Bush Gives Up on Senate Approving John Bolton

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:09pm

Rather than choose an appropriate alternative, Bush will make Bolton a "recess appointment," thereby further eroding the integrity of the United States in the eyes of the world.

Bolton will not have the Senate stamp of legitimacy on his Ambassadorship and thus will be perceived at home and abroad as not representing the citizens of the United States who elected those senators.

We will be laughingstocks to the world as we preach "democracy" -- which means a system of checks and balances, respect for minority rights, and rule of law -- while we send some presidential crony to the U.N., thereby demonstrating that that legislatures can be ignored and minority rights in government trampled by the demands of the Executive Branch.

Why should anyone in the world have respect for George Bush's United States? We've become exactly what we tell them not to be.

John Bolton NOT on Bill Frist's Laundry List of Nominations to Consider This Week

Updated On: 6/30/05 at 01:09 PM

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:17pm

He should've gone with Michael Bolton. Everybody loves him.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:17pm

How long before we receive word that Bush has been awarded full power of government for an unspecified amount of time?
We'll all be kowtowing to His Rigteous King Bush I in no time.

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:20pm

I read a lovely quote about Mr. Bolton today: "Appointing John Bolton to be UN ambassador, is like appointing a fish to ride a bicycle-- a bicycle he despises and has vowed to destroy."

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:21pm

I know this is an understatement, but I think this is truly a political blunder and I mean in his own party.

Who is cheering for Bolton?? This is wasted polical capital and some in his party will regret it. Cowboys do not have any regrets, so Bush will not have any.

[Plum]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:21pm

You're making assumptions, PJ. I'm also leaning towards the conclusion that Bush will, out of sheer stubborness, make Bolton a recess appointment, but nowhere does it actually say that's a certainty. There's evidence pointing the other way, too.

What we can be certain of is that this is a symptom of Bush's big-time loss in political capital. Even his own party isn't lining up to do his bidding anymore.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:31pm

What evidence shows that Bush will choose a more appropriate ambassador? His natural inclination to admit mistakes?

[Plum]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:42pm

Nooo, just the fact that everyone in the international community knows the difficulties surrounding Bolton's nomination, which would only make his job next to impossible if he were to go through. Bush has been only semi-contemptuous of the UN instead of completely so in his second term, so he might feel the need to have an ambassador who won't be laughed at by all the other diplomats.

There's also the minor fact that recess appointments don't normally happen after the Senate has, for all practical purposes, rejected a candidate. I doubt a lack of precedent will stop Bush, but it is there.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 1:48pm

If there's one group Bush refuses to be intimidated by, or barely acknowledge, it's "the international community." I'm with PJ. Right now Team Bush is smarting from eroding polls and a generally indifferently received speech. The Bushies spout venom toward those who won't compromise in their direction, and yet compromise isn't part of their own MO. Ever. My guess is, Bolton will be shoved upon us.

[Plum]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:01pm

Yeah, but it wouldn't just be a big "screw you" to the UN; it would say the same thing to the Senate. You really think he wants even more dissension there? He's having a tough enough time getting his programs through already.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:02pm

Plum, I think you've said yourself, it's not as if this administration has ever looked to compromise.
You're either for him or against him. The senate is merely against him. He now has nothing to lose himself personally and sees each setback like this as a defeat and a personal test of his manhood.

[Plum]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:04pm

Say what you want about it, but this administration isn't run by total idiots. Pushing Bolton through as a recess appointment is such a stupid idea, I'm not sure even stubborness is going to be enough of a reason to do so.

Like I said, he has plenty to lose. The Senate said "no" to his candidate. If he sticks him in anyway, the legislative branch won't be happy. And heaven knows the judicial branch doesn't like him much. The executive branch is hugely powerful, but it can't do things alone. Anyone who's passed a basic American Government class knows that.
Updated On: 6/30/05 at 02:04 PM

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:06pm

Let's hope he shoots himself in the head...uh, I mean foot.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:07pm

Okay, so they're not TOTAL idiots.

Yet.

But neither were the "crooks" in Nixon's administration--until hubris got them.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:10pm

Thanks for beating me to it, PJ. I never said the Administration is full of idiots (that's only an opinion, although I do hold it about some of them). The problem is, they've been able to accomplish so much through sheer force of will and making people line up or be called down as Un-American that I don't really think you can say with any certainty they're thinking clearly about this situation.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but you can still point to the Schiavo fiasco as evidence of this. They saw half of their own party split on the issue but chose to ride the wave of energizing their fundamental Christian base and it still didn't work. But they didn't care. They feel as if they have some moral high ground to walk on now and, to their base, they do.

[Plum]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:11pm

Ah, but the Schiavo thing was as much in the legislative branch as the executive. It was, in fact, another attack against the judicial. 2 against 1 is exactly the kind of fight a bully likes. Not so sure about 1 against 1, with the 3rd party hating you.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:19pm

But, as is so often the case with this administration, what we see is the Executive bullying his own party Legislators into lining up and pushing everyone outside his party into lining up.

Since they can't push the Judicial branch, they call them "Activists" and seek to remove them from power.

