this administration.

But, in thinking about the problem of ratification or non-ratification, we have to look at the consequences of what happens if this treaty goes down. We lose the verification system that has already lapsed under the treaty that I negotiated. We — we miss the opportunity to improve relations with the Russians, who have supported us on Iran and U.N. sanctions and increasingly in Afghanistan. And we become — we lose all credibility on the problem of stopping nuclear proliferation.

Margaret, there are only two governments in the world that wouldn't like to see this treaty ratified, the government in Tehran and the government in North Korea

MARGARET WARNER: All right, a brief final word from you, Mr. Woolsey, and do address, if you would, the point that Rick Burt just made about why he thinks this treaty is having a harder time with Republicans than former treaties did with Democrats.

JAMES WOOLSEY: Well, the whole atmosphere of Washington is much more sour now than it has been at some times in the past.

I hope you'll note that Burt said he's a Republican!  Who worked on the Start-1 treaty!  For George H.W. Bush, who nobody called a dove.

This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2010.