It was easy, listening to Thursday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on John Bolton’s ambassadorship to the United Nations, to get lost in the minutiae of U.N. programs and resolutions, and fear that the big picture of the damage Bolton is doing to America’s standing in the world would be lost. If that happens, it could lead to the disaster of Bolton’s successful nomination as U.N. ambassador.
Since Bolton was sent to the U.N. as a recess appointment a year ago, he has been the quintessential bull in what is the quintessential china shop. But Republicans are more than willing to give Bolton a mandate to do more damage to a place that—more than most institutions—needs someone deft at forging tenuous alliances and addressing delicate problems.
The only thing that will keep that from happening is if Democrats—based on a clear-cut case that Bolton’s behavior is creating more problems for U.S. standing abroad than it solves—block Bolton’s nomination from coming to the Senate floor, just as they did last year, leaving President Bush to make the recess appointment without Senate confirmation.
Fortunately, some Democrats on the committee have been asking Bolton the tough questions that spell out why he has been, and will continue to be, the wrong man to be ambassador to the United Nations. Activists for the group Bolton Watch put together a blog Thursday live from the hearing room that chronicles the highs and lows of the committee questioning.
Steve Clemons of The Washington Note has also been chronicling the Bolton debacle for the past year. In one post, he notes:
He has failed to get America what it wanted on a new Human Rights Council. He failed to be a full and successful strategist and negotiator on other U.N. reform issues. He has failed to secure the support needed for more effective resolutions dealing with Iran and North Korea. He's known for being more of a tempest than a stabilizer. To many, he is seen as a brilliant architect of American failure at the U.N. And remember, essentially, John Bolton seems for the most part to want to set up failure.
He has been extraordinarily successful at making himself look like a gladiator taking on the stifling and incompetent bureaucrats at the U.N.—but I am aware of very few times when John Bolton invested his time and "political capital" in achieving a real success for America at the U.N.
There is hope that the negative impact Bolton is having is getting noticed, notwithstanding the disappointing reversal of Republican Sen. George Voinovich, who opposed Bolton’s nomination last year but now supports him. (He virtually fawned over him at Thursday’s hearing.) The Washington Post , however, reversed its deferential support of Bolton in an editorial. “Rather than building support at the United Nations, Mr. Bolton has more often solidified the anti-American coalition,” the Post wrote, concluding, “we can't explain Mr. Voinovich's change of mind, nor why Mr. Bush supposes that this polarizing envoy advances U.S. interests.”
Unless one believes that the United Nations in general and the United States’ place in the U.N. should be reduced to irrelevancy—unless you believe, as Bolton famously said, that you could eliminate the top 10 floors of the United Nations and it would make no difference—Bolton has proven himself to be utterly unsuited to be United Nation’s ambassador. But Republicans are being willfully blind to Bolton’s incompetence. Senate Democrats will be accused of being "obstructionists" if they get in the way of what Republicans hope will be a Bolton juggernaut. That is a badge they should wear proudly.
--Isaiah J. Poole |
Thursday, July 27, 2006 1:11 PM
