If baby Bush had said he was on favour of the treaty which has daddy had been in favour of, the sensible thing to do for Clinton would have been to leave it until after the election, at which time whichever of the two candidates had been elected on a pledge to support the treaty would be in a better position to push to get it ratified.

That's the naive version,

The cynical version would be that he anticipated that if Bush won he would promptly rat on his pledge, and would get seriously damaged by the hostile reaction he would get, and by the damage it would cause to American interests world wide.

Incidentally, and I suppose this is thread drift - I was watching an episode of Star Trek, and this Ferengi daemon appeared, and bingo, I realised why Bush was so familiar. Cartoonists have played with the image of him as a chimpanzee, and it has some merit - but the reality is far closer to Ferengi. The mannerisms, the body language, the way he laughs, the eyes...

(Any Ferengi reading this, please don't be offended by the comparison. There are some significant differences, fortunately for you.)