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Notes -
Obama played games with the definition of "treaty" to try to get around the 2/3 Senate requirement to pass them, claiming it was merely a "non-binding political commitment." Republicans had stated their displeasure, too; the House voted down a resolution of approval (269 to 162), and Senate Democrats only managed to kill the resolution of disapproval by filibustering it (54 Reps opposed, along with 4 Dems). (And yes, that is down-voted resolution of approval, and a filibustered resolution of disapproval, which is what happens when you start the process with procedural gamesmanship.) Having avoided the work of getting buy-in from Republicans, and declaring it "non-binding," you don't get to complain when Republicans feel not-bound by it.
Clinton's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework was not the Joint Declaration you linked to, but a response to that falling apart. It was also not approved by the Senate as a treaty, again because he knew the Republican Senate did not approve of it. This was all 5 years before Bush was elected and had a chance to pounce.
So, let's adjust this statement to be accurate:
In both cases we have democratic presidents pretending to have treaties, but not actually passing a treaty like the constitution requires. Shockingly, Republican presidents did not feel bound by these non-treaties that their parties had always opposed.
I appreciate your technical clarifications. I think these corrections only reinforce my main point though that getting long term domestic support for nuclear cooperation is very hard in the US, and that's why we don't see more of it even if it could be an effective foreign policy tool.
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