Look on the bright side. If trends continue, this’ll be one issue both parties’ candidates will agree on this fall.

In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?

She warned you, didn’t she? As for BJ, I’d say this officially makes it his best month since, oh, January 1998, and that’s not counting this curious yet delicious morsel served up by the Times this morning. You owe it to yourself to read it all. Multimillion-dollar influence peddling, willful blindness to human rights abuses, the principals caught by reporters in not one but two major lies — and the Clenis right in the middle of it all. It’s conservative catnip, although I can think of one liberal who’s enjoying it even more than we are. Expect to see him mention it tonight if Hillary dares to toss the Tony Rezko thing at him. “Business as usual” for the Clintons indeed.

Update (Bryan): I have to say, as much as I loathe Billy Jeff and all, ABC is misrepresenting what he said. Sure, he uttered the line about slowing down the economy, but he followed that with an explanation of why that’s a bad idea.

“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.

“But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.

“But if we did that…” is the beginning of his counter-argument. He goes on to serve up pipe dreams about how green tech like 100-mile-per-gallon cars will create more jobs, which seems unlikely. He’s also off in the weeds when he declares that anything is “the only way it will work.” That’s classic Clintonian fallacy: A complex problem, if it’s even a real problem, requires a complex set of solutions, supposing it’s even something we could solve.

The bottom line is that, for whatever reason, ABC actually played Clinton’s “slow down the economy” line unfairly and ended up downplaying his argument against the far left on global warming. I’m sure that will be too much mental jujitsu for the Clinton-hating, “conservative media” nutroots to handle.