Bolton Out of the Blue You can say this about George W. Bush and the way he approaches political confrontation in his second term: He's pretty much a chicken(bleep). First, he watched John McCain take away his "nucular option" in the Senate. Then he nominated a human Nilla Wafer, John Roberts, to be our next Supreme Court Justice. Now the president has to stiffen his upper lip against Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist's public backhanding of his stem-cell research policy. And then there's the John Bolton thing. You remember Bolton, the pugnacious, moustached, disturbingly ineffective Undersecretary of State whose job it has been to keep a grip on global nuclear proliferation. Many moons ago, Bush nominated Bolton, of all people, for the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. I know this is stultifying, but Senate Democrats have been very much opposed to the idea of confirming Bolton. They have a plethora of complaints, some petty, some serious. The Oval Office has built the usual stone wall around Bolton, an act which can only be described as the appearance of some impropriety or other, but that's meaningless anymore. They've gotten away with everything, so there's no reason for them to stop trying now. Some find it a curiosity that the GOP didn't make more of a fuss about "obstructionist Democrats" keeping Bolton down. They griped a little, but not nearly so much as they've done over the four-point-something percent of appellate judges that had been the subject of acrimonious filibusters in the Senate. They were in no hurry to get an ambassador over to the U.N. building because, for one, they don't really care about the U.N., and besides that, they're chicken(bleep). It's a neat trick, the "recess appointment" which Bush will today use in order to install Bolton, much like a catalytic converter, into the machinery of world diplomacy. While the Senate is out of session, the president can tip his cap toward anyone he wants, an appointment that is good for one year before facing Senate confirmation. It's old hat; Bush played the recess appointment card to get around Senate opposition to Justice William Pryor, for instance. Bill Clinton did this, too. It was very controversial, and stirred up quite a bit of emotion among Senate Republicans, like James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who huffed that Slick Willie had "shown contempt for Congress and the Constitution." What had Clinton gone and done to rake up such ire? You mean, you don't remember? With the Senate in recess, he appointed James Hormel to be the United States' ambassador to Luxembourg. Bolton's appointment to the U.N. carries substantially more weight than that. Bolton was one of Bush's key players in the negotiations (or lack thereof) with North Korea. Since 2000, that country has drifted further and further away from the mainland of rational behavior, and this administration has steadfastly done nothing about it. The North Koreans made for some good conservative State of the Union snacks on TV, nothing more. Consider the timeline of our do-nothing policy with respect to that small problem (North Korea having nuclear weapons), as presented by the news stories over the years: "We've expanded the areas of dialogue by putting conventional forces on the agenda and by making it clear to the North Koreans that we want to talk about missiles and missile technology and missile sales and nuclear weapons programs. But also, we want to talk about humanitarian issues." - Secretary of State Colin Powell, June 2001. "I think we just have to let some time pass." - Colin Powell, July 2002. "In this first set of meetings, nothing is being put on the table. We'll begin a set of discussions. They will hear what we think about the situation." Powell, April 2003. "We very much hope that the six-party talks can resume before much longer," Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, February 2004. "It's not an issue between North Korea and the United States. It's a regional issue." White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, August 2004. And today, the Reuters headline: North Korea Nuclear Talks Toil in Vain on Joint Text. What, then, has been our new U.N. ambassador's input into this process? Other than having been in charge of the situation, what does he have to say about it? "A sounder US policy (towards North Korea) would start by making it clear to the North that we are indifferent to whether we ever have 'normal' diplomatic relations with it, and that achieving that goal is entirely in their interests, not ours." - John Bolton. Sounds like diplomatic material to me. Have a nice year, John... Try not to blow up the world while you're at your new job, you chicken(bleep). Paul Heller 8/01/05 << back to the archives
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