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:26pm

I think Bush absolutely will do a recess appointemnt of Bolton. To do anything less would involve admitting he was wrong, and acknowledging failure, something he is pathologically unable to do.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:34pm

Here's a brilliant analysis of what could happen if Bush goes through with this. Maybe Plum is right--maybe Karl is reading these columns to Bush (aloud, slowly) and they're changing course.

===

Bolton and Iran

Yet another reason to oppose John Bolton: If he gets to the UN, will he be a point man for our next war?

By Michael Tomasky
Web Exclusive: 06.30.05

Print Friendly | Email Article

The humiliating -- to George W. Bush, and to us, the citizens of the United States -- prospect of John Bolton becoming ambassador to the United Nations through a recess appointment is reason enough at this point to oppose the man. Such an appointment would signal contempt for both the constitutional advise-and-consent process and for the UN. And while neither of those may matter to officials of this administration, what should matter to them is the weakness it signals about them -- the biggest Republican majority in a Senate in a dog’s age and they still can’t get their man through.

But we have to work under the assumption that Bush will indeed make Bolton a recess appointment. There’s nothing in his character to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, we have to assume that, while Bolton would certainly arrive on First Avenue a damaged package under those circumstances, he will go about asserting his prerogative without timidity. There’s nothing in his character to suggest otherwise.

Given all that, it’s worth thinking about what he might actually do on the job. Usually when this question is considered, the talk is of UN reform (or “reform,” depending on one’s perspective). But maybe there are other items on the likely Bolton agenda; and if there are, we can bet that Iran is at the top of the list.

It’s an open secret in Washington that many neoconservatives -- most outside the administration, like Michael Ledeen, but a few still inside -- want to “do Iran next.” What “do” means in this context is as yet unclear. It could mean “decapitation attacks,” or targeted air strikes against key Iranian facilities or leadership. It could mean facilitating, covertly and overtly, a “people power” movement that could someday topple the mullahs. Or, finally, in the neocons’ wet dream, it could mean a ground war (other neocons, of course, are fantasizing about Syria).

I should stipulate here that I detest the Iranian regime as much as any neocon. As the estimable Stephen Kinzer has written in our pages, “Iranians fervently wish for change,” and Western liberals have to support that urge.

But there are ways, and there are ways. The way of the neoconservatives outside the administration, with Republican Representative Curt Weldon playing 007 with the discredited Manucher Ghorbanifar, as exposed exclusively by Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer in our pages, is at once dangerous and silly. And the administration doesn’t seem to be having much positive impact there either, on the evidence of the election last week of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Which brings us to Bolton. On April 18 of this year, The Washington Post’s Dafna Linzer printed the stunning report that on 12 separate occasions, Bolton, as the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, blocked his bosses Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice from receiving information about Iran. Let’s repeat that: Bolton got information about Iran from intelligence and other sources and sat on it. Twelve different times.

Linzer cites two especially interesting cases. In October 2003, Powell was prepping for an important international meeting on Iran. A memo had been prepared informing him that, in the Post’s words, “the United States was losing support for efforts to have the UN Security Council investigate Iran's nuclear program.” Yet when Bolton was asked about this in a meeting, a source told the newspaper, he said that information about other countries’ views could not be collected.

On a more recent occasion, the Post says, Bolton allowed Rice to go to Europe -- her first trip there as secretary of state -- without knowing about European opposition to Bolton’s efforts to oust Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Rice has been publicly supportive of Bolton’s nomination, but in private, she shut him out of everything having to do with Iran. The Post reported on June 20 that the Bush administration’s shift toward more cooperation with Europe on the Iran question was tied directly to the sidelining of Bolton.

So here’s what we know: In one area, and in only one area that we know of (Iran), Bolton kept information from his superiors and pursued an agenda that was more hard line than others in the administration were comfortable with. It also happens to be the case that the matters on which Bolton freelanced had to do specifically with the United Nations’ handing of Iran-related issues.

It’s hardly going out on a limb, given all this background, to suggest that UN Ambassador John Bolton might hit Turtle Bay with a certain agenda in mind with regard to Iran -- an agenda, his history on the topic indicates, that might not even square with that of his boss, the president. Small wonder that Ledeen told The New York Sun back on January 24, “I love John Bolton.”

The prospect of a Bolton recess appointment is sneaking under the radar right now. A formidable opposition that got Democratic senators to focus on Bolton in the first place, and then succeeded in raising such a clamor that the GOP-controlled Senate couldn’t win him a cloture vote, seems to have turned its attention to other matters. Folks, let’s not wake up next Thursday morning and find that this man is representing us at the United Nations. It’s time to rev the machine back up.

Michael Tomasky is the Prospect’s executive editor.
Yet another reason to oppose John Bolton:

[Plum]

Posted: 6/30/05 at 2:47pm

Y'know, the link to an article becomes kind of moot when you post the entire thing in the thread. If you stuck with the link and a quick summary or quote, it would be much appreciated. Not to mention more copyright-correct.
Updated On: 6/30/05 at 02:47 PM