This is very good, but reading paragraphs like this (and variants re: US and global climate politics) has me wondering if other countries’ political systems indulge in comparable economic hostage-taking vs. RoW. German EZ politics 2008-12 seems closest.

It strikes me that the two are probably related because one of the factors increasing the global political weight of the marginal voter at the fulcrum of US electoral politics is the weight of a similar (mythical?) creature in German politics.

True, though with Germany it wasn’t about trying to affect an election so much as about placating/accommodating a consensus national view.