George W. Bush has long used China as an excuse for the United States to do nothing about global warming. At the Republican debate yesterday, Mitt Romney adopted a similar line. “We call it global warming, not American warming!” he cried. “So let’s not put a burden on us alone and have the rest of the world skate by.”

Such comments rest upon the absurd fallacy that the United States has embraced leader status on environmental issues. The rhetoric is meant to reassure grassroots conservatives of America exceptionalism, the same dangerous ideology upon which neo-conservative foreign policy is based. And it couldn’t be more misleading when, simultaneous to the GOP debate, as Kate wrote, American negotiators in Bali were refusing to sign on to binding carbon reductions. Without a promise from the U.S., China is holding back. There goes progress.

So, yes: Where the United States leads, the world follows … even if we lead straight into the abyss. Americans who tune into the presidential debates deserve to know the truth.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.