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The six universal dives are asked of every subject at this tier. This is not one of them. It exists because of one thing this subject has been — head of government — and a subject who has not been that never gets this page. That is why this record has 11 overlay dives to write rather than a number every record shares. All six base dives were written first, and that ordering is a rule rather than a habit: an overlay dive published on its own is a page about the part of someone chosen by whoever built it.
The instrument this dive counts is the one the Constitution names, and it is now rare. The instrument that replaced it is not in any series this build could source, which is stated as a headline limit rather than a footnote.
The six base dives and the other 10 overlay dives are listed on the full record.
Transmittals per year: 23.5 under Clinton, 12.0 under George W. Bush, 5.0 under Obama, then 1.25 and 1.50 in the two four-year terms that follow. The rate roughly halves at each of the first three steps and then falls off a cliff. Six presidencies, both parties, one direction.
International commitments did not stop when treaty transmittals did. They moved to executive agreements, which are made without the Senate and outnumber treaties by orders of magnitude. No consistent public series of those could be sourced for this build. So what follows is a change in the instrument, and it is not evidence that the United States commits to less.
In progress — see the same-point table, which is the only fair comparison for it.
Bars are treaties transmitted per year; the raw total and the length of service are printed beside each. 327 treaty documents across the 103rd to 119th Congresses, attributed by transmittal date.
Nothing on this page attributes that to any president, because no president could produce it alone — a treaty needs sixty-seven Senate votes, and the collapse tracks the availability of those votes at least as closely as it tracks anyone's preference. What the series does establish is that the instrument the Constitution names is now used a handful of times a decade, and that this was true before the subject of this record held office.
One of seventeen dives on the full record. Two of the six presidencies charted here are Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's, both of whom carry this overlay and will get this dive with the same table. The instrument question it raises — whether a commitment that needs no ratification is a commitment — is already an entry on Obama's contested ledger, made by the other side.